What’s your position on surveillance cameras and other erosions of American privacy?

[Dave V]

What’s your position on surveillance cameras and other erosions of American privacy?
With drones and networked cameras everywhere, China has zero personal privacy and as a result, there are no personal freedoms and the population is controlled by their Communist government.
We are headed the same direction and neither political party will take a stand against it because surveillance provides information and information is power. Or maybe they just don’t recognize what’s happening?
In the name of national (and local) security, we’ve ceded almost all our privacy to corporate and governmental spying of all our activities. There are now cameras inside and outside of (most?) businesses, on your doorstep (Ring,) attached to police and their cars, on every street corner, and in your smart phone and home assistant????
Artificial Intelligence/Facial recognition has reached the point that in some cities and some whole states, you have little privacy. Everything you purchase and everywhere you go is collected with a combination of cloud attached cameras, credit card point of sale info, the GPS in your phone, and any website or web search you make. Particularly dangerous are “smart speakers” like Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod, Google Nest, Sonos One, and Bose Home Speaker 500. On your cell phone (iPad, MacBook, or PC,) you may have Google Assistant, Alexa , Apple's Siri, BlackBerry Assistant, Bixby, Cortana, Facebook Messenger, or Wechat Secretary.
Every phone has apps that give away our personal information. Soon, all cars, all appliances, and even lightbulbs will be connected to the Internet and probably used by someone to surveil you and to sell your info to the highest bidders. Think about what may be watching, listening, or tracking you right now?!
An awareness of these privacy issues has changed the way I live, but it’s really easy to get tricked into giving away your info, your location, and your purchases. Maybe you don’t care, but I don’t like the direction this is going – i.e. like China!

 

[DrHenley]

 

[Amish Heart]

I don't think it's right to have cameras everywhere. When I go into our bigger town for shopping, they still do have the old style traffic cam on top of the lights at the intersection, but I'm sure there's more I'm missing. When we were in Denver a few months back, stopped at a traffic light, there was a good sized cement block "work of art" at the corner where people cross the street. We were waiting for a green light right near it, and it was a painted face design. Looking closely, one eye of the painting had a camera.

 

[Oddcaliber]

Like any tool it will lead to misuse by a corrupt government.

 

[bill harrell]

Not me, I'm invisible to all known wavelengths of light.

 

[Jayson]

Not me, I'm invisible to all known wavelengths of light.

 

[Mountain trapper]

I'm absolutely aginst government surveillance cameras 100% for any reason in public areas.

 

[backandbeyond]

My position is it's an unavoidable reality and rather than complain about it I employ methods to counteract it. If preppers spent half the time they spend complaining about things on finding solutions they would have nothing to complain about.
"No one's gonna tell me to wear a face mask!"
"Look, they are spying on us with facial recognition!"

 

[Mountain trapper]

My position is it's an unavoidable reality and rather than complain about it I employ methods to counteract it. If preppers spent half the time they spend complaining about things on finding solutions they would have nothing to complain about.
"No one's gonna tell me to wear a face mask!"
"Look, they are spying on us with facial recognition!"

So who's complaining? Pointing out the fact that some of us value our right to privacy and to not be spied on by a corrupt government is "complaining"? You sound like someone else on this site that is fine with rolling over and giving up our Rights.
And what does wearing a stupid ineffective face diaper have to do with being spied on?

 

[EastenerWesterner]

We have been giving up our rights in private businesses for 30 years.

I was friends with a large national retailer store manager. He couldn’t by policy go play golf with me, but we would meet up on the second or 3rd hole. I relayed how security was targeting me when I was there for work and when I was there as a customer.

One day when I was working, we went up to the security office. It was like the TV show 24. This was in a 20k population city in the middle of IL. The Manager informed security to stop being so obvious that a vendor can spot them. I was never followed again in that store

 

[KateMTx]

Of course it's an invasion of privacy. It's a violation of the fourth amendment if the government is using them to spy in people's homes or other places that are not in public view. So if they are hacking that Alexa or spying with your webcam then it's a violation. . . but we all know they are. Hell, I remember when I used to say the NSA was using Facebook to spy on us and my brother called me a conspiracy theorist. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know for a fact that the government was infringing on our rights by collaborating with Facebook and other companies to spy on citizens private lives.

 

[Jayson]

The next time I suspect the federal KGB is snooping on me, I’m going to about face and drop trousers...

 

[backandbeyond]

You sound like someone else on this site that is fine with rolling over and giving up our Rights.
And what does wearing a stupid ineffective face diaper have to do with being spied on?

You're "rights" are going going soon to be gone, I'm just a realist, I don't live in some dream world where talking about it endlessly on the internet will make it better.
The face mask and spying? I thought that was patently obvious. Facial recognition, which is another bitch freedom lovers have, is basically defeated by covering your face. But what do you care? You live way out in the woods and don't even have to deal with the mask issue do you. You have no dog in the fight so to speak.