We’ve never had a central data store that would make it practical to achieve such a feat. Now we have one that could answer questions like this, forever.
Mass surveillance at scale is not a trivial problem to solve, but Flock is both making it happen and making it clear that they are fine with enabling bad actors to take advantage of it.
While I don't love the FBI's history of data collection, there is a world of difference between warehousing data from government records, and building a graph of warehoused data from all possible sources and selling access to any small town police chief that can convince the city council to pay for it.
Plus, data in FBI custody is nominally subject to laws and oversight in a way that privately held data is not.
If you think democracy still has a chance in a nation as diverse and expansive as the united states, given that technology empowers despots and poisons democracies that are too big to be held by social bonds, then you are much more optimistic than I am.
At this point, the only way to preserve democracy would be to mostly dissolve the federal system, leaving states as democracies without the heavy hand and massive financial leverage from above.
States are closer to the right size for democracy to be resistant, but I think we’d need city-states of the metropolises, and big states like California would possibly need to subdivide.
Harms of this sort tend towards societal harms toxic to democracy like chilling effects and loss of social cohesion, but you definitely could end up being much more directly harmed by invasive antiprivacy technologies.
> I am not harmed when I go through a toll plaza or an express lane.
Yet. The jewish people had no problem that the government had detailed lists including the religion. It helped the Nazis killing many jews. Total surveillance will always be abused like every other invasive law.
First it’s against child abuse and terrorist, then organized crime, then crimes like theft, then littering and jaywalking, then swearing in public
In places where the germans had access to identity information survival rates among jews was much lower. The Danish government refused to provide data about Jewish citizens to the occupying germans, and simply didn't comply in general with anti Jewish efforts. 99% of Danish jews survived the war.
In the Netherlands, where there was initially a policy of compliance, the occupying germans got their hands on the lists of jews and only 25% of Dutch jews survived.
You are not, or at least, you think you are not.
How far removed are we from the federal government revoking the passports of everyone who attended a No Kings rally, anywhere in the country?