It was, which is why it makes such a perfect analogy.

Surveillance has lots of good and bad uses, and is morally neutral itself. Powerful but neutral. The problem comes when the users use it for bad purposes, and in fact it is so tempting that they can't help using it for more and more bad purposes. If every palantir (either one) user was a "good guy" who refused to use it for bad purposes, it would be a potent force for good, and that's why they were created in the first place.

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OkayPhysicist 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I thoroughly disagree. Surveillance is an invasive tool of control, and as such intrinsically immoral. Just like a slew of other immoral actions, it may be a net positive when applied for a greater good, but if not used for anything, it's evil.

This is trivially true to most common moral understandings. If my neighbor installs a camera pointing through my window and into my shower, applying some fancy technique to see through clouded glass, most of us would justly think that was immoral of him, even in complete absence of any other immoral actions facilitated by that surveillance.

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sfink 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That depends on the definition of "surveillance". Should a foreman not pay close attention to his workers? Should a hospital not track its patients' locations and vital stats while within the hospital? Are cameras in a jewelry shop morally wrong?

Your neighbor's surveillance of you is bad because they're violating your privacy, and using the tool of surveillance to do it. If you lived in a foggy area and they were monitoring their front walkway with a camera that was good at seeing through fog, and they happened to get a corner of your property in the camera's field of view, then you might have something to complain about but I wouldn't call it morally wrong.

I agree that surveillance is a tool of control. So are fences. It's ok to control some things.

I also agree that surveillance gets into sticky territory very, very quickly. I definitely don't have a clean dividing line between what I'd like the police to be able to see and what they shouldn't. (Especially when the temptation to share that data is so strong and frequently succumbed to.) I would probably say in some useless abstract sense, mass surveillance is also morally neutral. But given that it's proven to be pretty much impossible to implement in a way that doesn't end up serving more evil than good, I wouldn't object to calling it immoral.

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dudefeliciano 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> So are fences

Good fences make good neighbors... If I could put a notion in his head: Why do they make good neighbors?

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rogue7 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

IMHO surveillance is a problem when it is asymmetric ; which is obviously the case here. Governments for example are watching everyone inside and outside, but the people that are being monitored simply cannot really watch the people watching them. Don't you agree ?

In this view, maybe an ultra radical solution to privacy issues is : no privacy at all, for no-one. Complete and total transparency of everyone to everyone. Now the question is how to implement that ? That's obviously impossible, because someone in power will always have something to hide. So maybe if true democracy where everyone holds exactly the same amount of power that could work ? Same issue, because it is impossible to implement too. Oh well.

	▲	OkayPhysicist 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That is a "justifies extreme violence to prevent" type suggestion. Privacy is a basic human right. The problem is power. No one should be in a position to spy on everyone.

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8note 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

if its ok for the foreman to control the workers, you would then say its ok for the foreman to hold the workers at gun point while they work?

id say the control is immoral, in all forms. Voluntary agreement and consent are fine but then its not surveillance, its people saying where they are. the patient wants the doctor to know where they are and what they are doing, and not just letting the doctor decide on their own what to know.

the worker wants the foreman to know that they are present and working, in fulfilment of their contract together. its not surveillance either.

the jewelry store itself is immoral, but private property and control thereof is a tradeoff we've made

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OkayPhysicist 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Again, there are plenty of instances where enough good comes from surveillance that it outweighs the intrinsic negative, but denying that it is, in of itself, intrinsically negative suggests that some creepy dude monitoring everyone's every move is just fine, as long as he's not doing anything else.

A more obvious parallel is violence. To trip over Godwin's law, shooting Hitler would have been a moral action, but not because "shooting people" is amoral. Shooting a random person is definitely immoral. We constantly do immoral things for the greater good, but it is a mistake to thusly assume those actions are amoral.

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Manuel_D 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So should the US simply not pursue any tax evasion cases? Because catching tax evasion necessarily requires surveillance.

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sleepybrett 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

the palantir weren't created for spying, they were created so that the various kingdoms of middle earth could stay in contact with each other. The palantir are a party line. It just got real sketchy when Minas Ithil fell (and became Minas Morgul) and Sauron got possession of the orb. After which the kings of gondor stopped using them.

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jltsiren 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The palantiri were created by Fëanor. The kinslayer whose pride, rage, and desire for vengeance drove most of his people to their doom. The potential to corrupt was always present in them.

In the LotR, Aragorn bends a palantir to his will and uses it for good with great difficulty. He manages to do that, because he is (in addition to everything else) the trueborn king and the palantiri are his birthright. Denethor, on the other hand, succumbs to corruption. While he is a powerful lord with good intentions, he is only a steward, not a king. The right to use the palantiri is not inherent in his being, because he only wields power in someone else's name.

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8note 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

surveillance creates leverage over people. its not neutral if it creates a power imbalance, especially since its used by the wealthy on the poor.

you can't do surveillance and not learn the bad knowledge, and once youve created the bad knowledge its just a matter of time before it gets into nefarious hands.

a "bad guy" could still hack the "good guys" or palantir itself, and get access to all the bad data the "good guys" have created.

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kortilla 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s not morally neutral, the very existence of surveillance has a chilling effect on dissenting opinions.

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uoaei 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are morally neutral technologies, but the unique quality of surveillance data containing PII (and tools to correlate across time and space) means that it's only morally neutral until it is used in any capacity. Which is to say, it is not morally neutral.

	▲	sfink 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You've already made a pretty big leap from surveillance to storing surveillance data persistently, and another to the tools. I'm not going to argue that mass surveillance is morally neutral.[1] Tolkien's Palantirs let you see and communicate and influence across vast distances. That's no more immoral than a videophone. Of course, that's also not surveillance; that'd be a telescope. But surely telescopes aren't immoral? [1] I mean, I would, but (1) you can't create a mass surveillance system from a morally neutral or positive place, and (2) it seems nearly impossible to implement a mass surveillance system without creating more harm than benefit. So it becomes a boring semantics argument as to whether mass surveillance is fundamentally immoral or not.

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renticulous 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If Palintir itself gets hacked, all the data and analysis will be stopped up by others.