Figures that the only push-back against pervasive surveillance that would have any chance of success is when the military points out that it is a threat to national security.
The main thing surveillance cameras create is distrust between neighbors, and to enable businesses to better ignore the community they are in.
>[1] The main thing surveillance cameras create is distrust between neighbors, and [2] to enable businesses to better ignore the community they are in.
I see your first point, but don't get the second.
What do you intend?
Putting one up inside your store, okay, sure whatever. I mean when they put them outside pointing at sidewalks and pedestrians. Monitoring the sidewalk says that you care more about your security than your neighbor's privacy, and intrinsically that you think your neighbors may be a security threat, which is objectively offensive if you're the neighbor.
You don't do that if you see yourself as a part of the neighborhood.
We can talk about theft and security being important concerns, sure, but when I see security cameras going up pointed at neighbors and pedestrians it's yet to be *because of an actual breakin*. It's just bonkers how they get installed without anyone asking "why here, specifically?"
It seems like a response based on paranoia when the less antisocial thing to do is recognize that your business is, by the nature of physical space, part of the community. If every employee, including the founders and C-suite, commute from elsewhere and never talk to anyone living near their office, of course they're going to be paranoid of neighbors.
My goal of the cameras, which my neighbours know about, is not protecting me. It's protecting us.
I point cameras at their houses, at their doors & driveways from my property. Why? Because they can't install a camera on my house, but I can. Nobody has a problem. There's no distrust. There's cameras pointed right back at my home, too. We watch each other, because having more than one camera point of view creates a better security for all of us. I also have them watching at my door, specifically so I can see who is at the door, when mail gets delivered, or when packages get dropped off.
None of us have the delusion that we're all spying on each other. We're watching out for each other.
I'm not trying to play contrarian, but I agree with your parent.
If a neighbor wanted to install a camera pointed in the direction of my house and I could tell they were asking as a formality, I'd be nice about it. I'd be even nicer if we discussed my concerns before the final choice and they did not respect my wishes. It is their property and I'm not one to make a fuss, especially if there is no legal recourse.
However, in my head, I'd be furious and take it as a clear sign that they lack trust in the community and that they misunderstand what privacy means.
Being a good neighbor often means not rocking the boat, especially if you want to maintain healthy relationships. That isn't an endorsement of being passive, but an understanding that there are often bigger fish to fry. Banking their good will for a rainy day when I need coalitional support for something
In thinking a bit more about how to put this (I agree with you) --
My point was that cameras destroy trust.
You don't demonstrate trust in your child by putting a webcam in their bedroom and scanning their internet traffic. Maybe that's necessary for security in your mind, but it's not *trust*.
> I point cameras at their houses, at their doors & driveways from my property
Good god!
If a neighbour insisted on filming me and my family every time we left our front door, I'd either think they had a mental illness (paranoia) or were a bloody perv and in need of percussive attitude readjustment.
Complaining about the neighborhood putting cameras on their property means someone cares more about their propaganda system than their neighbors. Most of what you said is valid for door locks.
I'm sorry, you need to define "propaganda" and "neighbor" if you want me to take this seriously, especially as you're claiming that I am so invested in it. I care about my neighbors and want to preserve their and my privacy.
I don't think it is worth the downsides of being subjected to pervasive surveillance in the public square in exchange for the (false) promise of being necessary for security. Is your position seriously that this is propaganda that means I don't care about my neighbors?
To be honest it sounds like the actual propaganda I've been hearing since 9/11, and I don't think it makes neighborhoods healthier or safer. Just look at the actual article, do you think criminals haven't been hacking these cameras to determine when your neighbor leaves home?
You can have different values if you want, I'm not ashamed of mine on this one. I will absolutely not put up cameras pointing at the public, my neighbors deserve better than that.
The technicalities of such an order greatly interest me — Roskomnadzor already has statutory rules in place that make ISPs block egress traffic to proxies, Tor entry nodes, and similar. Since the censorship infrastructure is already there, couldn’t they similarly not put up stateful firewall rules to prevent any inbound connections from outside Russia?
