surveillance state

Dad’s Permanent Trailer Plate Has Entered the Surveillance State

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Dad thought “permanent trailer plate” meant permanent. Government apparently meant, “until you buy another trailer, peasant.” For generations, recycling an old trailer plate was the kind of technically-wrong rural economics nobody noticed unless a cop had an actual reason to look. Today, cameras, databases, and algorithms potentially can notice—and remember—things no human officer ever would have bothered with.

That raises a bigger question than Dad’s Great Trailer Plate Crime Spree: **When technology makes it possible for government to notice nearly everything, should it?**

Governments’ (Flock) Spy Systems: Yet Another AI-Data Center-Privacy Nightmare

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Much has rightly been made of the monstrous amounts of resources – water, electricity, land – data centers use.

Data centers that are now being built, we are told, to feed the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Data centers are being called “data centers?” Because the far more truthful “surveillance centers” and “human replacement centers” would be an even tougher sell.

Pssst: It’s not just Twitter and the FBI

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Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald delivered a memorable and hard-hitting speech at the University of Utah in April 2015 titled “Edward Snowden and the Secrets of the National Security State.” His remarks focused on the National Security Agency’s collection of billions of communications of ordinary, law abiding U.S. citizens. He emphasized that, even then, nearly eight …

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