I remember nostalgically when this kind of thing would have been so unpopular in the USA, including (especially?) among the "populist right", that it would not have happened.
The escalation of the surveillance security state has been quick and vast.
I remember maybe a decade ago talking to a person in computer security. What I was surprised was a strange turn of events in the 'exploits' arena. Although they monitored exploits/cert/etc, they also monitored the people who were involved in exploits.
I kind of wonder if the political arena is quietly doing the same thing. Instead of targeting dissenting opinions, it might be possible and effective to target the people with dissenting opinions.
It's still unpopular. The difference today is that the public is so thoroughly disempowered, that there is nothing you can do to change/resist it. Point me to the major political party, or even individual candidate, where "dismantling surveillance" is even a minor part of their platform. There are probably a single digit number of politicians in the entire country, from federal all the way down to local, who are against surveillance.
its almost like there a special interest group working behind the scenes that has been simultaneously developing expertise in maintaining surveillance state technology and is motivated to maintain strict control over american public opinion to manage those resistant to their manufactured consent mechanism.
Of course that would require decades of testing and refining the technology on a people so conditioned for us to malign that our mainstream shows can make jokes about their dead babies and only be met with applause.
How much of that, at least among elites, is due to looking at China's dizzying development, bound straight for the singularity, while the old appeals to liberty and rights seem to have only got the USA bogged down in gridlock and squabbling?
Revolutions happen, inter alia, to break gridlock, whether consciously or unconsciously. The rise of the surveillance state might be seen as the coup by elites that is one of the known forms of revolution.
I haven't fully made up my mind here, but I'm thinking that (most forms of) privacy is simply no longer viable due to technological advances. Mass collection of data is getting cheaper and cheaper, so these databases will be built. If not by the state than by corporations. And if laws prevent corporations, then by those operating outside the law like intelligence agencies (including foreign ones) and organized crime.
Having the government be the only ones without the data is a weird situation.
We could absolutely regulate corporations so that they didn't collect, keep, and sell everyone's personal data. When the consequences are high enough and enforcement is consistent your grocery store won't go overseas to hand your data to a mafia boss and Netflix isn't going to sell your data in a dark alley to an illegal black market data broker.
Corporations didn't need our current level of surveillance in order to become massively wealthy and they won't risk their wealth just to find out the last time you took a shit or who you're sleeping with and how often.
Surveillance capitalism is a choice. It's happening because at the moment it's profitable, but it can be made unprofitable (or even dangerous) to collect and sell and the moment that happens it all stops.
Just because the technology exists to abuse something that doesn't make it inevitable that it will happen everywhere all the time. The problem we have now is that abusing technology to exploit and control people through the misuse and sale of their personal data is making a lot of people money hand over fist (including people in government) and they'll fight like hell to keep that easy cash and to convince you that any other kind of life would be impossible. Don't fall for the lie.
One thing that i would prefer in biometrics would be that the iris/fingerprints get treated as what they are publicly available and easily obtainable data.
At worst using it a a secret key is similar to using your name as a hidden variable for authorisation, whent it sshould strictly be a identification token.And once leaked you cant revoke it .
Back on topic , a Gattaca type system is unbelievably bleak and when(not if) it is finallly shoved through.It wont take long to foist it on the rest of the planet (see the recent visa requirements viz social media and insane bond requirements demanded of some countries like Mali citizens being asked for $15K per visa application).
Absolutely not. That is legitimately beyond insane.
Fingerprints are used for investigating crimes. Giving them the access to this information before hand puts you as being investigated everytime they find a fingerprint at a crime scene.
Imagine someone wanting to frame someone for a crime and using their publicly available fingerprint data to manufacture gloves that reproduce that fingerprint.
Also, the science behind fingerprints is not particularly solid. Fingerprint experts can sometimes disagree on whether a particular print matches or not and even then, it hasn't been proven that fingerprints are unique - it's just likely to be so.
DNA too. Until 2018 it was used here as waterproof evidence until the police managed to lock up an innocent person based on DNA and blurry surveillance camera photos only. He was only exonerated because the real perpetrator was caught by chance and confessed a week later.
The transmission chain that was later identified on CCTV was hand to escalator rail to hand, a 2+ km walk, and finally hand to latex glove.
Biometrics are identification means (including DNA).
They can be used to uniquely identify you, but they're not secret. You literally leave fingerprints and DNA everywhere you go, and obtaining your biometrics is not as hard as guessing your password.
Biometrics should be used for identification, for authentication along with other means (passwords, PIN, device keys, etc), and never for authorization.
A coworker from Chile has described their equivalent to a SSN as being used as a public ID rather than a password. Every IT company and government service has the same primary key in their database for each citizen. Wouldn't that be great!
Lots of countries use the SSN equivalent as a public ID and sometimes have for decades now. The Nordic countries, for example, often require it on any application that requires your real name. I, as an academic, just put in a grant application to a private foundation, and my number was required there like many other places.
In the US, leak of SSN apparently can result in identity theft and so its public use can seem especially troubling, but other countries use different secrets and processes for identity.
What if people just publicized their own social security number, and then whenever they had to deal with "identity theft", they just pointed out that their SSN is public information and so it was negligent for the company to believe it was them just because of a SSN.
Biometrics can be a secure secret key, as long as there's a trusted guard manning the reader, ensuring that you're showing your real fingerprint / face and not a fake.
Not very secret though, considering that they are publicly visible most of the time. You might as well get your bank PIN tattooed on your face if you think that faces are secret.
Many SSNs have been compromised already. The jig is up. It was never supposed to be an identity system but organisations keep insisting on using it as one. Even if they aren’t literally publicly available and easily obtainable, they should be treated as such.
You don't leave iris prints everywhere you go. Even most fingerprints you leave are unusable for identification. Contrary to what CSI may have taught most Americans, even usable DNA samples aren't a given.
Biometrics aren't "publicly available" let alone "easily obtainable". They're easy to extract from you but this is why extraction and retention of this kind of data should be considered extremely invasive and sensitive. That wallet in your pocket may be "publicly available and easily obtainable" but that doesn't mean we should treat it as such - rather we should make sure it's actually illegal to do so without your consent: that's why theft is a crime.
It's weird how many people's perception of this type of behavior is shaped by the person sitting in the White House.
