this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
191 points (92.4% liked)
Privacy
9298 readers
479 users here now
A community for Lemmy users interested in privacy
Rules:
- Be civil
- No spam posting
- Keep posts on-topic
- No trolling
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
When talking about surveilling society at large, as this person is suggesting, it's important to remember that there is no such thing as surveilling a subset of the population.
Everyone who crosses the boundaries of surveillance, without exception, gets surveilled.
When you point a camera at a crowd, it does not selectively exclude everyone but your chosen subject: a camera photographs all. People and systems behind the camera then manipulate and match that data to suit their objectives, and that's where it becomes completely unaccountable, because the data has already been collected on all.
Today, supposedly, it's dastardly men, the suggestion being that all others will be excluded and thus this extended surveillance of all public spaces must be benign for everyone who is not a dastardly man. But in other places and times, it was runaway slaves, or homosexuals. Recently it has been women seeking abortions and trans people and immigrants. Tomorrow it will be those guilty of wrongthink.
And all are surveilled, because everyone is surveilled.
This surveillance WILL be used to the maximum of its capability, and very quickly, regardless of whatever guidelines or original purpose or its stated goals are said to be in the beginning.
These are nothing but lines in the sand that will be washed away almost immediately, because there's just no way to exclude specific groups from widespread surveillance, and our collective governments are far too corrupt and unstable and greedy for power to ever cut off their own access to it.