As an individual, I can decide to not work on such things. Didn't Google employees take a stand against something similar? and Google had to backtrack.
I not only understand this sentiment but also live myself by these rules. But for every person who refuses to work on this type of tech there are hundreds ready to fill the gap and happy to defend and gaslight critics.
We've been playing this game since decades[1] and the pace has been accelerating (and keeps on doing so). There is no way to stop this because the state always plays the long game, and the odds are rigged against us.
Agree. I haven’t read all of Seeing Like a State yet, but it does contain quite a few hints about how to protect yourself from the power of states.
For example, states like to make their subjects “legible” to the state in specific ways, so deliberately becoming illegible is a defense mechanism.
Personally, I have been enjoying that the facial mask has surely been making facial recognition more challenging, though of course this is short-lived.
Not only have we been playing this game for decades, because of the ratcheting effect of so many privacy infringements, it's almost impossible to go back to a happier time.
companies are perfectly capable of compartmentalizing information and also adapt/evolve their messaging so it never looks as bad from the inside. this works for both very large companies and start-ups.
Of course it will happen. It's like atomic energy, some physicists decided to not work on it and some did work on it. There's nothing we can do about it.