Lots of Ukrainians live and study in Russia even after the war (I knew a Ukrainian citizen who was studying at PhysTech despite the 2022 war), and lots of families in Russia have relatives in Ukraine (and vice versa).
It makes this war even more tragic, because Ukraine and Russia are so intertwined socially and culturally, and there was no reason for Russia to escalate the war.
That said, Roskomnadzor can't fully lock down ingress and egress without drastically impacting the Russian economy and pissing off your average Russian who watches YouTube, games on Steam, and messages using Telegram.
Back in 2021 Russia did several tests that disconnected from the international internet. They were prepared to do that and they didn’t suffer much financially and nobody really noticed tbh https://www.reuters.com/technology/russia-disconnected-globa...
Similarly I wonder how much of Russia's traffic camera network Ukraine has access to. And conversely what Ukraine does to avoid revealing targets and troop movements to Russian traffic cams
The Ukraine invasion is going to go down as one of the biggest own-goals in recent history. Even if Russia took all of Ukraine tomorrow it looks like it'd still be a pyrrhic non-victory given how much it cost them in money, lives, and international standing. It's basically reduced them to a Chinese vassal state.
It's like Putin watched the US experience in Iraq and said "I can do something much dumber than that..."
I would like to believe it too but western economic sanctions have overall done little. Russia is still finding takers for its gas (India and China notably but even European countries are still actually buying through third parties). It has found new allies in Africa. Plus it’s highly likely they will end up with territorial gain one the dust settles.
The war also highlighted some weaknesses and a general unpreparedness of the western allies.
The cost in human lives was high but I’m not convinced you can really call it a strategical defeat at this point sadly.
> -completely demolish their entire military export potential
Which buyer have they lost? I fail to see any. Most of their customers distrust the US and Turkey didn’t denounce their contracts as far as I know.
> -lose all kinds of prestige the „mighty“ russian military had
Did they? That’s unclear to me. Wagner is in more countries than ever.
> -severely diminish the arms stocks they had left over from the Soviet Union
Their defence industry output is the highest it has ever been and wasn’t stopped by the various embargo they are under.
> -publically had one of their mercenary companies march on their capital in revolt
Before Putin very publicly showing that he is still the sole master of the country. With Russian propaganda on the ground, it wasn’t ever a minor setback for them.
Plus, give it six months more and they might have humiliated the west by actually mostly winning the war with Ukraine which everyone say they would never win.
I know the western media needs to parrot that Russian is the complete loser here to keep support high but the reality doesn’t seem that clear to me.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying it’s an overwhelming victory from Russia. I’m saying that if you look at it like if Russia had overwhelming lost, you will completely misanalyse both the situation today and its implication for the future.
> Plus, give it six months more [...] mostly winning the war
I'd agree even two weeks ago, but then Kursk happened. So far, Russia's response to that has been weak. While it will be hard for Ukraine to use that as a foothold to advance deeper into Russia due to geography (mountains and rivers, I'm told), it will also be challenging for Russia to take back the territory. It's also not a big enough threat to "endanger the existence of the Russian state", so they probably won't be using tactical nukes there. With that, "winning" is going to be very hard - it looks much more like a tie now. What are your thoughts on that?
The US election will be key. Trump already said he wasn’t going to maintain the founding at the same level of help as today. Germany is already pulling out. Ukraine is entirely dependent of foreign founds to sustain its campaign.
Plus the situation regarding troops on the ground didn’t change. Ukraine didn’t rotate enough and is reluctant to conscript more. Soldiers are tired and morale is low.
Kursk is there to try to extend the front and have Russia pull troops out of the north. It’s mostly guerilla warfare on a weakly protected area. They don’t have the man power nor the logistic means required to prevent Russia from retaking the region but doing so means that Russia will stop pushing further into Ukraine for some time. It was sorely needed but it’s a stopgap measure not a complete revirement unless something else happens.
