Biometric Recognition Systems Are Just Totalitarian

So, the next iPhone will have facial recognition unlocks.

This will be easy to beat, since the web is full of pictures of, well, almost everyone. Just use a hard to crack/guess password, people.

But it is a swell and dandy totalitarian technology. We are closing in on facial recognition which can only be defeated by full masks. Gait recognition is being worked on as well, retinal is well understood, fingerprint, etc.

As I warned years ago, combined with ubiquitous cameras, infra-red, and so on, and even without the foolishness of cell phones, tracking devices, and bugs people voluntarily carry with them, virtually all of your movements every day will be tracked. Cameras increasingly have mics as well, so it won’t just be video, but in many cases audio. You won’t be able to remember what you did ten years ago, but those with access to the system will know.

This is a panopticon like nothing the world has ever seen. Yes, the older world was high-surveillance by people, but it was nothing like, “We know exactly what you did at 3.33 pm 12 years, two months and three days ago,” and the surveillance was done by people you knew.

Any sensible society with the least concern for either privacy or civil liberties, would outlaw this technology. It will also absolutely crush creativity.

In the meantime, black bloc or not, if you are protesting, go fully masked (not partially), with mirror shades, and do something to alter your gait.

Of course many countries are making full masks illegal.

When this sort of tech is fully deployed, 1984 will look like a utopia.

Enjoy your freedom while it remains and be bitterly amused that the best chance we have for preventing this stuff creating a totalitarian nightmare is catastrophic climate change.

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