EDIT: It's also weird how my comment is being perceived exclusively as criticizing the critics of this administration rather than criticizing the supporters of this overreach. My comment was intentional phrased very generally, if you think it is specifically about you, that reveals something about you.
>Wouldn't it be weird if that didn't shape their perception?
No. I flat out reject the excuse you make on their behalf and consider you lesser than you would be had you not made it.
We're presumably discussing adults, not ten year olds or monkeys. They ought to f-ing act like it.
These people are almost all likely capable of the emotional restraint and logical thinking and sufficient abstract thought to think these things through and decide whether policy or action is good or bad regardless of if it's their guy doing it or their interest being served by it. The fact that they decline to do so is a failing of them. To excuse it only serves to reinforce or validate it and should be ridiculed.
> It's not surprising that people are less trusting when an authoritarian is in power.
The majority of Americans don't feel that way, but did about the last administration, and enough to do something about it. What's surprising is, given that revelation, a few people still actually think that.
I see it as a blessing: privacy advocates have previously argued that yes these invasive tools might currently help an honest government do its job to stop bad guys, but the tools could eventually fall into the hands of a not so honest government. Now, you don't really need much of an imagination to see what happens when the tools fall into the wrong hands, and hopefully more of the citizenry can get behind the idea of privacy as a fundamental right, and not just something for those who have something to hide.
Do you have any evidence that public concern over privacy changes depending on who is in the white house?
A quick search suggests a solid majority has been consistently upset about this issue for decades. The phrasing of the question seems to have more impact than the year, but I cannot find any hard data on consumer privacy concern trends over years.
I think it's selective attention plus recency bias.
This drift has started 24 years ago with 9/11 and no president has stopped or slowed it.
People who dislike who's in charge say the same things as always, people who dislike such measures same the same things as always regardless of who's in the white house, etc.
Fwiw, I would be unhappy with the Biden and Obama administrations trying to do this as well. For me this has nothing to do with who's in the White House, it's an overreach plain and simple.
100%. Let’s not let partisanship distract us from the omni-presence of the military industrial complex and the authoritarian bent of everyone who’s been in power in the US over the last several decades. Dems will tinker around the edges to make it more palatable, but there’s still: black sites, torture, drone strikes, unjustified wars, installing of puppet governments in sovereign nations, abuse of the commons for private profit and an absolute hunger for every scrape of your data to monitor and manipulate you no matter who is in the White House.
If I have to choose between voting for pro-corporate neoliberalism or fascism 2.0, I’ll vote the former, but that’s basically just asking which speed you’d like quality of life to erode for the average person. I’d really like a couple more options on the ballot please.
It's also weird how people gatekeep resistance on the basis of their perception that it's motivated by the person sitting in the White House.
If people are ready to resist now, let's welcome them, rather than questioning whether their motives are related to some tangentially related disagreement.
>It's also weird how people gatekeep resistance on the basis of their perception that it's motivated by the person sitting in the White House.
Because let's be real here, whether such discussion is allowed to stand or is shut down in a politically fairly homogenous community is typically a direct reflection of that fact. You see the same thing on the opposite side of the isle.
>If people are ready to resist now, let's welcome them, rather than questioning whether their motives are related to some tangentially related disagreement.
You have to draw a line somewhere. This sort of shortsighted expediency based politics is how we got the current political parties.
The problem with these types of technologies is that you will be at the mercy of whoever uses them. It's like chat control, censorship, gun laws, etc. You can't control how they will be leveraged.
I lived in California for some time a few years ago, and it was a mess, so I understand people being okay with this type of stuff if it will make them more secure, but it's a very risky slippery slope.
The other thing is that with all the data Google has, they can probably uncover everything they need just by paying for Google Ads data :/
Big old cable connected to people's heads to control their movements and their thoughts would make some people feel more secure, but this is not what we're going to agree to. That's not enough that some people feel not secure...
... arent as vital as other freedoms like travel, anonymity, speech and contract. I dont like this conflation because i see it as a nasty and harmful bias.
All those other rights are backed up by credible capacity for violence. You need to distribute some of that credible capacity for violence among the populace in order to check the long tail of potential abuses the system (not necessarily the government, though there is much overlap) may engage in.
There's a discussion to be had about what the right amount is though.
I suspect this government isn’t receptive to commentary from anyone other than only one person. While I’d never discourage anyone from advocating their beliefs this feels like at best a waste of energy. They are going to do it because they decided to do it - the solicitation of comments is performative and required. The only way to stop it is via the courts and by voting next November.
There's even precedent for the current president's agencies compiling some pretty sketchy "comments" in the past due to not doing basic sanity checks on pretty obvious fake comments that happened to support their agenda, like when supposedly seeking input from the public about repealing net neutrality[1]. There were so many duplicates that only thirty 30 unique comments made up 57% of the overall total, and the second most common "name" among the authors was literally "The Internet".
No one in the current administration cares about what random members of the public think about their policies, and that's by design. Even the government positions that are intended to be permanent across administrations aren't a safe bet at this point with was things have been going
You are 'this government's best friend, advocating for their opponents to give up and quit. In a remarkable pattern that I never thought I'd see in the rugged individualistic, idealistic, freedom-loving USA, a large group is literally self-defeating: They defeat themselves before even getting out of bed.
That's why your opponents are unstoppable - because you don't stop them. The performative nonsense is their aggression display.
They still want to win the election. Political and policy outcomes aren't all or nothing; the more they see, the more it will nudge them in whatever direction you want. Others will see it and it will nudge them too. If one person didn't embrace being a quitter, others would do the same.
The government isn't one person, and I think both bureaucrats and judges are actually quite receptive to lots of people - only it's nebulous to who and why. Trying to please, and hoping to get rewarded, but neither you or they themselves are 100% certain of by who. Opaque power structures, everyone's paranoid, including the powerful.
Don't most people in the US get fingerprinted at some point?
Let's see. I've been fingerprinted, all 10 fingers, for, at least, 1) the US Army, 2) security clearance for a DoD job, multiple times, 3) a permit to ride a horse on SF Water Department property, and 4) Customs and Border Protection Global Entry, which also took an iris scan.
California DMV takes a thumbprint, but not all 10 fingers. They've been recording me at every transaction for decades.
So I'm on file.
I think of being IDd as a normal part of life, for any position of trust. Is this unusual?
