They're building 1984

 Okay, so this is gonna sound a bit conspiracy theoryish, but I think it's worth grappling with. So...I talked about fascism, techno fascists, and how the trump administration is openly authoritarian, supporting people like the dark enlightenment people who don't believe in democracy, and that Trump might make a pass at going full on authoritarian. But one thing I do want to emphasize is the surveillance state aspect of it. What do flock cameras, data centers, and smart devices all have in common? They create a surveillance dragnet to watch everything you do. Gamer's nexus talked about it today and this has been going around in my head for a while.

Flock cameras 

So...flock cameras, they're everywhere now. And people keep pointing out that they're creepy and dystopian. I have mixed opinions on them quite frankly. I live in a high crime area and some have wanted cameras for years in high crime intersections to track criminals and get them arrested. While there's nothing wrong with this, if they're placed there through democratic consensus, they have a clear purpose, and clear guardrails, these cameras are popping up everywhere, often against the will of the people, they dont have a clear purpose, and they are ripe for abuse. They can track people wherever they go, giving them no privacy outside of their homes. And even if we're okay with THAT, well...buckle up.

Smart devices

So gamer's nexus mentioned smart tvs, but this applies to phones, tablets, laptops, etc. It's possible, in theory, for these things to listen to what you say and record everything you say or do in your own home. It's also possible for them to be used without a warrant if corporations just hand your data over to the government on demand. Which they are probably doing. So not only are you being tracked outside of your home, but in them as well. That heated political discussion at dinner where someone said something they shouldnt have said, its probably in a data base somewhere. Speaking of which.

Data centers

 So we all know AI data centers are being built like crazy. But there's a clear financial problem with them. It's a product/service with no real demand. The whole bubble is artificial. But....what if the real client is the government? All that stuff being recorded, the data needs to go somewhere, right? So...why not tons of data centers? And how are they gonna sift through all that data? AI, of course! So....yeah. Really crappy dystopian spy crap. 

Discussion 

And all of this seems to bypass normal 4th and 14th amendment protections. You have no right to privacy outside of your home, they hide behind terms and conditions and corpo speak no one reads to justify you giving your data to corporations, and the corporations partner with the government and give it to them. 

Now, under a normal administration,  this would be concerning as is. There were concerns about, for example, spying on people during the Bush administration due to the patriot act and its provisions. But during the Trump years? When this administration has explicit anti democratic tendencies and seems to be aligned with some really dark mofos who not just share those tendencies but are the same tech bros pushing this crap? Yeah....scary to think about. They're literally building 1984. They were just 40 years off. 

if our country goes to crap, this data will be used against us in significant ways. They'll find whatever crimes or infractions they can and charge you for them. They'll use directives like NSPM7 to justify spying on the political opposition. They'll try to go after dissenters and jail them. Oh, and they already are putting the apparatus in place to handle that, what with the militarization of the police, the use of troops on US soil, ICE being trump's personal army, etc. Oh, and those camps for migrants. They can quickly be converted into makeshift prisons for dissenters. Kinda like what Hitler did in the 1930s. That's how we got concentration camps btw, they started as places to send dissenters and they ramped it up to genocide in the later years. Fun fact. 

But yeah. This crap is CREEPY. Like....really creepy, and I've been thinking about it for the past few days, and I just wanted to discuss it a bit. We're heading toward a world where the government records everything you do, and if they dont like you, they can theoretically start jailing and disappearing you. This is America in the 2020s. Scary to think about. Vote democrat while you still have the liberty to and hope we can remove trump and the republicans without them going full fascist here. There's still time to reverse course, hopefully....