the science & technology of social control (august 2020)

Cartoon, circa 1970

Just 2 links to articles on this site which are primarily about the science & technology of social control but have been put under different categories:

Comments

27 responses to “the science & technology of social control (august 2020)”

  1. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    https://roarmag.org/magazine/algorithmic-control-smartphone-internet-apps/

    “There is little doubt that innovations in mobile technologies are part
    of emerging methodologies of social control. In particular, games and
    applications that make use of the Google Maps back-end system —
    including Uber, Grindr, Pokémon Go and hundreds of others — which should
    be seen as one of the most important technological developments of the
    last decade or so, are particularly complicit in these new regulatory
    practices. Putting the well-publicized data collection issue aside, such
    applications have two powerful ideological functions. First, they
    construct the new “geographical contours” of the city, regulating the
    paths we take and mapping the city in the service of both corporate
    interest and the prevention of uprisings. Second, and more
    unconsciously, they enact what Jean-Francois Lyotard once called the
    “desirevolution” — an evolution and revolution of desire, in which that
    what we want is itself now determined by the digital paths we tread.

    On a smaller scale, this point can be seen in concrete terms with a case
    study of London. A recent Transport for London talk discussed the
    possibility of “gamifying” commuting. In order to facilitate this
    possibility, Transport for London have made the internet API and data
    streams used to monitor all London Transport vehicles open source and
    open access, in the hope that developers will build London-focused apps
    based around the public transport system, thus maximizing profit. One
    idea is that if a particular tube station is at risk of becoming clogged
    up due to other delays, TfL could give “in-game rewards” for people
    willing to use alternative routes and thus smooth out the jam.

    While traffic jam prevention may not seem like evidence that we have
    arrived in the dystopia of total corporate and state control, it does
    actually reveal the dangerous potentiality in such technologies. It
    shows that the UK is not as far away from the “social credit” game
    system recently implemented in Beijing to rate each citizen’s
    trustworthiness and give them rewards for their dedication to the
    Chinese state. While the UK media reacted with shock to these
    innovations in Chinese app development, a closer look at the electronic
    structures of mapping and controlling our own movements shows that a
    similar framework is already in its development phase in London too. In
    the “smart city” of the future, it won’t just be traffic jams that are
    smoothed out. Any inefficient misuse or any occupation of public space
    deemed dangerous by the authorities can be specifically targeted.

    Of course, when it comes to mapping pplications that promise to help us
    access the best quality objects of our desire with the greatest
    efficiency and the least cost, these tempting forces of joint corporate
    and state control are entered into willingly by participants. As such,
    they require something else in order to function in the all-consuming
    way that they do. Far from simply channeling and transforming our
    movements, they also need to channel and even transform our
    desires….If the boundaries between the way we search, desire and
    acquire our burgers, lovers and Pikachus are dissolving, it is not so
    much the old point that everything has become a commodity, but a new
    point that this kind of substitutional electronic objectivity endows
    corporate and state technologists with unprecedented power to distribute
    and redistribute the objects of the desire around the “smart city”.”….
    The various forms and objects of each individual’s desire no longer
    represent discreet and separable elements of a subject’s life. Instead
    we enter a fully cohesive libidinal economy in which we are increasingly
    regulated and mapped via the organization of what and how we desire.”

  2. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    Antwerp begins fingerprint scanning ahead of new ID card launch:

    https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/131288/antwerp-begins-fingerprint-scanning-ahead-of-new-id-card-launch/

    “It is important to know that the fingerprint is only present on the
    card (in the chip) itself, and is not stored in a central database,” the
    Antwerp alderman in charge of the process, Nabilla Ait Daoud, told ATV,
    adding that only the responsible authorities can read the chip and see
    the fingerprints. … In the rest of Belgium, the new ID cards with the
    holders’ fingerprints will begin being issued by all Belgian
    municipalities by the end of 2020.

