“What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater.”
“The combination of automated plate readers every 10 yards or so with always-on cameras that feed into an always-watching (and recording) nexus of ‘private-public’ surveillance is bleak, depressing and scary. Worse, it’s real.”
Read more: https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2018/04/17/when-the-meter-feeds-on-you/
“Police admitted to using a photo sent through WhatsApp to cull fingerprints for evidence that successfully led to the conviction of 11 individuals for drug crimes. The story further revealed that this was not just a special-use case.”
“China said this week it will begin applying its so-called social credit system to flights and trains and stop people who have committed misdeeds from taking such transport for up to a year.”
“As long as I’m carrying my Black Opal, there’s that little shred of liberty. If this the hill I die on, at least you’ll never know how I got here.”
“The prohibition ‘makes outlaws out of perhaps thousands of Nashvillians who…are simply trying to earn an honest living,’ according to the suit. There are at least 1,600 home-based enterprises in operation in the city, and since many such companies are forced to operate illegally, the true count is most likely even higher.”
Read more: https://reason.com/archives/2018/03/24/it-shouldnt-be-illegal-for-rec
“Uber, Lyft, and several other firms critically involved in self-driving cars have their own ideas about how to improve personal transport — and one of the biggest involves you not being allowed to drive your car at all.”
“This final exit scan had a different feel. It was not about the airline. It was not about stopping terrorism and other mischief. It is purely about the possibility that the right of a person to exit could be denied for any reason the government happens to dream up.”
Read more: https://www.aier.org/blog/exit-scans-are-here
“Cities and towns are using [smart meter parking apps] like ParkMobile, StreetLine, ParkMe, Park Smarter, ParkBud, MPay2Park and SmartParking to collect all kinds of personal information. SMPA’s like StreetLine warn that they ‘reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information to others as we believe appropriate’. ParkMobile’s privacy policy also reveals how SMPA’s are all too willing to, ‘provide requested information to relevant authorities upon the request of such authorities’.”
Read more: https://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2018/02/law-enforcement-uses-smart-meter.html
“Personal information, along with your biometric data, resides in a database tied to your ID number. The system crunches all of this into a composite score that ranks you as ‘safe,’ ‘normal’ or ‘unsafe.’ Based on those categories, you may or may not be allowed to visit a museum, pass through certain neighborhoods, go to the mall, check into a hotel, rent an apartment, apply for a job or buy a train ticket. Or you may be detained to undergo re-education, like many thousands of other people. A science-fiction dystopia? No. This is life in northwestern China today if you are Uighur.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/opinion/sunday/china-surveillance-state-uighurs.html