What may be information regarding a check for position of trust today, may well be information regarding a check if you should be locked up because of other reasons, tomorrow.
The issue is not the information itself, but how the information will be used. The chance of abusing information is not zero. But having rigorous rules and processes regarding that information, for instance mandatory destruction of said information, will greatly reduce the chance of abuse in the uncertain future.
I'm in my 50s and British and I've only had it done once: by the police when the house I was living in got burgled and they wanted to rule out our finger prints. It was 30 years ago and I imagine I could have refused. I didn't really think about it at the time.
Likewise a British citizen in the UK. Funnily, while the UK government does not have my fingerprints, the US gov does! They were taken at the border when I visited. All 10 fingers
Also in the US, never been fingerprinted. Well, I think. You mentioned CA DMV, and I don’t remember a fingerprint, but I did have a California drivers license over a decade ago, so maybe? But most people don’t have security clearance, most are not in the military, most do not have global entry. Also the horse permit one is just funny.
Exactly. As a naturalized citizen my fingerprints are already on file.
- everytime I entered the US when I was not a citizen
- when I filed my green card application
- when I went for my citizenship interview
- TSA precheck biometrics because I travel quite a bit.
Depend what the "position of trust" is taken. Security clearance for departement of defense is certainly not something the median citizen can be expected to go through.
Surely there's a difference between collecting a thumbprint for a driver's license or even collecting full fingerprints for a specific job type, and collecting your DNA and an iris scan just for being a citizen?
I'm German. My government literally issues ID cards and requires fingerprints for those nowadays as well (because terrorism or the children or whatever works as the excuse at the moment) but the idea of a government agency collecting my DNA seems far more invasive given the kind of things you can do with that information and the kind of things governments (especially in my country but in the US and Canada too) have historically done to groups of people under them.
If you think there's nothing concerning about the government wanting to collect extensive biometric data including DNA from not only people applying for immigration but also people associated with them or their application, maybe it would sound more concerning to you if I said that in German.
In the EU, national ID cards are required to contain fingerprints in an electronically readable section. (a private key is required to read them via NFC) As a result, Ireland started issuing passport cards, since compliant passports can be used in place of a national ID card. The only biometric data on my passport is a black and white image of my face. (that can be read with a key derived from data on the passport itself)
> Surely there's a difference between collecting a thumbprint for a driver's license or even collecting full fingerprints for a specific job type, and collecting your DNA and an iris scan just for being a citizen?
Not really; every citizen is expected to have a driver's license, and this takes place before anyone has really thought about the issue even if they're likely to object later. It's sort of like the difference between baptizing infants and baptizing adults.
You're right that there's more information in the DNA, but what difference do you see in the iris scan?
Did you know that the State of California has a DNA sample from every person born in the state since 1983? It's required by law for the hospital to collect it and give it to the state.
This is a particularly incendiary way of putting this information out there.
What is collected and stored is a small blood-spot sample from a heel prick on a newborn. This is used to test for various kinds of conditions that affect newborns.
This isn't a full DNA genome sequence or even any data at all, just the blood-spot specimen.
Law enforcement does not have automatic access to this sample, but individual samples have been given to law enforcement through court orders or warrants. There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information or how often it's given to law enforcement, but there's been proposed legislation to make this more transparent.
The blood sample isn’t a DNA sample right up until the point they decide to sequence it. This is the same legal doctrine allowing the government to systematically collect all of your personal data without violating your privacy as long they don’t look at what they collect without a warrant.
The government has granted themselves an option on your personal data that can’t be revoked.
No, they are correct, and it's disingenuous to claim otherwise. They have a DNA sample of everyone. Those samples haven't been sequenced. As you've pointed out, they are sequenced when the state needs them to be.
It would be like scanning your drivers license and putting it in a sealed envelope and claiming "I don't have your home address!", when I'm known to get the home address from other peoples envelopes when asked for it.
Do you have a source? I know there is an index[0] of the information on California birth certificates from 1905 to 1995 and technically, despite the privacy implications, birth records in California are considered "public record".
I just got back from the Millennium Seed Bank in the UK and was marveling at the size of a small footprint facility that stores samples of more than 10% of all known living plants.
Reading this thread, I was curious about what the size of California's sample collection looks like. I made an estimate using a little 1ul vial and an estimated 40 million people born in California since 1930. 100 samples in each box means 400,000 boxes. It's something like a 60 foot by 60 foot room with shelving.
If you extended it to a bank of 100 billion (about all humans ever born), that gets you to a pretty low tech solution that stores samples in the footprint of five Costcos.
The trick is that you don't elect someone like Donald Trump. I just read on the BBC that the president of America threatened New Yorkers not to vote for Mamdani.
People in the Netherlands trust their government because noone in the 500 years of history has ever gotten close to getting dictatorial power unless you count Napoleon and Hitler.
Despite the downvotes you are right that democracies mostly deliver what voters want. And if voters want silly things, they get silly things.
It's easy to fret at how dysfunctional and insane politics are. But after you talk to some actual voters (and look at opinion polls), instead you marvel at how comparatively sane policies manage to be---despite voters.
I think it's worth mentioning that while biometrics for identification have flaws (as mentioned in this thread, they're not 100% collision free, are not necessarily secret, and are non-trivial to collect), DNA has a different risk profile if it leaks than fingerprints and iris scans if you consider technology advances. DNA could let people (moving beyond government, since you should probably assume anything in a government database will be leaked at this point) target your family and not just you, it includes information that could let adversaries find out ways you're uniquely exploitable (for instance allergies, sensitivities, diseases) and in general its potential for harm goes far beyond impersonation or being used in court.
(On the plus side, I suppose, I think the story on storing DNA at the scale we're talking about is not fully complete. DNA does denature and it takes a reasonably good sample to get a full genome sequence, and fully sequencing and storing data for every person has other practical issues. The article itself only references using DNA results to "prove or disprove biological sex", which is much more trivial and while it's likely to come with its own problems and edge cases, is also much less information.)
Be careful - this may be a case where they say they're going to do one thing (collect data from US citizens), but walk that part of it back after people protest - while those very same people overlook the fact that they're still going to be getting every immigrant to submit to the scans.
Take it easy. The federal budget for the backup of that database was cancelled. We just have to wait for the next HD failure. And then we are anonymous again !