  3. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    https://theintercept.com/2020/09/13/police-surveillance-technology-operation-legend/
    “Awash in these federal funds, cities have doubled down on their surveillance investments, even as they face general budget shortfalls in the tens of millions. On August 4, two days before Operation Legend was formally announced in the city, Memphis signed a new contract with Cellebrite, an Israeli forensics manufacturer popular with law enforcement, whose products can hack and extract data from smartphones…Chicago, meanwhile, announced on August 14 that it would employ “enhanced” technology for “around-the-clock” monitoring of social media to identify looters. One hundred federal agents from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives were sent to Chicago through Operation Legend in late July. Though Mayor Lori Lightfoot at first assumed a hostile attitude toward the initiative, in August she also announced a new task force on looting in partnership with the FBI…In Memphis, a unique consent decree from 1978 prohibits law enforcement from engaging in “political intelligence” — collecting information on individuals for political purposes. This decree was the backbone of the 2018 American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, which held that Memphis had violated the law. City law enforcement has lobbied to amend and strike the decree, but so far, it has held.

    Yet the Memphis law does not apply to federal law enforcement. “That’s the harsh truth. The decree only covers the city,” explained Tom Castelli, legal director for the ACLU of Tennessee, though per the decree, the city cannot collaborate on unlawful surveillance with outside agencies. Still, Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings has alluded to partnering with the FBI to get around some of the decree’s restrictions, later confirming through a city spokesperson that he “told [federal officials] that we are restricted by the consent decree and depend on them to catch threats articulated on social media.”…”

    More than just carting a lot of heavily armed filth into some selected cities. The extent to which some of the surveillance networks have been constructed is notably spooky.

  4. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    “There was a report about an old man surnamed Xie, of Shanghai’s Pudong District, who passed away in January of this year. Recently, his family received a traffic ticket that claimed the elderly Mr. Xie ran a red light at an intersection on October 1. The fine: 20 yuan. When the police discovered the mistake, they personally went to the Xie household to apologize, claiming they would upgrade and update the system as soon as possible, increase manual verification, and improve the recognition accuracy of their systems as much as possible.

    It was a humorous and intriguing case of misjudgment by the traffic police artificial intelligence system. But the story leaves us with two conversation points: First, the only reason they had to admit the system made a mistake this time was because Mr. Xie had already passed away. If the system mistakenly targeted a living person, how would they be cleared of wrongdoing and get rid of this random ticket? Second, is it really okay to use a public intersection as a biological information collection point, and then to make that private information public?

    According to the police officers, the computer system mistakenly identified someone else running the red light as Mr. Xie. The system matched the individual with old household registration data. So first there was an error with the data collected by the crosswalk camera, and then it associated that data with the wrong person. One possibility is that the image, which was taken haphazardly at the front end, was superimposed onto an equally messy database. The AI used by the traffic police made a quiet mistake in a place hidden from human view…”

    https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/10/translation-dead-mans-jaywalking-ticket-raises-questions-about-ai-policing/

  5. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    “Cellebrite claims its tech can now crack Signal, which is regarded as
    the most encrypted app and is commonly used by journalists to
    communicate with sources … In an earlier, now deleted, version of the
    blog post, the company went as far as to say: “Decrypting Signal
    messages and attachments was not an easy task. It required extensive
    research on many different fronts to create new capabilities from
    scratch. At Cellebrite, however, finding new ways to help those who make
    our world a safer place is what we’re dedicated to doing every day.”

