The Dark Knight was released in 2008. In that movie, Batman hijacks citizens' cellphones to track down the Joker, and it's presented as a major moral and ethical dilemma as part of the movie's overall themes. The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done.
Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more powerful surveillance technology is being advertised at the Super Bowl as a great and wonderful thing and you should totally volunteer to upload your Ring footage so it can be analyzed for tracking down the Jok... I mean illegal imm... I mean lost pets.
Pulled from IMDB, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox voices the consternation perfectly:
> Batman: [seeing the wall of monitors for the first time at the Applied Sciences division in Wayne Enterprises] Beautiful, isn't it?
> Lucius Fox: Beautiful... unethical... dangerous. You've turned every cellphone in Gotham into a microphone.
> Batman: And a high-frequency generator-receiver.
> Lucius Fox: You took my sonar concept and applied it to every phone in the city. With half the city feeding you sonar, you can image all of Gotham. This is wrong.
> Batman: I've gotta find this man, Lucius.
> Lucius Fox: At what cost?
> Batman: The database is null-key encrypted. It can only be accessed by one person.
> Lucius Fox: This is too much power for one person.
> Batman: That's why I gave it to you. Only you can use it.
> Lucius Fox: Spying on 30 million people isn't part of my job description.
That system is nothing compared to the geolocation databases curated by Apple and Google, with GPS sensors combined with Wi-Fi wardriving, IMEI tracking, cell tower handoffs, and the rest of the insane amount of telemetry they collect collect in real time. And that’s before even considering BLE and the Find My network. Imagine the “God mode” dashboards they could have in Cupertino (or more likely, in Mountain View).
Lmao did they really say it's null-key encrypted?
Unfortunately a very realistic depiction of how many of the brands advertising their security the strongest often have the most ridiculously broken security (flock)
I rewatched recently. That's what he says all right.
I mean it is technobabble but in some way it is also poetic.
They should have used base64 encryption.
How about ROT13? Ideally applied twice for twice the encryption.
There are performance concerns with base64. Hardware-assisted null-key encryption offers security that's a non-strict superset of base64 encryption and with superior performance.
Lmao did they really say it's null-key encrypted?
You know movies aren't real life, don't you?
Wait until he sees the main character is a super hero
The Nolan Batman movies are absolutely risible in retrospect. It's hard to believe how seriously everyone took them back then.
Not a single person in the world took any of them "seriously."
They're blockbuster movies about a comic book.
They’re good entertainment, not a documentary haha
> The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done.
A key part of that is when he tells Alfred that he did not even trust himself with that level of surveillance and coded it to only grant access to Alfred. Further, Alfred agrees to aid Batman by accessing the data but simultaneously tenders his resignation.
I doubt Amazon has anyone like Alfred in charge of this thing. Because if they did, the resignation would already have been submitted.
These kinds of resignations are interesting. The character is such a good protagonist, he resigns rather than do Bad Thing. But that pretty much guarantees the boss will hire someone more pliable. Why not instead swallow the pride and do Bad Thing but with some level of moderation? That would surely be a better outcome overall.
The argument is that it would destroy the character's honor or whatever. But that is also a kind of sacrifice for the greater good. Maybe a lot of those are in fact happening but just not visible.
> Why not instead swallow the pride and do Bad Thing but with some level of moderation?
A better answer is "refuse to do it without resigning". To begin with it gives you a better chance of preventing it, because maybe they back down, whereas if you do it or leave, someone does it. Then if they fire you, well, that's not really that much worse for you than resigning, but it's worse for them because now they're retaliating against someone for having ethical objections. How does that look in the media or in front of a jury? Which is all the more incentive for them to back down.
The problem with "well just do it a little bit" is that you can travel arbitrarily far in the wrong direction by taking one step at a time.
Dr John wrote a song about this dilemma, “Such a Night”
> Alfred
Wasn't it Lucius Fox?
Oh you’re night! I had Morgan Freeman’s face in my mind too.
It was :) Morgan Freeman not Michael Caine.
I’d trust Morgan Freeman over Michael Caine any day.
same difference
It's hard to not become disillusioned with our industry when most of it is just the manifesting of that Torment Nexus tweet. It's like no one in the tech world actually understands any piece of fiction that they have ever consumed.
I've had a startling number of conversations exactly like this:
"Oh, you read as well? What do your read?"
"[this book], [that book]"
"Those are all non-fiction, any fiction?"