This is the most maddening topic I've experienced in recent times. My guess is it's the ghost of ww2. Anything that looks or smells like a definitive reduction of a human being to numbers is to be opposed, regardless of utility.
What you are choosing, instead, is the management of the phenomenon you're trying to avoid by corporations—more or less emergent feudalism.
Consider the options: a corporation knows everything about you vs. no entity knows any information about you except for whether you're eligible for the service being provided, and that you exist. The former is the current state of affairs. The latter, I think, is a better state of affairs.
I used to think this kind of thing didn’t concern me. But once family members get pulled in and citizens get scanned by association, it’s hard to stay untouched.
Is this really about safety, or are we quietly building something we won’t be able to roll back?
It’s somewhat important to point out that this is the same thing that was done during the Iraq war to potential “insurgents” so the biometrics tech was “trained” and used experimentally there before it has been brought home. Wouldn’t be surprised if the people that used it in Iraq (as technicians) are now going to be the people operating the tech now in the US.
India, which given its colonial-era ruling-elites who are maniacally obsessed with the Anglosphere, is today considered a "laboratory" for doing social experiments that'd be considered a outrage against human dignity in their own countries. This country was the first in line not only the biometric identification projects (Aadhar), and for demonetization (of 2016 with UPI). All of these were funded and pushed by USAID.
Both of these were implemented by running roughshod over constitution and regulation, by "roping-in" key regulatory people by giving them what they desire the most - access to the ruling elites in the US. Eg. Infosys' Nandan Nilekani was thrust to the top with his USAID funded projects.
Now the results of this "human corralling" experiments (note: a lot of what Orwell described came out of his experience in British-colonial India), is now coming to the West.
EU's recently rejected chat control looks like child's play compared to this. These are some Stasi methods that are going to destroy the US if implemented. Europe already went through creating dossier on citizens in the past, the next immediate step is always fascism. Nothing good comes out of fascism, as the history showed.
> It is a shame that your people suffered so. Just as in this situation, it was all avoidable. Why did Mandalore resist our expansion? The Empire improves every system it touches. Judge by any metric. Safety, prosperity, trade, opportunity, peace. Compare Imperial rule to what is happening now. Look outside. Is the world more peaceful since the revolution? I see nothing but death and chaos.
Yes, in a rundown communist state. What could have followed , would be a Kim leader steering the country in the North Korean direction — which I’d call fascist.
Luckily there was Gorbachev and in the people enough decency and civilisation left, so the system just folded
Every time I fly from SFO, there’s a face-tracking camera that takes your photo after you stand up close to it. There’s definitely some sort of data harvesting there and there’s no opt out that I know about.
I also have Clear, which was voluntary but certainly collected my biometric data years ago.
I also have Global Entry, which has a similar scanning tech to point 1.
As a US citizen, you likely have your photo in a state or federal database somewhere from getting your ID or driver's license.
Depending on your job, background check history, or interactions with the police, your fingerprints might be in a database somewhere.
If you fly, your facial image/photograph/video is held by TSA and also as part of the REAL ID program.
So there are some biometrics that the government has of us, but clearly the article is describing a huge increase in not just the kind of biometric data collected, but also the kinds of people who would be required to give it up.
The TSA uses facial recognition right now at most US airports. While they claim to not store the pictures, they've "accidentally" stored data many other times they promised not to so consider me skeptical.
I remember nostalgically when this kind of thing would have been so unpopular in the USA, including (especially?) among the "populist right", that it would not have happened.
The escalation of the surveillance security state has been quick and vast.
I remember maybe a decade ago talking to a person in computer security. What I was surprised was a strange turn of events in the 'exploits' arena. Although they monitored exploits/cert/etc, they also monitored the people who were involved in exploits.
I kind of wonder if the political arena is quietly doing the same thing. Instead of targeting dissenting opinions, it might be possible and effective to target the people with dissenting opinions.
sort of scary.
It's still unpopular. The difference today is that the public is so thoroughly disempowered, that there is nothing you can do to change/resist it. Point me to the major political party, or even individual candidate, where "dismantling surveillance" is even a minor part of their platform. There are probably a single digit number of politicians in the entire country, from federal all the way down to local, who are against surveillance.
> surveillance security state
The only security is of those in power. For ordinary people it gets more unsafe with every measure.
its almost like there a special interest group working behind the scenes that has been simultaneously developing expertise in maintaining surveillance state technology and is motivated to maintain strict control over american public opinion to manage those resistant to their manufactured consent mechanism.
Of course that would require decades of testing and refining the technology on a people so conditioned for us to malign that our mainstream shows can make jokes about their dead babies and only be met with applause.
How much of that, at least among elites, is due to looking at China's dizzying development, bound straight for the singularity, while the old appeals to liberty and rights seem to have only got the USA bogged down in gridlock and squabbling?
Revolutions happen, inter alia, to break gridlock, whether consciously or unconsciously. The rise of the surveillance state might be seen as the coup by elites that is one of the known forms of revolution.
I haven't fully made up my mind here, but I'm thinking that (most forms of) privacy is simply no longer viable due to technological advances. Mass collection of data is getting cheaper and cheaper, so these databases will be built. If not by the state than by corporations. And if laws prevent corporations, then by those operating outside the law like intelligence agencies (including foreign ones) and organized crime.
Having the government be the only ones without the data is a weird situation.
The government is an adversary that we must constantly keep in check
We could absolutely regulate corporations so that they didn't collect, keep, and sell everyone's personal data. When the consequences are high enough and enforcement is consistent your grocery store won't go overseas to hand your data to a mafia boss and Netflix isn't going to sell your data in a dark alley to an illegal black market data broker.
Corporations didn't need our current level of surveillance in order to become massively wealthy and they won't risk their wealth just to find out the last time you took a shit or who you're sleeping with and how often.
Surveillance capitalism is a choice. It's happening because at the moment it's profitable, but it can be made unprofitable (or even dangerous) to collect and sell and the moment that happens it all stops.
Just because the technology exists to abuse something that doesn't make it inevitable that it will happen everywhere all the time. The problem we have now is that abusing technology to exploit and control people through the misuse and sale of their personal data is making a lot of people money hand over fist (including people in government) and they'll fight like hell to keep that easy cash and to convince you that any other kind of life would be impossible. Don't fall for the lie.
One thing that i would prefer in biometrics would be that the iris/fingerprints get treated as what they are publicly available and easily obtainable data.