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tech-news/.premium-israeli-spy-tech-firm-says-it-can-break-into-signal-app-previously-considered-safe-1.9368581

  6. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    From T:

    https://www.frontierweekly.com/views/jul-20/10-7-20-

    “Foer’s[13] World without Mind is essentially a book about the forces in
    the world that have spurred confusion, conformism, and, sad to say,
    stupidity. Though the defeat of the higher ideal is hardly final, Foer
    examines how the truth is manufactured by the big-techs in a make
    believe world. The author hopes to persuade us that another course is
    still possible. The Europeans have charmingly, and correctly, lumped
    them together as GAFA (Google, Apple, Face book, Amazon) – says Foer.
    For example, Facebook can predict user’s race, sexual orientation,
    relationship status, and drug use on the basis of their “likes” alone.
    ‘The crowd’ gets what it wants and deserves. We’re in the earliest days
    of this revolution, of course, says Foer. The whole effort of all the
    neo-tech is to make human beings more predictable, to anticipate their
    behavior, which makes them easier to manipulate. Even the father of
    Capitalism, Adam Smith, didn’t anticipate this manipulative market of
    this extent through information. Knowledge never entered deeply into
    Smith’s thinking about trade. But now “Knowledge factories” have become
    a reality.

    With the big tech entry we also entered a kind of ‘noisy world.’ It is a
    condition called ‘Total Noise.’ It’s is no more a stable and
    predictable knowledge; it is peripatetic, where a wealth of information
    creates a poverty of attention.[14] The new way of offering us
    information is always in the order of shock and disbelief. Everyone
    acquainted with ‘social media’ is aware of this new environment. See for
    example a well-known method of social media news: “9 out of 10 Americans
    Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact.” The moment you come
    across such news, you will invariably drawn to read it or hear it
    instantly. Millions of readers couldn’t contain themselves and followed
    that link. “You Won’t Believe What Happened Next.”[15] On most occasion
    the content would be absolutely either irrelevant or full of vanity. The
    news is not just news, it’s always ‘breaking’ or ‘trending.’ Indians
    have, of late, become ‘news maniacs,’ and the social media is more
    virulent and corrupting in India than anywhere else in the world. Almost
    every linguistic region has more than two dozens of vernacular
    audio-visual media and hundreds of social media cites. News ‘production’
    has already reached the level of ‘industrial production’! “

  7. SamFanto avatar

    Drones now used to drop teargas on Palestinian demonstrators:
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-police-using-drones-to-drop-tear-gas-on-palestinian-demonstrators-1.9752997

    “The drone is operated by remote control and can drop between six and 12 canisters from the air, proving to be ‘very effective,’ according to Israeli police”

  8. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    Israel: new bill for the establishment of a nationwide array of facial recognition cameras – https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/s1pz2hfao

    Translation:

    “The memorandum of the bill, it seems, was drafted in response to a High
    Court review with the proper purpose of regulating the activities of the
    system that has hitherto operated in secret.” … The memorandum was
    formulated against the background of the High Court’s criticism of the
    police’s use of the system known as the “Hawk’s Eye”. This is a system
    of special cameras that are placed along Israeli roads, and which
    capture and document the license plate numbers of the cars that travel
    in them. … Now, the facial recognition system itself is not so
    detached from the Hawk’s Eye system, as it also captures the interior of
    the vehicle and the face of its passengers (although it is not clear
    whether it uses face recognition technology to automatically identify
    the passengers). However, the bill memorandum takes the issue one step
    further, and is not satisfied with regulating it as part of the activity
    of the Hawk’s Eye system on roads only, but allows the placement of face
    recognition cameras throughout the public space, in a fixed,
    semi-permanent configuration (up to 3 months) and mobile (“on a Body
    moving in space”).

    ***

    Rough translation of the full article that appeared in Calcalist
    journal:

    “Regime force”: Police want to operate a nationwide array of face
    recognition cameras

    Last week, a memorandum was published for public comment on a bill
    concerning the establishment and operation of a nationwide array of face
    recognition cameras to be operated by the police. If approved in this
    form, it will allow it to monitor the movement of Israeli residents in
    the public space in real time, with almost no significant restrictions
    or supervision, and even share the information with other bodies.

