People wonder why housing is so expensive.
What this guy is describing is not the exception - it is absolutely the "norm' in the United States now. And every year more bureaucracy gets layered on top of what is already there.
My aunt once applied to add a second story to her cottage. She was told it wasn't allowed. BUT she was allowed to make a basement, and it didn't HAVE to be subterranian.
So she got a permit for a basement, jacked up the existing house, built underneath it, and reattached the original first floor as a new second floor, and all was good...at nearly double the cost and twice the timeline.
Amazon Ring now has AI facial recognition. Here's why that's a bigger deal than it sounds.
Ring doorbells are already in tens of millions of homes. Amazon has now added an AI feature that can identify visitors by face, meaning it can recognize and log who walks past a property.
Why this creates a surveillance network by default:
→ Individual Ring cameras are already linked through Amazon's Neighbors app and police partnerships
→ Ring has a track record of sharing video with law enforcement, sometimes without a warrant
→ Facial recognition adds a persistent identity layer; it's no longer just "a person walked by"; it's "this specific person walked by, again, at this time".
→ You have no way to opt out of being scanned by a camera on someone else's property
One Ring camera isn't a big deal. But millions of them in a neighborhood, all capable of identifying faces and feeding data to a centralized platform, is a distributed surveillance grid.
You never agreed to this. But the people around you did, and that affects you.
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This is a Trojan horse that will eliminate privacy on the internet.
Why not make devices just for kids if you want to protect them? Why KYC every single person on the internet?
Because this is about control, not children.
Fun fact: The phrase "reasonable expectation of privacy" is nowhere in the 4th Amendment. A judge invented it in 1967.
The actual text guarantees your right to be secure in your person, house, papers, and effects. One is an unalienable property right; the other is a legal loophole that shrinks every time technology grows.
🚨 THE CEO OF FLOCK JUST SAID THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD — AND PEOPLE ARE LOSING IT
Remember when Flock cameras were only supposed to read license plates?
Apparently that's not enough anymore.
Now we're talking about AI that can find a vehicle from a simple description.
Microphones that are always listening for so called "sounds of distress."
Drones that can be launched automatically after a 911 call.
And camera networks that can follow movement across entire cities.
Every year the cameras get smarter.
The databases get bigger.
The AI gets more powerful.
And the amount of information being collected keeps growing.
Then came the comment that really got people's attention.
The CEO behind Flock, one of the largest camera networks in America reportedly compared people who map camera locations to terrorists.
Think about that for a second.
The cameras aren't the problem.
The people tracking the cameras are.
Some people see a tool that makes communities safer.
Others see a system that knows where you've been, where you are, and eventually where you're likely to go next.
If mapping Flock cameras makes you a "terrorist," what does that make the people putting cameras everywhere?
Anyone who can't see what is happening is blind.
1) Banning of the ability to have privacy with a cellphone
2) Banning of the ability to own a foreign router (which may not "comply" with future "required" legislation )
3) Identity checks at the OS, App Store and Service provider levels.
4) Ability to restrict individuals access to the internet, to given types of content, etc
5) Forced front and center "official" news media forced into online services.
6) Control over AI algorithms
7) Control over algorithms for visibility/sharing of content
8) Control over peoples cars (remote kill switches, embedded biometrics, automated reporting to LEO, inebriation checks).
9) Forced biometrics to login to computers, phones, etc
10) Digital ID to replace physical ID.
11) Digital cash to replace physical cash
12) Millions of biometrics and license place cameras + millions of "gun shot detection" systems
13) Banning of mobile applications and endpoint software the government deems wrong, dangerous, or incorrect, etc. (Tiktok, Kaspersky, etc)
14) AI being embedded in every processor, mobile device, desktop OS, etc.
15) Laws demanding "backdoored" encryption.
16) Laws demanding client side scanning.
17) Laws demanding control over speech deemed harmful, violent, dangerous, upsetting, etc
18) Charges and convictions against anyone releasing privacy focused software (tornado cash).
19) AI predictive policing and predictive dissent detection
20) Centralizing of all healthcare, psychological, financial, online, offline, travel and government records.
21) Forced biometrics collection to travel, attend public events, etc
New Audit reveals Flock Safety Cameras are being used as mass surveillance cameras by multiple agencies
The audit shows Flock cameras in San Francisco are being accessed hundreds of times by out of state agencies and federal agencies
“Stunning revelation from San Francisco's police chief putting the spotlight on the city's license plate cameras — A recent audit uncovered activity that violated violates California law.
The police chief said the city's license plate cameras were improperly accessed hundreds of times by Western State Information Network. That was done on behalf of federal and out-of-state law enforcement agencies, which include the DEA, the ATF, as well as state agencies in Oregon and Washington”
“San Francisco has more than 400 license plate reading cameras across the city”
For reference, the Western States Information Network is a regional intelligence sharing hub on behalf of federal agencies (DEA, ATF, IRS, U.S. Marshals) and out-of-state agencies for Oregon, Washington, and others like Idaho
Think about how much this is being abused nationwide. Think of how many states don’t even restrict sharing the data
From what I could find this is likely legal in as many as over 40 states
This is the mass surveillance network in America