You Will Shoot Your Eye Out

There’s a couple of issues where I might run into opposition among the readership and that’s all right, we can disagree and one might even enlighten the other. No harm, no foul.

First of all: data centers. I’ve already registered my complaints against them, not theoretical, political complaints, but issues that directly affect myself and my property.

So I question the need for the vast amount of the data centers being built and the incredible amount of debt being racked up to get them into place before the public has a say in their construction.

As a capitalist, it’s hard to deny that corporations that buy land have a right to build on that land whatever they want. However, a corporation should not be able to buy a parcel of land straddling a river and block the river with a damn to generate electricity, if it floods land they don’t own.

In a typical situation the corporation could do whatever it wanted and the people could explore their options once they found their property or rights being damaged. This is the same argument for the second topic: Flock cameras and government operated cameras of all sorts.

In a privately owned store, a person has a right to install security cameras to provide evidence of a crime committed against it. The hard drive of which would probably be purged to make room for more recent recordings, so that there is no ability of the government to subpoena months and months of footage, but could use that recent footage to provide evidence of a crime committed within the establishment.

The problem arises when these cameras rely on the cloud to store the footage. This is where Flock cameras and their ilk run afoul of the 4th Amendment rights of those who are not suspected of crimes, but simply moving throughout the area.

Cameras connected to WiFi or use cloud storage (data centers) are eminently hackable. In fact, one source claimed that while the police departments were accessing the Flock cameras (sometimes illegally), others of a non-law enforcement nature were too. This provides other security services, like private investigators, the ability to gather information to be used in a divorce proceeding.

Maybe, it would allow for groups to monitor and target individuals. How advantageous would that be to someone planning a terrorist attack or assassination?

The cumbersome nature of having to follow someone around to gather information in a divorce proceeding, or to plan a terrorist attack exposes those doing the surveillance and prohibits these activities to a rarified few. The expansiveness of it, the ease with which it can be obtained is the danger.

Once a camera is available to the cloud, it is no longer a security camera, but a surveillance camera and that’s where I find fault with both the Flock camera and the data centers available to house that data. The question to me still comes back the amount of the data centers.

People say, “we’ve had data centers for decades. What’s the problem? You’re being manipulated by the CCP.” I was never a fan of those data centers either, because what need is there, but to store information gathered through internet connections, cell transmissions and other modes of expected private communication?

The connection between data centers and AI seems rather tenuous and a bit of a distraction designed to allow for the surveillance state while seeming to inspire economic activity and beneficial use.

The data centers represent, to me, the ability to store data surreptitiously accumulated through passive spying on all human communication. When there were only a few, the limited number defeated the ability to store enough to impinge on individual rights of privacy to a great degree.

Not completely, but it was at a much better ratio than when there are 5,000 data centers and more being built all the time. The admonition that it’s necessary to keep up with China falls a little flat when China has 385 data centers and the US has 3,600-5,000.

Localities and states are sold on the idea of high-paying jobs in construction and operation, increased tax revenue and an invigorated economy. From a government perspective, there’s no downside. The people have to pay more in electricity. So, what? The people have to pay higher property taxes due to the imagined “invigorated economy.” So, what?

These government entities claim that the tax revenue from the data centers will reduce or eliminate property taxes. I’ll believe that when I see it. What I do suspect is initially some of the increased tax revenue might be used to offset some property taxes, if just to reduce opposition, but surely that will be obliterated when the counties get used to that increased income and come looking for more.

When it comes to terrorist activity, I can’t imagine a more beneficial weapon against the West than it’s own technology. A terrorist cell able to track a specific individual or target by hacking the Flock cameras and others, while never leaving the mosque, exposing themselves to observation and suspicion, seems to be a gift.

I know I’ll lose this argument. Americans are too addicted to convenience to deny themselves the advantages of perpetual spying.

They already take their personal surveillance devices with them wherever they go. They see, especially in the entertainment industry, the advantages of AI as a cost-reduction practice, despite the fact that anything coming out of AI already stinks, looks and feels too easy to give it value by the consumer, who rightfully thinks to himself: “Why should I pay to watch something I could create myself for $25 and share with my friends?”

The concept of using AI in warfare is too compelling to deny it simply because there’s a downside. “There’s good and bad in everything.” Yes, but the surveillance state we’re building will not be constrained to the military or law enforcement. It can and will be used by political and terrorist organizations. It’s being used right now by individuals in law enforcement to track romantic interests, romantic rivals and social enemies and we shrug.

A local police officer was just fired for using the Flock system over 100 times to track a romantic interest. How often is it happening where there is no consequence, where no one is monitoring?

On the other hand, a person who had been destroying Flock cameras, several of them, was arrested and put before a grand jury and subsequently set free, because they would not indict him. If the majority are willing to allow this, those having a stake in the privacy of the individual have a right and a duty to prevent it. The state can make whatever law they want, but people can reject it and refuse to indict.

All of the usual methods of operating a republic are gone. The constitution is ignored; radical judges are frustrating the will of the people to have legitimate elections and to deport illegal aliens; a surveillance state is being erected using our own taxes; our resources are being devoured against our interests and no one in congress is listening to our pleas for sanity. This is a classic example of when the people have to fend for themselves and do what is right, not just what is legal.