    Omer Kabir, Calcalist | 12.07.21 | 07:48

    Over the years, and in the last year in particular, quite a bit has been
    written about the danger of the slippery slope. How moves such as the
    establishment of the biometric database or the operation of the Shin
    Bet’s geopositioning tool against Israeli citizens as part of efforts to
    limit the spread of the corona are not a full stop at the end of a
    sentence, but may be the beginning of a long story of deterioration and
    expansion of espionage and surveillance systems. How as soon as one dam
    is breached, the pressure on the dams down the road increases and there
    is a danger that they too will be breached and flooded, and so on and so
    forth.

    For the most part, this is a theoretical warning, a statement of mine or
    of experts that this is one of the dangers we face if we can talk about
    what is at stake. But sometimes, we not only see the slippery slope at
    the tip of our feet, but also the forces that are beginning to push us
    down. And this is what happens with a bill memorandum released Thursday
    evening for public comment. The matter of the memorandum is the
    establishment and operation of a national array of face recognition
    cameras to be operated by the police, and if approved in its current
    wording it will be able to monitor the movement of Israeli residents in
    public space in real time, with almost no significant restrictions or
    supervision and even share information with other bodies.

    The memorandum was formulated against the background of the High Court’s
    criticism of the police’s use of the system known as the “Hawk’s Eye”.
    This is a system of special cameras that are placed along Israeli roads,
    and which capture and document the license plate numbers of the cars
    that travel in them.

    In this way, the system, which has been in operation for about a decade
    but almost secretly, can create an extensive database of vehicle traffic
    in Israel that is used by the police to solve crimes.

    Although operating the system can be legitimate under certain
    conditions, although here too it can be argued otherwise, the fact that
    it is operated secretly without the public knowing that information was
    collected about it, how it is stored and for how long, who is entitled
    to access it and under what conditions is particularly serious. In the
    UK, for example, the activity of a similar system is regulated in a way
    that includes significant transparency regarding its various aspects of
    use.

    The High Court sharply criticized the operation of the “Hawk’s Eye”
    system, warned that it could violate basic rights such as freedom of
    protest, the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial, and
    ordered the government to explain why it would not immediately stop
    using the system and delete all data collected so far.

    Police cameras on very street, and even in the mall

    The memorandum of the bill, it seems, was drafted in response to a High
    Court review with the proper purpose of regulating the activities of the
    system that has hitherto operated in secret. Across the country, a face
    recognition system, or as it is described in the memorandum: “‘A special
    photo system’ … has a processing capability that allows a person or
    object to be uniquely identified in real time and thus to track or
    detect a person.”

    Now, the facial recognition system itself is not so detached from the
    Hawk’s Eye system, as it also captures the interior of the vehicle and
    the face of its passengers (although it is not clear whether it uses
    face recognition technology to automatically identify the passengers).
    However, the bill memorandum takes the issue one step further, and is
    not satisfied with regulating it as part of the activity of the Hawk’s
    Eye system on roads only, but allows the placement of face recognition
    cameras throughout the public space, in a fixed, semi-permanent
    configuration (up to 3 months) and mobile (“on a Body moving in space”).

    The memorandum clarifies that the system is not intended for roads only,
    saying that “a special photography system will be set up, intended and
    operated so that only the public space will be photographed and not the
    private domain.” That is, it will allow the police to place cameras on
    every street in every city, and in theory also inside buildings like
    malls or government offices. Any place that is not a person’s private
    space. However, even this limitation has a caveat according to which
    when it comes to a mobile camera it will be placed “in a way that does
    not infringe, to the extent necessary, on a person’s privacy.” That is,
    it seems that under certain conditions it will be possible to use this
    system in order to infringe on a person’s private domain.

    The uses requested by the police are also particularly wide and allow it
    to actually operate the capabilities of this system almost indefinitely.
    These include uses such as prevention or thwarting of offenses,
    investigation of crime patterns, detection of crime-type offenses,
    prevention of serious damage to mental security or property, locating a
    missing person and enforcing entry bans and deportation orders. It is
    also noted that information stored in the system can also be used for
    the proper purpose of saving or protecting human life, or for the less
    critical purpose of confiscating property.

