A guy named Anthony Sistilli decided to make some sauce for the gander, so to speak. He built his own iteration on the Flock/Axon cameras that the watchers are using to watch us only these cameras watch the watchers. You’d think they wouldn’t mind. After all, if they’ve got nothing to hide . . .
Of course, the watchers – law enforcement, as they accurately like to style themselves – did not like it. They paid a visit to Sistilli’s home to make that plain.
“We just want to ask you what the main goal is,” one of the watchers asks. “What (do) you plan to do with all of that”?
When we – the watched – ask the same question, the watchers invariably say it’s all about keep us “safe.” Of course, it’s actually about keeping us watched. That is, keeping us under constant surveillance, like they do in prisons. The key difference being we’re nominally not inside the prison. We are – nominally – presumed innocent and thus supposed to be free to go about our presumptively legitimate business in public. What’s happening, via these cameras that are tied into the data centers that are being erected at a furious pace all over the country, is an attempt to systematically and nationally upend that precedent.
These cameras ought to be seen as the expansion of the principle established by “sobriety” checkpoints and the TSA rigmarole at airports to everywhere.
That principle being the presumption of guilt – presented as necessary to protect us from the guilty. Since there might be drunk drivers out on the road, everyone out on the road is presumed to be drunk. They must prove they are not drunk. Since a “terrorist” might try to hijack a commercial airliner, everyone who wants to fly commercially (but not privately) must be frisked and searched and given a once-over on the presumption that they might be a “terrorist.”
There is another purpose, of course – which is what they call “fishing.” While you are trying to prove you aren’t drunk at a “sobriety” checkpoint, the enforcer is looking for other things he can enforce, such as an out-of-date inspection or registration sticker and also whether your license is valid – which has nothing to do with whether you’re drunk. It’s the same at the airports. The TSA geeks rummage through your stuff – as well as your junk – and if they find something you’re not supposed to have, they’ll take it. Maybe they’ll take you, too. It need not be anything that has to do with “terrorism.”
The point is that they are trying to make this national and ubiquitous. “Sobriety” checkpoints are few and far between. It’s random bad luck to find yourself in line to prove you’re not drunk just because you happened to be driving. The TSA can be avoided if you don’t fly (or if you have the means to fly privately because – apparently – “terrorists” haven’t got the means to charter a flight). It is hard to avoid leaving your home, the last redoubt of privacy. Even that is being undermined via the technology people are willingly bringing into their homes, such as computers and “smart” phones and “smart” appliances” (and even TVs) that have cameras and microphones and the ability to stream you to whoever is on the receiving end of that stream of invisible “data” about you.
New cars are just the same.
All of this is happening without our consent. Hell, we weren’t even asked. Rather, this stuff has been foisted on us, often without our knowledge (viz, he way new cars collect and stream data about us to marketers, the insurance mafia and also almost certainly the government). It begs the obvious question: If this stuff is benign – if it is really for our own good (and “safety”) then why is it necessary (apparently) to foist it on us? To do it deceptively? Is furtiveness not a presumptive indication that something sketchy is going on? 
One of the three watchers appeared (in full Hut! Hut! Hut!) gear on Sistilli’s doorstep uttered the usual police state boilerplate: “I’m just doing my job.” Which makes it even worse. Lavrenti Beria – Stalin’s chief of police, who was also very interested in watching everyone – was also just doing his job. The cow-like unconsciousness of it is striking. Of course, cows are not capable of such machinations. Nor such nihilism. They are, after all, cows. They mosey around, munching grass – and moo’ing. They are harmless. A man who serves the state who says he is just doing his job is worse than harmless. He is mindless, like a cow – but dangerous.
Yet his mindlessness isn’t exactly cow-like. He sees the threat when he is subject to the same watching he enjoys doing.
It is, as Mr. Spock says, fascinating.
. . .
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