Autonomy is mostly a negative right—it’s a right to be free from interference and coercion.
Freedom is both a negative and a positive right—it’s the lack of restrictions (negative) but it’s also the capability to do things (positive).
In that case, anything that a government (or any other external agent) does to decrease someone’s freedom also decreases their autonomy, unless you want to redefine “interference” too. If you take away my capability to do things, you are interfering with me. Based on the examples you provided, it sounds to me like the difference between autonomy and freedom is that “autonomy” is an applause light, so limits to freedom that you approve of aren’t limits to autonomy, but limits to freedom that you don’t approve of are.
Do you think your behavior would change if you knew that every moment of your life was observed and recorded by government agents?
No. All the laws that I regularly break are laws that enough people regularly break that the police would very quickly give up even pretending to enforce them. Things that aren’t illegal but I wouldn’t want known would rarely end up exposed even if the surveillance system did not have well-designed protections for the surveyed, simply because the government agents involved wouldn’t have time to keep track of and exploit everyone’s embarrassing secrets.
Or, simpler, have you read 1984?
No, but I know what you are referring to. This is not an inevitable consequence of surveillance.
Selective enforcement of laws can be a huge problem. If for some reason a local cop decides he doesn’t like you, having all your crimes recorded in advance will make retaliation much easier.
Full transparency mitigates selective enforcement—if you can always point out the similar crimes other people are doing, selective enforcement becomes untenable in any semi-democratic society.
The relevant terms are “selective enforcement” and “selective prosecution”. Both are fully legal (as long as you don’t show bias against any of the protected classes) and commonly practiced.
As a trivial example try telling the traffic warden that she can’t give you a parking ticket because there is a bunch of illegally parked cars without tickets around.
This is true. If the surveillance system does not come with well-designed protections for those being watched, then problems like that can happen. Having a thorough surveillance system would make it possible to protect people from things like that, though of course that doesn’t mean it will actually happen. I’m not actually confident that increased surveillance would be a good thing; I was just arguing that “individual autonomy is good; therefore surveillance is bad,” is not a coherent argument.
In that case, anything that a government (or any other external agent) does to decrease someone’s freedom also decreases their autonomy, unless you want to redefine “interference” too. If you take away my capability to do things, you are interfering with me. Based on the examples you provided, it sounds to me like the difference between autonomy and freedom is that “autonomy” is an applause light, so limits to freedom that you approve of aren’t limits to autonomy, but limits to freedom that you don’t approve of are.
No. All the laws that I regularly break are laws that enough people regularly break that the police would very quickly give up even pretending to enforce them. Things that aren’t illegal but I wouldn’t want known would rarely end up exposed even if the surveillance system did not have well-designed protections for the surveyed, simply because the government agents involved wouldn’t have time to keep track of and exploit everyone’s embarrassing secrets.
No, but I know what you are referring to. This is not an inevitable consequence of surveillance.
Selective enforcement of laws can be a huge problem. If for some reason a local cop decides he doesn’t like you, having all your crimes recorded in advance will make retaliation much easier.
Full transparency mitigates selective enforcement—if you can always point out the similar crimes other people are doing, selective enforcement becomes untenable in any semi-democratic society.
That is empirically not true—well, unless you don’t consider the US to be a “semi-democratic society”.
We don’t have recordings of rich bankers doing cocaine. Saying “but they also do it” is very different from having the recorded proof of this fact.
The relevant terms are “selective enforcement” and “selective prosecution”. Both are fully legal (as long as you don’t show bias against any of the protected classes) and commonly practiced.
As a trivial example try telling the traffic warden that she can’t give you a parking ticket because there is a bunch of illegally parked cars without tickets around.
This is true. If the surveillance system does not come with well-designed protections for those being watched, then problems like that can happen. Having a thorough surveillance system would make it possible to protect people from things like that, though of course that doesn’t mean it will actually happen. I’m not actually confident that increased surveillance would be a good thing; I was just arguing that “individual autonomy is good; therefore surveillance is bad,” is not a coherent argument.