At worst using it a a secret key is similar to using your name as a hidden variable for authorisation, whent it sshould strictly be a identification token.And once leaked you cant revoke it .
Back on topic , a Gattaca type system is unbelievably bleak and when(not if) it is finallly shoved through.It wont take long to foist it on the rest of the planet (see the recent visa requirements viz social media and insane bond requirements demanded of some countries like Mali citizens being asked for $15K per visa application).
Absolutely not. That is legitimately beyond insane.
Fingerprints are used for investigating crimes. Giving them the access to this information before hand puts you as being investigated everytime they find a fingerprint at a crime scene.
They haven’t seen those movies.
Imagine someone wanting to frame someone for a crime and using their publicly available fingerprint data to manufacture gloves that reproduce that fingerprint.
Also, the science behind fingerprints is not particularly solid. Fingerprint experts can sometimes disagree on whether a particular print matches or not and even then, it hasn't been proven that fingerprints are unique - it's just likely to be so.
DNA too. Until 2018 it was used here as waterproof evidence until the police managed to lock up an innocent person based on DNA and blurry surveillance camera photos only. He was only exonerated because the real perpetrator was caught by chance and confessed a week later.
The transmission chain that was later identified on CCTV was hand to escalator rail to hand, a 2+ km walk, and finally hand to latex glove.
That transmission chain is fascinating. I haven't been able to find which case this is describing - can you provide any more details?
Biometrics are identification means (including DNA).
They can be used to uniquely identify you, but they're not secret. You literally leave fingerprints and DNA everywhere you go, and obtaining your biometrics is not as hard as guessing your password.
Biometrics should be used for identification, for authentication along with other means (passwords, PIN, device keys, etc), and never for authorization.
A coworker from Chile has described their equivalent to a SSN as being used as a public ID rather than a password. Every IT company and government service has the same primary key in their database for each citizen. Wouldn't that be great!
My question would be how do we get there?
Lots of countries use the SSN equivalent as a public ID and sometimes have for decades now. The Nordic countries, for example, often require it on any application that requires your real name. I, as an academic, just put in a grant application to a private foundation, and my number was required there like many other places.
In the US, leak of SSN apparently can result in identity theft and so its public use can seem especially troubling, but other countries use different secrets and processes for identity.
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It'll be treated just as stupidly as Social Security numbers, and soon we'll have biometric data breaches. >sigh<
Aside: Social Security numbers should be public now, too. That ship sailed a long time ago and it should be recognized.
What if people just publicized their own social security number, and then whenever they had to deal with "identity theft", they just pointed out that their SSN is public information and so it was negligent for the company to believe it was them just because of a SSN.
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poor netsec aside, at least I don't leave my social security number lying around every time I touch a door knob.
Hey now, at least I'm able to change my social security number and passwords.
Good luck changing eyes.
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Biometrics can be a secure secret key, as long as there's a trusted guard manning the reader, ensuring that you're showing your real fingerprint / face and not a fake.
Why bother with the scan if you can have a perfect guard in place?
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Not very secret though, considering that they are publicly visible most of the time. You might as well get your bank PIN tattooed on your face if you think that faces are secret.
> Biometrics can be a secure secret key
Nadela, is that you ? /s
Why should they be publicly available and easily obtainable?
Many SSNs have been compromised already. The jig is up. It was never supposed to be an identity system but organisations keep insisting on using it as one. Even if they aren’t literally publicly available and easily obtainable, they should be treated as such.
https://constella.ai/verifying-the-national-public-data-brea...
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That's not what GP said though.
The point was not to make them publicly available but treat them as if they had already leaked and allowed anyone to frame anyone else.
1. Most people already share this data in the form of photos posted online.
2. So people don't treat it as a "secure secret," because we've been down this road more than once before.
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Visit a bus stop, pick up a stubbed out cigarette, leave it at the scene of your next crime.
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You don't leave iris prints everywhere you go. Even most fingerprints you leave are unusable for identification. Contrary to what CSI may have taught most Americans, even usable DNA samples aren't a given.
Biometrics aren't "publicly available" let alone "easily obtainable". They're easy to extract from you but this is why extraction and retention of this kind of data should be considered extremely invasive and sensitive. That wallet in your pocket may be "publicly available and easily obtainable" but that doesn't mean we should treat it as such - rather we should make sure it's actually illegal to do so without your consent: that's why theft is a crime.
It's weird how many people's perception of this type of behavior is shaped by the person sitting in the White House.
EDIT: It's also weird how my comment is being perceived exclusively as criticizing the critics of this administration rather than criticizing the supporters of this overreach. My comment was intentional phrased very generally, if you think it is specifically about you, that reveals something about you.
Wouldn't it be weird if that didn't shape their perception? It's not surprising that people are less trusting when an authoritarian is in power.
But the assumptions should always be that one day someone like that could take power and gain access to that data.
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At this point, at least a third of the country always thinks an authoritarian is in power.
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>Wouldn't it be weird if that didn't shape their perception?
No. I flat out reject the excuse you make on their behalf and consider you lesser than you would be had you not made it.
We're presumably discussing adults, not ten year olds or monkeys. They ought to f-ing act like it.
These people are almost all likely capable of the emotional restraint and logical thinking and sufficient abstract thought to think these things through and decide whether policy or action is good or bad regardless of if it's their guy doing it or their interest being served by it. The fact that they decline to do so is a failing of them. To excuse it only serves to reinforce or validate it and should be ridiculed.
What makes this objectionable is that it's an authoritarian thing to do.
They should bear in mind that someone they consider an authoritarian will inevitably be elected.
> It's not surprising that people are less trusting when an authoritarian is in power.
The majority of Americans don't feel that way, but did about the last administration, and enough to do something about it. What's surprising is, given that revelation, a few people still actually think that.
I see it as a blessing: privacy advocates have previously argued that yes these invasive tools might currently help an honest government do its job to stop bad guys, but the tools could eventually fall into the hands of a not so honest government. Now, you don't really need much of an imagination to see what happens when the tools fall into the wrong hands, and hopefully more of the citizenry can get behind the idea of privacy as a fundamental right, and not just something for those who have something to hide.
Do you have any evidence that public concern over privacy changes depending on who is in the white house?
