America's Expanding Domestic Surveillance

And over the domestic surveillance, that had some complaints back in that time, there is the point of foreign surveillance and intervention, that had no slowdown back then, so you can figure out where that should be today. At least Americans have some saying on their government and policies, but for the rest of the world is just the new normal.

The time to resist the next crop of policies and technologies is today.

And I disagree the ground was more fertile for action in Covid. The silver lining to the AI companies’ PR and political ineptitude is that there is widespread, bipartisan pushback against tech in all stripes.

Sure Flock, we buy your safety pitch. We just don’t trust you.

Or the other guy's community network idea but it would have to also publish the realtime activities and whereabouts of all politicians who voted against making this illegal.

Much like the law that stopped video rental companies from telling what their customers were renting, that passed after some politicians had their video rental histories leaked.

And the ever increasing desire to break encryption.

And the increase in technology companies who have metadata about us citizens becoming offense and defense contractors.

And... The list is so long.

I'm dead serious.

- Addendum: People generally don't resort to petty crime for no good reason. They do it because some need is not being met, or they have become socially outcast due to some systemic failure. When people feel they have little autonomy to exist in a meaningful way, and even being poor is expensive and criminalised, of course you'll see petty crime everywhere. Cracking down on the "undesirables" won't make them go away, it'll just make the issue more pronounced.

I would literally buy you a bicycle to change your mind. Or sit down and review countries where theft is minimal so we could brainstorm real solutions.

The 20% of the country that thinks that shoplifting is the real problem are a problem. They will always vote for the biggest liar.

I'm right now imagining a counterfactual world where there is no property crime or physical assault, and petty reactionaries are demanding surveillance in order to keep people from swearing.

As it turns out, society is a lot more fun when there is just a bit of risk of crime. I'll 1000000000% take the additional freedom to do "stupid shit" in the USA over living in one of these boring dystopias.