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Depending on the crime, most people would agree that face/gait recognition is warranted, for example in case of murder or rape. The difference here is that some people consider "illegal immigration" to be more like a misdemeanor, others consider it to be something much more serious.
> " others consider " laws are knowable. readable. Opinion on them does NOT matter.
It’s not just facial it’s also gait recognition too.
Mostly gait probably. I wonder if there are any hacker techniques to scramble gait, like putting wooden planks or plastic parts inside clothes
We like to think surveillance is something you can turn on for one problem and turn off afterward. In practice, that never happens. Once the machinery is in place, it stays and looks for new work. Tools justified today by "illegal immigration" won’t stop there. They drift into credit scoring, health insurance pricing, hiring and firing decisions, school admissions, housing access, travel permissions, banking, welfare…
That first sentence of yours really struck a chord with me. I tried to think of other examples: Cars — essential for leveraging time to travel longer distances and carrying multiple passengers and heavy loads; ens up being used by one person to drive three minutes to get coffee. Guns — to quickly précis a … complex topic: good guys, but also bad guys. Electricity — power generation goes up decade after decade, but so…
Surveillance is different. It’s inherently centralized and asymmetrical. By design, it gives one side - the state or large institutions - persistent visibility into everyone else, with little reciprocity. You can regulate how it’s used on paper, but the power imbalance remains.
It’s closer to nuclear technology than to cars or electricity. I can’t build a nuclear weapon or possess fissile material, not because it’s inefficient, but because some technologies are considered too dangerous to be broadly accessible. Mass surveillance belongs in that category. Once it exists, citizens don’t get to opt out, and meaningful oversight tends to lag far behind capability.
Licensing works when the technology is decentralized. With surveillance, the risk isn’t misuse at the edges - it’s concentration at the center.
When China did this, this was seen as a terrible violation of rights.... Now that we do this hundreds of times a day, it has become routine.
>"When China did this, this was seen as a terrible violation of rights.... Now that we do this hundreds of times a day, it has become routine." Normally questions like this would be labeled as whataboutism, false equivalence etc. One rule for thee, another one for me. Personally I think we (The West) are heading to disaster. I really missed older times before 9/11
Regardless, it's quite relevant to point out that at this point two of the world's superpowers are actively engaging in this. Claiming that the technology won't be used this way - that people are just fearmongering - clearly doesn't hold water. (Not that it ever did, but now we've got concrete evidence.)
Depending on the crime, most people would agree that face/gait recognition is warranted, for example in case of murder or rape. The difference here is that some people consider "illegal immigration" to be more like a misdemeanor, others consider it to be something much more serious.
> Depending on the crime, most people would agree that face/gait recognition is warranted, for example in case of murder or rape That's the problem with dragnet surveillance. People are okay with it for extreme cases. And then the scope creeps. Free or secure. You can't have both. And you usually can't even have just the latter.
Agreed and wanted to add. If it exists, can do the job, and the person in charge is aware of it, then it will inevitably be used. There's no such thing as "only for certain situations" unless there is a large inherent cost to using it outside of the proscribed scenario.
If you mandate the placement of fireman's axes by every door, at some point someone is going to use one of them to commit murder or vandalism or some other crime. There is effectively nothing that can be done to prevent that other than choosing not to mandate their placement.
It’s not just facial it’s also gait recognition too.
> It’s not just facial it’s also gait recognition too Source? Where would they get the fingerprints from?
With all the trade in personal data in the US I assume it's only a matter of time before places like grocery stores start selling it.
Why stop at just gait though? Geometric fingerprinting of various body parts is also possible. Palm geometry readers have been commonplace for a long time.
We like to think surveillance is something you can turn on for one problem and turn off afterward. In practice, that never happens. Once the machinery is in place, it stays and looks for new work. Tools justified today by "illegal immigration" won’t stop there. They drift into credit scoring, health insurance pricing, hiring and firing decisions, school admissions, housing access, travel permissions, banking, welfare…
Any mechanism, once built, seeks to expand its scope. Until it delivers mail ;)
We like to think surveillance is something you can turn on for one problem and turn off afterward. In practice, that never happens. Once the machinery is in place, it stays and looks for new work. Tools justified today by "illegal immigration" won’t stop there. They drift into credit scoring, health insurance pricing, hiring and firing decisions, school admissions, housing access, travel permissions, banking, welfare…
The peer-reviewed consensus of this in psychology describes a three-step internal process of Anticipatory Anxiety, Risk Aversion and Self-Censorship [1]. The Conforming Effect (Conformity Theory) has been measured in studies such as those by Jonathon Penney (2016/2021), where use of Wikipedia data and search traffic shows a statistical drop in "sensitive" searches (e.g., about "terrorism," "human rights," or "health") immediately following news of government surveillance. [2]
[1] Surveillance as a Socio-Technical System: Behavioral Impacts and Self-Regulation in Monitored Environments, https://www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/13/7/614
[2] Chilling Effects: Online Surveillance and Wikipedia Use, https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1127413?v=pdf
[0] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/721/ ("Davis v. Mississippi (1969)")
When China did this, this was seen as a terrible violation of rights.... Now that we do this hundreds of times a day, it has become routine.
>You're thinking Chinese surveillance
>US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims
https://xcancel.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955
American capitalists are ideologically driven hypocrites.