A quick search suggests a solid majority has been consistently upset about this issue for decades. The phrasing of the question seems to have more impact than the year, but I cannot find any hard data on consumer privacy concern trends over years.
Such trend data would be useful.
I don't think it is.
I think it's selective attention plus recency bias.
This drift has started 24 years ago with 9/11 and no president has stopped or slowed it.
People who dislike who's in charge say the same things as always, people who dislike such measures same the same things as always regardless of who's in the white house, etc.
Fwiw, I would be unhappy with the Biden and Obama administrations trying to do this as well. For me this has nothing to do with who's in the White House, it's an overreach plain and simple.
100%. Let’s not let partisanship distract us from the omni-presence of the military industrial complex and the authoritarian bent of everyone who’s been in power in the US over the last several decades. Dems will tinker around the edges to make it more palatable, but there’s still: black sites, torture, drone strikes, unjustified wars, installing of puppet governments in sovereign nations, abuse of the commons for private profit and an absolute hunger for every scrape of your data to monitor and manipulate you no matter who is in the White House.
If I have to choose between voting for pro-corporate neoliberalism or fascism 2.0, I’ll vote the former, but that’s basically just asking which speed you’d like quality of life to erode for the average person. I’d really like a couple more options on the ballot please.
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It's also weird how people gatekeep resistance on the basis of their perception that it's motivated by the person sitting in the White House.
If people are ready to resist now, let's welcome them, rather than questioning whether their motives are related to some tangentially related disagreement.
>It's also weird how people gatekeep resistance on the basis of their perception that it's motivated by the person sitting in the White House.
Because let's be real here, whether such discussion is allowed to stand or is shut down in a politically fairly homogenous community is typically a direct reflection of that fact. You see the same thing on the opposite side of the isle.
>If people are ready to resist now, let's welcome them, rather than questioning whether their motives are related to some tangentially related disagreement.
You have to draw a line somewhere. This sort of shortsighted expediency based politics is how we got the current political parties.
Biden cancelled this during his administration
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The problem with these types of technologies is that you will be at the mercy of whoever uses them. It's like chat control, censorship, gun laws, etc. You can't control how they will be leveraged.
I lived in California for some time a few years ago, and it was a mess, so I understand people being okay with this type of stuff if it will make them more secure, but it's a very risky slippery slope.
The other thing is that with all the data Google has, they can probably uncover everything they need just by paying for Google Ads data :/
Big old cable connected to people's heads to control their movements and their thoughts would make some people feel more secure, but this is not what we're going to agree to. That's not enough that some people feel not secure...
> gun laws
... arent as vital as other freedoms like travel, anonymity, speech and contract. I dont like this conflation because i see it as a nasty and harmful bias.
All those other rights are backed up by credible capacity for violence. You need to distribute some of that credible capacity for violence among the populace in order to check the long tail of potential abuses the system (not necessarily the government, though there is much overlap) may engage in.
There's a discussion to be had about what the right amount is though.
You can submit a public comment on the proposal to DHS at the link below:
https://www.regulations.gov/document/USCIS-2025-0205-0002/co...
I suspect this government isn’t receptive to commentary from anyone other than only one person. While I’d never discourage anyone from advocating their beliefs this feels like at best a waste of energy. They are going to do it because they decided to do it - the solicitation of comments is performative and required. The only way to stop it is via the courts and by voting next November.
There's even precedent for the current president's agencies compiling some pretty sketchy "comments" in the past due to not doing basic sanity checks on pretty obvious fake comments that happened to support their agenda, like when supposedly seeking input from the public about repealing net neutrality[1]. There were so many duplicates that only thirty 30 unique comments made up 57% of the overall total, and the second most common "name" among the authors was literally "The Internet".
No one in the current administration cares about what random members of the public think about their policies, and that's by design. Even the government positions that are intended to be permanent across administrations aren't a safe bet at this point with was things have been going
[1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/11/29/public-comme...
You are 'this government's best friend, advocating for their opponents to give up and quit. In a remarkable pattern that I never thought I'd see in the rugged individualistic, idealistic, freedom-loving USA, a large group is literally self-defeating: They defeat themselves before even getting out of bed.
That's why your opponents are unstoppable - because you don't stop them. The performative nonsense is their aggression display.
They still want to win the election. Political and policy outcomes aren't all or nothing; the more they see, the more it will nudge them in whatever direction you want. Others will see it and it will nudge them too. If one person didn't embrace being a quitter, others would do the same.
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The government isn't one person, and I think both bureaucrats and judges are actually quite receptive to lots of people - only it's nebulous to who and why. Trying to please, and hoping to get rewarded, but neither you or they themselves are 100% certain of by who. Opaque power structures, everyone's paranoid, including the powerful.
> this government isn’t receptive to commentary from anyone
Name one government of the past 60 years that was.
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Don't most people in the US get fingerprinted at some point?
Let's see. I've been fingerprinted, all 10 fingers, for, at least, 1) the US Army, 2) security clearance for a DoD job, multiple times, 3) a permit to ride a horse on SF Water Department property, and 4) Customs and Border Protection Global Entry, which also took an iris scan.
California DMV takes a thumbprint, but not all 10 fingers. They've been recording me at every transaction for decades.
So I'm on file.
I think of being IDd as a normal part of life, for any position of trust. Is this unusual?
What may be information regarding a check for position of trust today, may well be information regarding a check if you should be locked up because of other reasons, tomorrow.
The issue is not the information itself, but how the information will be used. The chance of abusing information is not zero. But having rigorous rules and processes regarding that information, for instance mandatory destruction of said information, will greatly reduce the chance of abuse in the uncertain future.
I live in the apparent dystopia that is the UK and I've never had my fingerprint or DNA taken. Seems a bit of an overreach.
I'm in my 50s and British and I've only had it done once: by the police when the house I was living in got burgled and they wanted to rule out our finger prints. It was 30 years ago and I imagine I could have refused. I didn't really think about it at the time.
Likewise a British citizen in the UK. Funnily, while the UK government does not have my fingerprints, the US gov does! They were taken at the border when I visited. All 10 fingers
> I've never had my fingerprint or DNA taken.
Automated passport-and-fingerprint (sometimes also iris) scanning is now often the default route at many airports.
Also in the US, never been fingerprinted. Well, I think. You mentioned CA DMV, and I don’t remember a fingerprint, but I did have a California drivers license over a decade ago, so maybe? But most people don’t have security clearance, most are not in the military, most do not have global entry. Also the horse permit one is just funny.
