I agree that it's going to happen with or without Amazon but I'd rather not support this system.
back
2 comments
It's possible that in the short term, Amazon could be changing the economics of mass surveillance, making it more feasible for police departments that could not afford such tech before. But at this point, I think a change of dynamic is important, and that we actually _need_ an 800 pound gorilla to frighten us, before people wake up and start demanding action at the state and federal level.
It's already been half a decade since the UK surveillance regime and the reality of mass surveillance was opened to us, yet nobody batted an eyelid in the US. Meanwhile, facial recognition has improved by an order of magnitude and has already silently been seeing deployment everywhere around us. I'm being led to believe that unless we have a public poster boy to rally against, the situation isn't going to change.
Speaking of which: how have things gone with the UK's experiment?
Maybe I'm not plugged into the right channels, but I haven't heard any news about "London falsely jails thousands of people due to false-positives on the camera surveillance network" or "the Crown finds and jails protesters by the thousands."
Last I heard, it got mired in legal issues, and was recently tossed out by the courts [0]. (Something that's not quite as likely in the US due to the EU being more privacy-conscious, and would require mass outrage and an act of congress to deflect)
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/30/uk-mass-digi...
Limiting the power of surveillance is only going to come in the form of passing laws, there's always somebody willing to build the tech for the military industrial complex. It's lucrative
Law enforcement is not part of the military.
Call it the police industrial complex if you want (some people do), but it's all the same thing.