Reports that Madison Square Garden temporarily shut off its facial recognition system for Swift’s wedding expose a glaring problem with how the elite wield and control mass surveillance.
There’s no such thing as a good billionaire.
Not privacy related, but … another double standard is that she is against guns yet her security team was armed at her wedding.
I’d prefer not to have a car, but this country makes it really inconvenient to do it, so I have one. That’s not a double standard, that’s adapting to your reality. Maybe the sec team arrived to the conclusion that they wouldn’t be as effective without them in a society under the 2nd amendment.
It seems she was okay with the security team having guns, but in general, not for the common person. In my mind, adapting to reality (and the 2nd amendment) she should be okay with both groups having guns. I think we (you and I) hold the same position on this.
Great article. It touches on the primary concerns I have with modern surveillance tech, namely:
This “privacy for me, surveillance for thee” attitude feels like a perfect encapsulation of the future we’re already living in: one where wealthy elites can afford privacy, while the rest of us are forced to live in a corporate surveillance panopticon.
This concept has crossed my mind as well: privacy becoming a privilege reserved for the super-wealthy; it simply being added to luxuries the underclass should naively strive for, in exchange for their exhaustible time and energy.
AI surveillance in the hands of wealthy individuals could create opportunities for Epstein-like abusers to get away with their crimes, allowing monied interests to get dirt on politicians, law enforcement and even judges.
Wealthy individuals getting away with crimes is the most terrifying to me. Where either knowing mazes in surveillance infrastructure, or systems explicitly turning a blind eye, could create situations where: there’s no evidence placing the actual perpetrator at a crime-scene, while an innocent person, simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, is framed with evidence to support it.