Exactly. As a naturalized citizen my fingerprints are already on file. - everytime I entered the US when I was not a citizen - when I filed my green card application - when I went for my citizenship interview - TSA precheck biometrics because I travel quite a bit.
Depend what the "position of trust" is taken. Security clearance for departement of defense is certainly not something the median citizen can be expected to go through.
Surely there's a difference between collecting a thumbprint for a driver's license or even collecting full fingerprints for a specific job type, and collecting your DNA and an iris scan just for being a citizen?
I'm German. My government literally issues ID cards and requires fingerprints for those nowadays as well (because terrorism or the children or whatever works as the excuse at the moment) but the idea of a government agency collecting my DNA seems far more invasive given the kind of things you can do with that information and the kind of things governments (especially in my country but in the US and Canada too) have historically done to groups of people under them.
If you think there's nothing concerning about the government wanting to collect extensive biometric data including DNA from not only people applying for immigration but also people associated with them or their application, maybe it would sound more concerning to you if I said that in German.
In the EU, national ID cards are required to contain fingerprints in an electronically readable section. (a private key is required to read them via NFC) As a result, Ireland started issuing passport cards, since compliant passports can be used in place of a national ID card. The only biometric data on my passport is a black and white image of my face. (that can be read with a key derived from data on the passport itself)
> Surely there's a difference between collecting a thumbprint for a driver's license or even collecting full fingerprints for a specific job type, and collecting your DNA and an iris scan just for being a citizen?
Not really; every citizen is expected to have a driver's license, and this takes place before anyone has really thought about the issue even if they're likely to object later. It's sort of like the difference between baptizing infants and baptizing adults.
You're right that there's more information in the DNA, but what difference do you see in the iris scan?
Did you know that the State of California has a DNA sample from every person born in the state since 1983? It's required by law for the hospital to collect it and give it to the state.
This is a particularly incendiary way of putting this information out there.
What is collected and stored is a small blood-spot sample from a heel prick on a newborn. This is used to test for various kinds of conditions that affect newborns.
This isn't a full DNA genome sequence or even any data at all, just the blood-spot specimen.
Law enforcement does not have automatic access to this sample, but individual samples have been given to law enforcement through court orders or warrants. There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information or how often it's given to law enforcement, but there's been proposed legislation to make this more transparent.
The blood sample isn’t a DNA sample right up until the point they decide to sequence it. This is the same legal doctrine allowing the government to systematically collect all of your personal data without violating your privacy as long they don’t look at what they collect without a warrant.
The government has granted themselves an option on your personal data that can’t be revoked.
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> but individual samples have been given to law enforcement through court orders or warrants.
Then I can easily guarantee you that individual samples have been given to law enforcement _without_ orders or warrants.
> There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information
Which means there is zero oversight, logging, or auditing.
> This is a particularly incendiary way of putting this information out there.
Was it inaccurate?
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No, they are correct, and it's disingenuous to claim otherwise. They have a DNA sample of everyone. Those samples haven't been sequenced. As you've pointed out, they are sequenced when the state needs them to be.
It would be like scanning your drivers license and putting it in a sealed envelope and claiming "I don't have your home address!", when I'm known to get the home address from other peoples envelopes when asked for it.
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> This is used to test for various kinds of conditions that affect newborns.
Then why do they keep the samples?
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"There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information..."
Then no, it wasn't an incendiary claim.
Ag puhleez
Do you have a source? I know there is an index[0] of the information on California birth certificates from 1905 to 1995 and technically, despite the privacy implications, birth records in California are considered "public record".
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Birth_Index
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CFH/DGDS/Pages/nbs/default....
I just got back from the Millennium Seed Bank in the UK and was marveling at the size of a small footprint facility that stores samples of more than 10% of all known living plants.
Reading this thread, I was curious about what the size of California's sample collection looks like. I made an estimate using a little 1ul vial and an estimated 40 million people born in California since 1930. 100 samples in each box means 400,000 boxes. It's something like a 60 foot by 60 foot room with shelving.
If you extended it to a bank of 100 billion (about all humans ever born), that gets you to a pretty low tech solution that stores samples in the footprint of five Costcos.
California has been storing the samples in its biobank since 1983 not 1930.
What about people born outside of a hospital?
... The concept of DNA sample collection existed in 1983?
They actually started in 1966 (it's a blood spot collection) but they only started keeping it in 1983.
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https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/tag/newborn-blood-spot-pr...
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The trick is that you don't elect someone like Donald Trump. I just read on the BBC that the president of America threatened New Yorkers not to vote for Mamdani.
People in the Netherlands trust their government because noone in the 500 years of history has ever gotten close to getting dictatorial power unless you count Napoleon and Hitler.
Why does Belgium exist? Is it because the Flemish revolted against Dutch rule?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Revolution
Despite the downvotes you are right that democracies mostly deliver what voters want. And if voters want silly things, they get silly things.
It's easy to fret at how dysfunctional and insane politics are. But after you talk to some actual voters (and look at opinion polls), instead you marvel at how comparatively sane policies manage to be---despite voters.
I think it's worth mentioning that while biometrics for identification have flaws (as mentioned in this thread, they're not 100% collision free, are not necessarily secret, and are non-trivial to collect), DNA has a different risk profile if it leaks than fingerprints and iris scans if you consider technology advances. DNA could let people (moving beyond government, since you should probably assume anything in a government database will be leaked at this point) target your family and not just you, it includes information that could let adversaries find out ways you're uniquely exploitable (for instance allergies, sensitivities, diseases) and in general its potential for harm goes far beyond impersonation or being used in court.
(On the plus side, I suppose, I think the story on storing DNA at the scale we're talking about is not fully complete. DNA does denature and it takes a reasonably good sample to get a full genome sequence, and fully sequencing and storing data for every person has other practical issues. The article itself only references using DNA results to "prove or disprove biological sex", which is much more trivial and while it's likely to come with its own problems and edge cases, is also much less information.)
I think it's an interesting visual to compare the Stasi's rows of scent jars to data centers filled with banks of flash memory storing biometric data.
The horror of that constrasted with the blithe compliance of modern citizens.
Be careful - this may be a case where they say they're going to do one thing (collect data from US citizens), but walk that part of it back after people protest - while those very same people overlook the fact that they're still going to be getting every immigrant to submit to the scans.