    Now the opening for unlimited use is significant. If, say, a certain
    person has a restraining order from the center of Tel Aviv for one
    reason or another, in theory such a system can be used to scan the faces
    of all who come to the city center at any given moment, just to check if
    that person is among them. And when it comes to investigating crime
    patterns – here the canvas is so wide and the definition so loose that
    the police can paint on it whatever they want and find endless
    justifications for operating the system across the country without
    significant restriction. In addition, the system can be used for
    “research” purposes, but omitting identifying information.
    Unfortunately, the memorandum does not specify what those identifying
    details are and in what procedure they will be omitted.

    Will citizens know they are being filmed in this system? It depends. The
    fixed and semi-fixed cameras “will be placed in a way that will be
    visible”, and a qualified officer is also asked to consider whether to
    place “appropriate signage” next to them. However, this obligation does
    not apply to mobile cameras, and if the officer finds that the
    circumstances justify it, he can also order the other cameras to be
    placed in a way that is not visible. All is left solely to his
    judgement. That is, there may be many situations where citizens did not
    even know if they were being filmed.

    Access to sensitive information will not be limited to the police alone

    The police are not limited in time in storing the information collected
    by the cameras, beyond the “period required for the purpose of placing
    the cameras.” And is there a time when crime or crime prevention is not
    necessary?

    In addition, access to sensitive information will be broad and will not
    be limited to the police only. The memorandum states that it may provide
    the information to a public body that needs it for the purpose of
    fulfilling its function, provided that the use is for the purposes
    specified in the memorandum, or for the purpose of protecting state
    security. This wording ensures that the Shin Bet and the army will have
    almost unlimited access to the biometric information collected by the
    cameras, while in some scenarios various government ministries can also
    gain access. For example, the Ministry of Agriculture which assists in
    the fight against agricultural crime.

    Particularly serious is the lack of oversight by the police in the
    manner of deployment and use of the system. According to the memorandum,
    a “qualified officer” (a police officer with the rank of Assistant
    Commissioner or higher or Commander or higher – depending on the type of
    camera) can order the placement of a camera in a public space, without
    the need for court or other external approval. The procedure for
    supervising the ongoing need to place a camera at certain points is also
    internal, and is carried out by the officer himself. The transfer of
    information to other bodies is also not subject to the supervision of a
    court, and according to the memorandum it is reserved for the sole
    discretion of the police.

    Although the memorandum does not explicitly use the name “biometric
    database”, a reasonable assumption would be that it will be an important
    component in operating the system. For, facial recognition technology is
    worth nothing without a face-image database for comparison and
    identification. And for the police, there is only a pool of criminal
    suspects, not of most Israeli citizens. Today, the Biometric Database
    Law regulates the transfer of information to the police under restricted
    circumstances. But the nature of a slippery slope is that it is easy to
    roll over in it quickly. And if the placement of a wide range of facial
    recognition cameras is approved, how far will the day be when the police
    realize that without full access to the biometric database the system is
    not useful enough, and will advance a new bill memorandum that allows
    this access?

    A significant part of the manner in which the law is implemented, if
    approved, will be regulated by ordinances to be determined by the
    Minister of Internal Security and approved by the Knesset’s Interior and
    Environmental Protection Committee. These ordinances may be required for
    issues such as limiting the time of retention or use of the information,
    but these still unknown and therefore cannot be discussed. We can only
    talk about what lies ahead, and what lies ahead has very frightening
    potential.

    I can write much more (and I have written before) about the fundamental
    and practical dangers of operating a biometric identification system on
    such a scale, about the known problems of such systems – for example,
    their difficulty in identifying minorities and women with sufficient
    accuracy – or that the global trend is to stop using facial recognition
    systems in public spaces, especially by law enforcement. I will probably
    do so in the coming weeks, as long as the bill memorandum is promoted.