It has changed the timeline however. I expect Russia to stall until the US election to see if it’s better to enter negotiations now or keep fighting.
I mean, if you’re Russia, being totally dependent on China is probably not a good outcome for you, and that seems to be where things are ending up. If nothing else you’d be depending on China remaining on-side forever, whereas in fact you’d assume China will use this dependence as a bargaining chip with the US and/or Europe at some point.
> China will use this dependence as a bargaining chip with the US and/or Europe at some point.
You are misunderstanding how China views itself and its current position. They don’t really bargain this way anymore and especially not when it comes to country bordering them and they consider in their sphere of influence.
Most analysts seem to think that China is not very happy about what Russia is doing. It means they will probably put pressure on Russia for an end to the war. I expect them to try to be leading and hosting the negotiation to show that they are a diplomatic power nowadays.
I don’t expect them to negotiate an end of their support with the US however. They still share a common goal with Russia after all. They both want to limit the US influence in their direct neighbourhood.
Then Netanyahu came and made both Iraq and Ukraine look almost sane. I suspect we're still not anywhere near the inflection point: it's going to get much worse before it starts to get better.
Understand that Kim Jong Un doesn't want to be Putin when he grows up. Instead, it is Putin who envies Kim. He wants to live a life of lucre and luxury while the rest of the world is more-or-less forced to prop up his failed state for humanitarian and political reasons.
As stupid as this sounds, no other explanation for Putin's behavior makes any more sense. Come up with a better one? I'm all ears... but there's a lot you'll need to explain.
He still needs to play, in some way, to a domestic audience.
The fall of the USSR was objectively bad for a large part of the Russian population. Their economy and quality-of-life metrics have never really returned to pre-1991 levels. Their geopolitical relevance has been degraded, and Western institutions have nibbled away at their sphere of influence. They've lost millions of square kilometres of territorial holdings that date to Imperial times.
He needs to perform some action to prove he's delivering something, and a stilted "you bait us long enough and we'll bite back" response might well fit, especially if they're already on a "the West is encroaching on our motherland" narrative.
I still believe that if the Ukraine had made some token concession-- for example, offering a binding secession referrendum in the Donbass, that would have given Putin the bacon he needed to bring home without an actual war.
I still believe that if the Ukraine had made some token concession-- for example, offering a binding secession referrendum in the Donbass, that would have given Putin the bacon he needed to bring home without an actual war.
The de-facto capture of Crimea wasn't enough, but the Donbass would've been. Got it.
I think you’re possibly overthinking it. Being a dictator doesn’t normally come with a particularly enviable pension plan; once you fall out of the saddle, at best you’re going into exile, but often they just kill you. So Putin needs to stay in the saddle, forever. And thus, this sort of thing.
No, that's exactly what I said. His goal is to stay in the saddle for the rest of his natural life, propped up by Western charity and Chinese interests just like the Kim dynasty has been. That's the whole idea. For someone in Putin's position, a projection of genuine strength is actually less sustainable.
As a nuclear-armed loser, he's a threat to global stability. Since he evidently can't be removed or ignored, he must be indulged, which is why he has gone out of his way to project weakness at every level since the start of the invasion. Losing the Black Sea fleet to a country with no navy, complaining about NATO encroachment while taking actions guaranteed to increase it, making a big show out of (temporarily) forgiving a usurper, releasing weird-as-hell photos in which he cowers at the end of a table the size of a bowling lane, along with videos in which he's quivering with a nervous tic that mysteriously doesn't seem to be getting worse... the examples are as numerous as they are nonsensical, and as irrational as they are irrefutable.
Either I'm terrible at making my point, or many people vehemently disagree while being unable to offer a better explanation.
Putin wants Russia to be great again (the image of Russia he grew up with), and to undo the historic “injustice” of the fall of the USSR and Lenin’s “mistake” of ceding territory to Ukraine.