Hospitals in california steal the DNA of every single baby born there and collect it in a database.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-newborn-dna-privacy-...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/baby-dna-parental-consent-genet...
Take it easy. The federal budget for the backup of that database was cancelled. We just have to wait for the next HD failure. And then we are anonymous again !
Unless it gets backed up by some hackers.
Hilariously, this is the second Sam that wants to collect everyones iris's for nefarious purposes
This WorldCoin image will forever live rent free in my head:
https://www.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/08...
What exactly am I looking at?
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Looks suspiciously like the robot that pumped Princess Leia full of drugs.
"How does it work?"
"It's magic. All technology is."
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In this case, I suspect it's more Uncle Donald (or Aunt Kristi, but she usually doesn't do anything without Uncle Donald's approval).
Big difference between a hash for use as an attestation (proof of humanity) and a digital ID associated with your name
This is the most maddening topic I've experienced in recent times. My guess is it's the ghost of ww2. Anything that looks or smells like a definitive reduction of a human being to numbers is to be opposed, regardless of utility.
What you are choosing, instead, is the management of the phenomenon you're trying to avoid by corporations—more or less emergent feudalism.
Consider the options: a corporation knows everything about you vs. no entity knows any information about you except for whether you're eligible for the service being provided, and that you exist. The former is the current state of affairs. The latter, I think, is a better state of affairs.
I used to think this kind of thing didn’t concern me. But once family members get pulled in and citizens get scanned by association, it’s hard to stay untouched.
Is this really about safety, or are we quietly building something we won’t be able to roll back?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
> Is this really about safety
The question is „whose safety?“
There is a massive difference between collecting your DNA and iris or fingerprint.
a Gattaca-esq society is terrifying.
Every grocery store I have been to in the US is recording people at the checkout.
DNA seems especially egregious. That’s useful for things other than identification and has commercial value and thus incentive to abuse.
Idk I’m just planning to stay clear of the US till we see if they recover from their bout of authoritarianism
It’s somewhat important to point out that this is the same thing that was done during the Iraq war to potential “insurgents” so the biometrics tech was “trained” and used experimentally there before it has been brought home. Wouldn’t be surprised if the people that used it in Iraq (as technicians) are now going to be the people operating the tech now in the US.
I'm quite disappointed by the discourse in this thread.
We can build privacy-preserving identity. It's a huge opportunity. Go work on it!
If you're in the Bay, there's a conference on it every year where the people building the tech and setting the standards are hashing out the ideas!
When the government comes knocking, they're not coming up with stuff from scratch—they're picking up the tools we left around ready to use.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK NNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO
This is the only sane and decent answer to that. I wish more people were honest and had some gut at least to say this.
DNA is already stored after every infant is born and blood drawn.
Does anyone know about PRISM?
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Unsurprising.
India, which given its colonial-era ruling-elites who are maniacally obsessed with the Anglosphere, is today considered a "laboratory" for doing social experiments that'd be considered a outrage against human dignity in their own countries. This country was the first in line not only the biometric identification projects (Aadhar), and for demonetization (of 2016 with UPI). All of these were funded and pushed by USAID.
Both of these were implemented by running roughshod over constitution and regulation, by "roping-in" key regulatory people by giving them what they desire the most - access to the ruling elites in the US. Eg. Infosys' Nandan Nilekani was thrust to the top with his USAID funded projects.
Now the results of this "human corralling" experiments (note: a lot of what Orwell described came out of his experience in British-colonial India), is now coming to the West.
This shows how complex the balance is between security and privacy, every new technology seems to push that line a bit further.
The party of liberty and small government.
You've been asleep or something? Current policy of every Five Eyes country:
"You could be refused entry to [...] if you:
[...]
- refuse to let an immigration officer take your photo, fingerprints or an iris scan"
EU's recently rejected chat control looks like child's play compared to this. These are some Stasi methods that are going to destroy the US if implemented. Europe already went through creating dossier on citizens in the past, the next immediate step is always fascism. Nothing good comes out of fascism, as the history showed.
To be honest, one could argue that places like Singapore turned on amazingly well by most metrics.
Isn’t that a quote from The Mandalorian?
> It is a shame that your people suffered so. Just as in this situation, it was all avoidable. Why did Mandalore resist our expansion? The Empire improves every system it touches. Judge by any metric. Safety, prosperity, trade, opportunity, peace. Compare Imperial rule to what is happening now. Look outside. Is the world more peaceful since the revolution? I see nothing but death and chaos.
>the next immediate step is always fascism.
Chronologicaly the Stasi was built after fascism ended. It operated in East Germany, a communist state.
Yes, in a rundown communist state. What could have followed , would be a Kim leader steering the country in the North Korean direction — which I’d call fascist.
Luckily there was Gorbachev and in the people enough decency and civilisation left, so the system just folded
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Yes, they're definitely doing this to help you, the hoi polloi whose data is being harvested.
Santa Claus is coming tonight.
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And just like that jimbo throws away his right to privacy.
In other news, water is wet.
How is this news, the usgov has been taking my biometrics for the past 5 years
Have they? They haven't taken mine.
Every time I fly from SFO, there’s a face-tracking camera that takes your photo after you stand up close to it. There’s definitely some sort of data harvesting there and there’s no opt out that I know about.
I also have Clear, which was voluntary but certainly collected my biometric data years ago.
I also have Global Entry, which has a similar scanning tech to point 1.
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As a US citizen, you likely have your photo in a state or federal database somewhere from getting your ID or driver's license.
Depending on your job, background check history, or interactions with the police, your fingerprints might be in a database somewhere.
If you fly, your facial image/photograph/video is held by TSA and also as part of the REAL ID program.
So there are some biometrics that the government has of us, but clearly the article is describing a huge increase in not just the kind of biometric data collected, but also the kinds of people who would be required to give it up.
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I've gotten scanned at the airport on entry and for my greencard h1b/greencard applications, I had to go get scanned at a biometrics center.
https://www.uscis.gov/forms/filing-guidance/preparing-for-yo...
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> They haven't taken mine
If you let have a passport, State has your face.
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The TSA uses facial recognition right now at most US airports. While they claim to not store the pictures, they've "accidentally" stored data many other times they promised not to so consider me skeptical.
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