Slippery Slopes
Surveillance is a slippery slope.
You have some kind of crime somewhere that’s hard to police with traditional means of law enforcement, so you put up some kind of 24/7 camera there on the street corner. One camera is able to deter some crime, but what about a dozen cameras? How about hundreds?
Why not monitor everyone’s social media feeds to see if they’re doing anything dangerous, like speaking out against the government? Heck, why not see if you can hack into their emails and texts, and read everything they’ve ever typed to another person?
We’ve got to keep society safe, you see. There’s no cost that’s too high, and this is all inevitable if we put that one security camera up.
This represents two different types of slippery slope arguments. There’s the rational chain-based idea that implies that one camera may well lead to others, and that could lead to government overreach and privacy violations.
Then, there’s the slippery slope argument that thinks it has the football and runs all the way down to the end zone before realizing it does not have the ball.
Thinking in possible outcomes is a lot better than visualizing one certain outcome and fixating on it. A good slippery slope argument can open minds to possibilities that hadn’t been considered. A bad slippery slope argument can close minds to all possible outcomes but one.
Burp.
My cities subreddit regularly blows up with an accounting of all the Flock cameras we have. Last time I saw it, someone had counted 400 and i think there is deflock.org. Oatmeal_hole is seriously worked up about this.
How good to hear somebody else who sees things a bit like this. Obviously slightly different here just for a change but is the issue of being spied upon. I’ve got to that point of just not being bothered if they listen to conversations and read my messages on my phone - fine, read what you want, hear what you like and get bored whilst wasting money. There you go they can read my reaction now and drop their digestive in their cup of tea whilst still holding one half.