That’s the public line, of course, but likely not his actual reasoning. Putin wants to stay in charge, because once he’s not in charge, his life expectancy is measured in hours.
>Once he’s not in charge, his life expectancy is measured in hours.
No it is not. Every Soviet or Russian leader since 1917 died peacefully in his bed, and a handful of those (Gorby and Yeltsin certainly) lost power well before they died.
Every Soviet or Russian leader since 1917 died peacefully in his bed,
Beria was executed.
Stalin did apparently expire in his own bed a few days after collapsing on his floor. But given that he was suspiciously denied treatment for 18+ hours, the circumstances cannot quite be called "peaceful".
Khrushschev died of a heart attack at Moscow Central Clinic Hospital.
Andropov and Chernenko spent their last months mostly at that same hospital. Andropov "dropped off" there, and Chernenko likely did as well.
Yeltsin spent his last 12 days at an unspecified hospital.
And yet somehow you "know" that they all died peacefully and in their own beds.
Putin's own circumstances will likely be significantly more precarious than the post-Stalin/Beria batch. The reason the latter were able to enjoy relatively peaceful exits (if not in their own bed at home) rests in the fact that the Soviet system at least had a working semblance of respect for the law; and everyone knew that the transition process was firmly in the hands of the Politburo and the KGB. The country's position in the world at large was quite stable, and it faced no external threats.
Meanwhile under Putin, rule of law as such been entirely hollowed out; his supporting factions are more diverse suspicious of one another; and thanks to his actions, the country now faces significant external threats, which he doesn't seem to be doing a good or even adequate of managing.
Pretty much anything could happen in his last days, under these circumstances.
"In a bed", then. I.e., his life was not shortened deliberately by other people.
And Beria was never leader of Russia or the Soviet Union: he was head of the spy service, a position held since 2008 by Alexander Bortnikov. You've heard about Beria, but probably haven't heard about Bortnikov because Bortnikov has been much much less violent and hasn't made a habit of raping Russian women in plain view on the streets of Moscow like Beria did.
And I disagree with your assertion that the Putin regime is more autocratic than the other Russian / Soviet regimes since the death of Stalin. Opposition leader Navalny for example held that Crimea should be part of Russia; ditto Yeltsin. (And Russia's holdings in Donetsk, Zaphorizia and Kherson oblasts can be seen as necessary to make it viable to hold Crimea over the long term: the so-called land bridge.) If Putin dies suddenly, Russian politics probably goes on mostly the way it has been going: i.e., very slowly becoming more liberal and more committed to the rule of law, with some setbacks. (I do not deny that Yeltsin was more liberal than Putin.)
Arguably the US's finest diplomat was George Kennan, who predicted before Putin became leader of Russia that NATO's policy of expanding eastward would eventually cause Moscow to react with military force, which Kennan correctly predicted would be misinterpreted by the West as a re-awakening of Russian imperialist ambitions. Kissenger was also against NATO expansion as were many other Western diplomats and international-relations experts.
I think the parent's (@layer8's) snippet provides a pretty accurate and succinct statement of Putin's true (internal) position, actually (most of it anyway -- there was also his hope that the SMO would help keep Ukraine and Belarus out of Western influence, and forever grateful for the Motherland's tender affections and embraces; and likely strengthen Russia's long-term position in the oil and gas markets, as a sweet little bonus on top). Even more basically, it was all about enhanced "stature" vis-a-vis the West, which he presumed Russia would naturally and rightly win as a result of the brilliant technical operation he had planned.
As opposed to the external narratives -- about NATO expansion, denazification, and the supposed need to "protect" the Russian-speaking population, and all that garbage (that unfortunately a certain contingent on HN seems all too eager and happy to believe, pretty much exactly at face value).
At the start of the invasion, anyway. By now things have changed dramatically of course, and his true position is probably a lot closer to your description.
The main thing surveillance cameras create is distrust between neighbors, and to enable businesses to better ignore the community they are in.