    But this time, I will confine myself to just some of the harsh things
    the High Court judges wrote about the Hawk’s Eye system, and that are
    many times over relevant to a facial recognition system like the one the
    police seek to set up. Such a system, it is written, “has a policing and
    disciplinary influence, which limits our space of activity and behavior
    and infringes on our freedom in the most basic sense (…) The regime’s
    power of a surveillance mechanism such as the ‘Hawk’s Eye’ is not
    necessarily based on actual surveillance, but also on the fact that the
    individual knows that the state controls his personal information and
    can follow him at any time it wishes, in advance and in retrospect. This
    recognition is enough to make the surveilled suppress their behavior and
    live in constant fear.”

    *And this is what the judges said about a system that only collects
    license plate numbers.* Take this, multiply by an array of facial
    recognition cameras deployed throughout Israel, which are loosely
    monitored and the discretion of the police officers who operate it is
    wide, and you have a country where every citizen feels well that every
    action outside his home is filmed, that every movement is controlled,
    that there is an open eye that looks at him, a big brother who always
    spies after him.

  9. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    This about the situation in China: “… We were shown in a lobby presentation at Foxconn – an elaborate system of automation that could tell who we were, what our phones were doing, who we were standing next to, what we purchased recently, what our eyes were focused on etc. This system demo was proudly shown to also ‘help’ the factory employees – including monitor their health status and well being (tied to the Social Credit system I would assume), so that the company could tell them what was good for them (and the collective of the company)”https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2021/02/19/cui-bono-the-covid-19-conspiracy/comment-page-2/#comment-12866

  10. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    Amazon will pay you $10 in credit for your palm print biometrics –

    https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/02/amazon-credit-palm-biometrics/?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKfSgd1wLdtU-2P8cLJcgpex6EbB11wfDLp7GURdft2cHTMbJT7pm566jjC5WpatqvsC_i8IwVY1QFrUUSNm27Ryt-Q9Yp6Hr54pXtsJMOJwKqk-HaOYf6g5Q8I1GW1TZQ3bOQ0jp-X0Q0-ABGsdxD1uaBS1-fr43wyY7ir4WTPk&guccounter=2

    “They have stated that the biometric data will be used to monitor shopping activity and target ads, which is bad enough, but there are myriad other applications. None of them especially reassuring. For one thing, Amazon could sell the data…to anyone.

    As a precedent for that, there is the Amazon facial recognition tech, which they already sold to the US government:

    Amazon’s controversial facial recognition technology, which it historically sold to police and law enforcement, was the subject of lawsuits that allege the company violated state laws that bar the use of personal biometric data without permission.” https://off-guardian.org/2021/08/29/this-week-in-the-new-normal-4/

  11. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    Sent in by T.:

    [Translated from here: https://www.francesoir.fr/politique-monde/le-royaume-uni-reconnaissance-faciale-cantine%5D

    In the United Kingdom, nine schools have implemented biometric payment for access to canteen services. A device combined with software scans the children’s faces to verify that the canteen payment is in order. The child is then admitted or rejected from the canteen room! This procedure, which is becoming more and more widespread in the world as a means to pay for public services, has drawn the attention of several associations defending rights and freedoms who consider this system superfluous and dangerous for the protection of personal data.

    A desire of the canteens to make the entrance more hygienic and faster

    According to the schools involved, located in the North Ayrshire region of Scotland, the use of this technology is faster and more hygienic than accepting payments with cards or fingerprint scanners. It “allows for a faster lunch service while eliminating any touching at the point of sale,” says a flyer distributed to parents by the schools. According to David Swanston, CEO of the company responsible for installing the technology, facial recognition would reduce the time it takes to pay per student to an average of five seconds. Parents must give permission for children to use the facial recognition technology and can opt out if they are not interested. According to North Ayrshire Council, as quoted by the British media outlet Financial Times, 97 percent of children or parents have consented to be enrolled. But some parents believe their children’s decision was influenced by peer pressure.

