Eleven years back, John W. Whitehead warned in his weekly column about the danger from government’s proliferating use of automated license plate readers across America. Whitehead included these devices among the tools being employed in the construction of what he termed an “electronic concentration camp.”
Tag: surveillance
In recent years, schools across America, with the help of private companies, have been significantly ramping up surveillance on students, largely in the name of keeping the children safe. Now that there is big buzz about artificial intelligence, or “AI,” it should come as little surprise that peeping adults will increasingly employ AI to aid them in the surveilling of school students.
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Big Brother in the Big Apple
“Big Brother is protecting you.” That is a quote from New York City Mayor Eric Adams in a Saturday article at Politico. Adams made the comment in defense of the extensive web of high-tech surveillance his city government deploys against people in America’s most populous city, as well as the mayor’s desire to expand the surveilling.
In his latest weekly editorial titled “Why You Should Use Cash to Buy Guns” legal scholar and Ron Paul institute Advisory Board member Andrew Napolitano discusses how credit card companies have newly put in place a means to track credit card users’ purchases at gun shops. For people who continue to use credit cards for purchases at gun shops, Napolitano warns that the results can include United States government agents reviewing their purchase histories and even showing up on their doorsteps asking to see their guns.
In 2016, I, along with some other privacy advocates including writer and commentator Andrew Napolitano, was applauding Apple Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tim Cook for standing up for privacy and the United States Constitution in a situation that pitted his company against the power of the United States government and the desire of many Americans to seek information related to a mass shooting. Five years later, Apple has decided that, in the name of countering child pornography, it will throw privacy protection for all its customers out the window.
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Beware Coronavirus Surveillance
“Concerns about curtailing contagion help to normalize detailed scrutiny of people’s lives and drive us toward a pervasive surveillance state,” writes J.D. Tuccille in an informative and disturbing Friday article at Reason. Tuccille details in the article developments in new surveillance efforts termed “contact tracing” that are marketed as part of an effort to counter coronavirus. He also addresses the continuing and expanding employment of surveillance technologies that were in use before the coronavirus scare.
In a Wednesday Fox News video commentary, former New Jersey state Judge Andrew Napolitano describes the great privacy invasion capability of government entities in Great Britain using many cameras along with facial recognition software and databases of personal information. Further, notes Napolitano, the use of facial recognition by police for surveillance has already been approved in court in Britain. “The people in Great Britain have lost their right to be left alone,” asserts Napolitano.
“Tough for the British,” some Americans may say, “but there are privacy protections that will prevent that from happening in America.” However, Napolitano, who is the senior judicial analyst for Fox News, explains that “sadly” the same thing “has begun to happen here” in America. Napolitano points to facial recognition software being acquired by police in New York City, Chicago, and Orlando, as well as in “smaller police departments around the United States.”
Argued as needed to prevent mass shootings, government schools across America are operating surveillance programs targeting students. Like surveillance pursued by the United States government’s National Security Agency (NSA), the schools, with the assistance of private companies, are extensively tracking the activities of all students, including students’ social media posts, emails, and use of programs such as Google Docs and Microsoft Office.