"I don't read fiction. If I'm not going to learn anything, it's a waste of time."
"..."
Oh man, have I gotten to read a lot of history recently.
And also fiction.
Frequently at the same time.
I knew plenty of people growing up who thought Fight Club was just a fun movie about guys who like to fight and make a club to do so and it gets a little crazy, then cut to credits. They then theorized making their own such club. This to say, yeah, I think sometimes the audience can be overestimated in their ability to understand deeper meaning in art.
And Scarface was an inspiring rags-to-riches story.
It's said that Starship Troopers failed to do as well in USA because people thought it was pro-fascist propaganda ... it doesn't seem possible that could genuinely be the case.
Starship Troopers (the movie) is a terrible example of satire because it fails to show anything substantially bad. When you present a society that's more ethical than real life, nobody's going to care if some people wear uniforms that look a bit like Nazi uniforms.
There is a genuine existential risk, and it's addressed in the best way possible. Military slavery ("conscription") is more evil than disenfranchisement, especially when citizenship is not required to live a good life. Nobody is tricked or coerced into signing up for military service. Potential recruits are even shown disabled veterans to make the risk more salient. There are no signs of racism or sexism.
Other objections are not supported by the film. There is no suggestion that the Buenos Aires attack is a false flag. I've seen people claim it's impossible for the bugs to do this, but it's a film featuring faster-than-light travel. The humans are already doing impossible things, so why can't the bugs? I've also heard complaints that there is no attempt at peace negotiations. There is no suggestion that peace is possible. It's possible among humans because most humans have a strong natural aversion to killing other humans. Real life armed forces have to go to great lengths to desensitize their troops to killing to prevent them from intentionally missing. But humans generally have no qualms about killing bugs, and the bugs in the movie never hesitate to kill humans.
The movie is an inspiring story about people making the right choices in a difficult situation. Some people look at it objectively, and some only react to the aesthetics. Those who look objectively understand it's actually faithful to the spirit of the book despite Verhoeven not intending that.
The only hung I see about the asteroid was that Carmen’s collision (caused by her showing off) knocked the rock which caused it to hit Earth, where originally it may well have missed.
Seems reasonable (although clearly not the intent of the story and not a deliberate “false flag”)
And some extreemist are using fight clubs to gather followers, emulating the movie in the other direction. So-called "active clubs" are springing up using "fitness" to gather young angry males to the cause. Most join without realizing. Even gym owners are surprised to discover thier facilities have become clubhouses.
https://www.jfed.net/antisemitismtoolsandresources/neo-nazi-...
its far simpler than that; not caring about what they've built if the check is big enough. because they've taught us that "if i don't build it, they'll just hire someone else. might as well be me that gets the money." but if there was solidarity or more regulation it'd be much less of a guarantee that these things would be built.
Never doubt they understand, there's just too much money to be made making the Torment Nexus
This is a bit orthogonal to the article, but Christopher Nolan gives me the willies. Almost all his films have this kind authoritarian apologia in them.
Is that the same willies as something like 1984 or Black Mirror? All they are doing is taking some idea present now, and just taking it too the darker places of it while society is currently only seeing the rosy side of things. It's stories like this that might be first time someone might actually consider other implications of ideas.
I think they take issue with how it was ultimately okay to do to catch the Joker as long as Batman didn't use it and gave power to Luscious who resigned, instead of just calling it out as terrible and not doing it. That's how I read their comment anyway. "apologia"
Batman is a vigilante using brutal violence to pursue his goals outside of any legal system. The whole concept of the comics, movies, etc. is predicated on him being a virtuous guy that you can trust will always do the right thing (mostly, I'm sure he's a villain or anti-hero in some of them). The surveillance system really isn't anything different and it was ridiculous that Luscious had a problem with it in the first place.
Most (all?) of Batman is based on the idea that sometimes you need a good guy who operates outside of the law. Given that Batman isn't real but the problems he encounters often are real, the natural conclusion is that we should make up for our low Batman levels by letting law enforcement off the chain.
But this is hardly unique to Nolan. Probably 90% of Hollywood movies that involve crime have this message in some form.
The fact that Batman is an ultra wealthy 1 % which dishes out justice with his expensive toys while hiding from most of the authorities is also quite a message.
It’s not uncommon. Green Arrow the same.
The popular ones with extra-human abilities - Flash, Superman, Spiderman, Captain America, etc, have more normal backgrounds.