    Unnecessary technology in schools

    For Ella Jakubowska, policy advisor at European Digital Rights, the use of facial recognition in schools is “clearly unnecessary”. Her position is shared by Silkie Carlo of the British campaign group Big Brother Watch. According to her, “this normalizes biometric identity checks for something trivial”. For campaigners, the decision shows how the Brexit is an opportunity for the Kingdom to deviate from the EU’s strict data protection standards. “French and Swedish authorities have banned the use of facial recognition in schools to protect children from more invasive technologies than necessary. Our regulator, the ICO, should do the same,” said Jen Persson, director of Defend Digital Me, a nonprofit organization.

    Should we let machines take responsibility for deciding whether a child should go to the canteen?

    Children are not responsible for their parents’ economic management, and depriving them of meals is too sensitive an issue to let machines decide. However, human decisions are not always better than those of machines. On September 9, a seven-year-old child was taken home by the police in Gironde, because his family owed 800 euros. This was due to the implementation of digital systems for the management of the canteen, which forced parents to face delays of three months after the meals were taken, making the bills more difficult to settle.

    ***

    “What the English call ‘comfort’ [to this we can also add ‘hygiene’ now – T.] is something inexhaustible and illimitable. Others can reveal to you that what you take to be comfort at any stage is discomfort, and these discoveries never come to an end. Hence the need for greater comfort does not exactly arise within you directly; it is suggested to you by those who hope to make a profit from its creation.”

    — G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right

  12. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    Social control in the shops:

    https://www.leparisien.fr/video/video-carrefour-flash-le-magasin-connecte-ou-le-passage-en-caisse-ne-dure-pas-plus-de-10-secondes-24-11-2021-2Z26TD3RBZHZTLLHIDFQARCJ2I.php

    ” This is a world first for Carrefour. The retailer has just launched its very first connected shop on Avenue Parmentier in Paris (11th arrondissement). No need to scan items, artificial intelligence does it for you instantly.

    By Le Parisien
    November 24, 2021 at 8:14 am

    “My shopping in a flash”: on the front of the first Carrefour Flash shop, which opens this Friday on Avenue Parmentier in Paris (11th arrondissement), the promise of shopping in record time intrigues passers-by in the neighbourhood. “Ah, is this a new drive-through?” asked a father who had dropped off his child in front of the school next door to the shop. Yes and no, he was told. If the drive is included in the various services offered inside, the novelty, the real novelty, lies in the checkout.

    The checkouts are fully automatic and take the form of touch-screen tablets that can list all the products the customer has on him or in his basket in a second. The shop is equipped with 60 cameras that capture the slightest movement in the aisles,” explains Nicolas Safis, Innovation Director at Carrefour. For each customer who enters the shop, these cameras create a colour avatar, which is followed in real time in all the departments. If he picks up or puts down a product, they will detect it.
    Also read
    Carrefour announces the end of advertising leaflets in Paris and Lyon

    But how to distinguish the references (there are about 900 in the shop) or the quantities taken by the customer? This time, the artificial intelligence of the cameras is combined with that of sensors hidden in the 200 shelves of the shop. “As a result, when you arrive at the checkout, you no longer need to take your items out of your basket and that’s the magic of the concept. You may have put them in your shopping bag or taken a packet of chewing gum out of your pocket, the checkout knows everything. It’s quick and easy for the customer,” he continues. It’s also impossible to forget to scan an item (intentionally or not).

  13. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    Not exactly about social control but about the increased functionalising of humans by turning them into batteries:
    https://tessa.substack.com/p/human-battery?s=r

  14. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/08/face-up-to-it-this-surveillance-of-kids-in-schools-is-creepy

    “… this technology does not just identify children or allow them to transact with their bodies. It can be used to assess their classroom engagement, mood, attentiveness and behaviour.”

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