The Death of Privacy is An Abusive Government's Wet Dream

Written by FrederikBussler | Published 2019/11/16
Tech Story Tags: privacy | facial-recognition | facial-recognition-tech | online-shopping | surveillance-system | digital-surveillance | latest-tech-stories | state-control | web-monetization

TLDR Facial recognition isn't just a neat little gimmick to unlock your iPhone or save a couple minutes at the airport. It's a dangerous weapon wielded by abusive governments to silence dissidents. China already has 170 million CCTV cameras, with 300 million being installed in the next 3 years. Other companies are working on recognition software that tracks your identity by things like your hairstyle and clothing. To trust governments with complete access to the information of every individual is no less than letting them play God, which is unethical.via the TL;DR App

Facial recognition isn't just a neat little gimmick to unlock your iPhone or save a couple minutes at the airport—it's a dangerous weapon wielded by abusive governments to silence dissidents, and the more mainstream this technology gets, the more powerful a weapon it becomes.
China already has 170 million CCTV cameras, with 300 million being installed in the next 3 years, able to identify any of its 1.3 billion population within seconds.
Modern-day software is more like just "recognition," as it doesn't need your face: your gait is enough to verify an identity. Other companies are working on recognition software that tracks your identity by things like your hairstyle and clothing.
And it's not just China, it's basically the entire world, from America to Zimbabwe. In fact, India is rolling out a system to track its 1.3 billion population as well. It doesn't help matters that most of us openly share our photos online and use smartphones, which are being tracked 24/7, as revealed many years ago.
Even without governments planting hundreds of millions of CCTV cameras, civilians are all too happy to install Ring doorbells and plant their own "private security" systems, ensuring that any movement you make is virtually guaranteed to be tracked.
To be even remotely OK with such a vast erasure of privacy necessitates absolute faith in the undying goodwill and innocence of government.
Not only do you have to trust your government with your life, as literally everything you do and everywhere you go is recorded, but to be accepting of such a system means that you trust everyone else's lives in the hands of your government as well.
You trust that political dissidents, religious, ethnic, sexual, and other minorities are all safe, and it's completely OK that everything they do is recorded for the all-benevolent government.
Of course, that's ridiculous.
To trust governments with complete access to the information of every individual is no less than letting them play God, which is beyond unethical—it's evil, wrapped in the guise of a cool new technology that offers convenience and can help catch the bad guys, forgetting that throughout history governments have decided that Jews, blacks, gays, and other minorities are the bad guys.

Written by FrederikBussler | Published author and writer.
Published by HackerNoon on 2019/11/16