this is not meant to be doom posting or conspiratorial, by the way. as i said, it's happening already here and elsewhere in the world.
in the Spring, the Senate voted to reauthorize FISA Section 702 in a move that was described as "the largest expansion of domestic surveillance authority since the Patriot Act."
France extended the controversial Olympics surveillance for Christmas markets, using the Germany vehicle attack as a justification.
Chicago felt the need to do the same, using the same reasoning.
speaking of Germany, they're rapidly expanding bio-metric surveillance.
Seattle turned down Shotspotter but then turned around and implemented "real-time crime center" software, CCTV cameras on street corners and automatic license plate readers.
and it's not just big cities like Chicago and Seattle. Glendale, California (pop. ~200k) is getting a 6-person "crime control center" that "takes live streams from hundreds of city and police cameras scattered throughout Glendale and routes them into a six-person control room at police headquarters."
in fact, entire states are implementing extensive mass surveillance, including North Carolina. 90 state agencies have installed automated plate-reading cameras on highways which gathers information about every single vehicle that passes them. 79 of those contracts are with a company by the name of "Flock Safety" which didn't even register to do business in NC until May 2021.
Customs & Border Patrol are engaged in a massive surveillance campaign at the Mexican border and have looked to “drastically expand its surveillance capabilities with new towers, artificial intelligence, drones, and even four-legged robots.”
meanwhile, don't forget to look up. because in the north, Canada is getting ready to start it's own border surveillance crusade in response to Trump's bloviating, which "includes expansions of border technologies, including RCMP counterintelligence, 24/7 surveillance between ports of entry, helicopters, drones and mobile towers." as the article linked outlines, this will increase the number of deaths of asylum seekers.
and naturally because we're living in the late stages of a capitalist hellscape, as you should already know: law enforcement are not the only ones engaging in mass surveillance. the FTC is (was with Trump taking over) investigating vendors for "surveillance pricing." essentially, credit card companies sell your personal information to vendors who use it in order to ultimately increase the amount you pay at checkout.
this is just scratching the surface. i can also give you recent examples from some places that perhaps you'd expect - Russia, Pakistan, India.
or recent examples from Anywhere, USA - Buffalo, NY, Charleston, SC, San Diego, CA.
or even recent examples from places in the United States like Metheun, MA, a city that comprises a total of 23 square miles and doubled their number of "public safety cameras" from 50 to 100. that being said, as the article covers, this is still "...a far cry from Lawrence's [Massachusetts] 500 cameras or roughly 71 per square mile..."
conspiracy theories are more prevalent than ever and it's important to be wary of them. this, however, is not one of them. every last one of the stories that i've linked above are from the last year. there are going to be a lot more like them in 2025.
romaincrisis
stormborns
blakekathryn
gracieabrams
titsay
jimmyeatworldofficial