Boys with toys though - Batman, Ironman, The Atom, are the 1%. Ant Man I guess is more normal, but he stole his suit (but Hank Pym was reasonably normal too)
There's real media illiteracy in watching a character in a film do a thing and assume that means the filmmaker is endorsing that thing. This has the same vibe as the Hays Code[1] which mandated that the bad guys in film must always get their comeuppance.
> All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience, or the audience must at least be aware that such behavior is wrong, usually through "compensating moral value".
Modern cinema and cinematic critique has been so flattened by the constant accusations of filmmakers supporting some "-ism" or another by failing to have their characters directly speak out against it. It's ridiculous.
No, it's more like the militarism in a Heinlein novel. It is, at best, an unexamined assumption and, at worst, a celebration, or sometimes a passive acceptance, of violence to enforce the status quo.
In the context of the Dark Knight/surveillance example, it comes across to me as more of a recognition that the arguments in favor of these things can easily be made compelling if you evaluate them with no tradeoffs (don't you want to catch the bad guys??).
Then again, I guess the film ends up doing the same thing by only demonstrating concrete benefits alongside theoretical, but unrealized, harms...
To be fair that's more than a little bit present in most superhero media.
The whole idea about any superhero media is a special dude going on a violent spree because the authorities (in their eyes) can't do their job properly. The whole concept is anti-government and society as a whole.
Do not mistake Nolan's ability to call out the failures of both absolute freedom and absolute control and their interaction with him advocating for any of them.
Don't get the willies from the warning, learn from it.
His brother and the writer, Jonathan Nolan, is the greatest prophet of our era.
The Dark Knight Rises (the batman movie with Bane) seemed especially notable in this way - almost directly caricaturing the Occupy Wall St protests that were relevant at the time.
My read is that it's immoral because it's a surveillance hijack without the knowledge of the users, as opposed to an opt-in.
And its not just opt in for the camera owner/licensor it should be explicitly optin for anyone who gets recorded
In the series Person of Interest, there's a scene where you can see racks of servers which allows to track everyone in a city (New York?).
When I first saw the scene I said: "This amount of servers is not remotely enough to pull something like this".
When I think of the scene now: "These amount of servers can do much more than the scene portrays".
I mean, most of the tech presented in the series is almost standard operations procedure via mundane equipment now.
Scary.
Subsequently in PoI we see two imperfect super-intelligent AIs let loose in the real world fight each other for domination and their objectives.
For me, it’s a question of when, not if this happens in real life.
Person of Interest is really good. Unfortunately I learned too much about the lead's IRL behavior, and it's on my shelf of shows I'll enjoy once the involved parties aren't collecting royalties anymore.
It absolutely takes people on a police procedural that drags viewers unwittingly into watching a science fiction show, and I'm totally here for all of it.
I believe they also pull this off with a fleet of PS3s, at one point.
The Dark Knight was released in the summer of 2008. This was almost 7 years after 9/11.
Many aspects of that film were deliberately done to explore post 9/11 America. This includes the methods Harvey Dent uses, the things the Joker says, and the surveillance scenes and more.
These discussions surrounding surveillance have been around long before 2008.
Of course. The use of mass surveillance in the movie is not-so-subtly referencing the PATRIOT Act. But again, it's presented as a moral dilemma, and multiple protagonists acknowledge that it's far too powerful to exist, and its use is a last resort. It falls into the larger theme of Joker pushing Batman to violate his ethics for the greater good.
One could argue that because it was successfully used to catch Joker, the movie concludes that mass surveillance is sometimes necessary to stop evil, but it's at least presented as a dilemma. A massive corporation coming out and saying "mass surveillance is awesome because you can find lost pets" is a crazy escalation of the surveillance state.
I mean the message in The Dark Knight is really messy. The characters believe it’s immoral, but they use it anyway, and it saves lives and stops the Joker.
Yeah, as I say in a sibling comment, it's a fair reading of the movie that it's ultimately pro-surveillance because it shows that despite being immoral, unethical mass surveillance catches the bad guy. But "surveillance is unethical but necessary when battling the forces of evil" is worlds away from "surveillance is totally awesome and everyone should buy a Ring camera."
That kind of change in morality seems possible for an 18 year timespan? If anything the slope is closer to typical than to the maximum recorded.
The moral norms of societies, in many aspects, changed even more from 1928 to 1946.