Add to that drones to keep the population under control and there is huge danger we'll have a pretty bleak future.
City and state level political change is very malleable.
Corporations have already figured this out, e.g. ALEC [1] writes laws, then gets sympathetic minions to enact them, but city politics still operate on a human scale in many places. I'd bet that a motivated campaign could reverse this move in San Diego, or at least figure out who pushed for it. I don't think there was massive popular support for cameras in streetlights.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_...
Getting younger people who give a shit to vote, and to become immune to the bogus fear mongering.
Hope the baby boomers die off of old age before the panopticon is built.
The current builders of the panopticon are very young and work for Google, Facebook and others. This has nothing to do with age.
The panopticon is being requested and purchased by municipalities, which are predominantly governed by those from the baby boomer generation. Start-up 101. Build what the Users want.
Everything feels scary, try walking around at 2 a.m. and not feeling it. People are tired of it.
I don't think that all the surveillance will work. You always find the most amount of sketchy people around police stations. The cameras will make things worse. Good people will flee to other neighborhoods, were they are not being watched.
Fundamentally, why arn't things safe?
Also though the kids at the moment seem to understand better the risk/reward benefits of some technologies and have a better idea what actual risks they take. You see this in voting patterns.
But won't be. GWB expanded the state's powers with the Patriot Act, Obama signed an extension and then a new version of the act when parts expired. When both sides are pro-surveillance and Americans refuse to change the system or support 3rd parties, what change can there be?
First past the post receives a lot of criticism for
restricting options to vote for due to the idea of vote
splitting and strategic voting. This leads elections to
run into the commonly referred to "Lesser of two evils"
dilemma and ends with a 2-party system in place. With 42%
of Americans saying they identify as independent and 60%
of Americans saying the need for a new party is apparent,
it would suggest that the FPTP voting system is failing
democracy, failing Americans, and failing America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Comparison_tabl...
US Congress doesn't represent US citizens. So nothing changes if moneyed interests want US citizens to live under surveillance.
That's circular logic. "They must be the most qualified, because they raised the most money and the person who gets elected is the one who raised the most money".
In a functioning democracy there should be a cliff where, no matter how much you spent, you cannot simply buy the election.
https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-67-the-gate-keepi...
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...
But Trump's team did a good job at getting in the media. Any news station you turned on there was more talk about Trump than Hillary.
The house of representatives should serve as a bulwark against "moneyed interests", but even they are being targeted and bought by money. What good is democracy if a small group of people buy all the politicians?
https://www.cu-citizenaccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/...
Work still remains though, one BART employee told the press they were considering fake gun turrets that would drop down from the ceiling on suspected criminals. Work still remains to make American culture see the dangers of a police state as more than a punch line [1]
0: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/09/bart-delays-action-on...
1: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/amp...
I tried to search for some actual national statistics it couldn’t readily find anything. My suspicion is that some of those BART stations are extremely dangerous environments that put police in very tricky situations.
There have also admittedly been a few very high profile accidental shootings.
It'll probably end in a war of some sort, as power struggles usually do, but a chaotic don't-know-who-your-enemies-are war like Syria rather than the Great Power contests of WW2. Then after the war we'll likely see the survival of technologies that don't require large-scale maintenance (like solar, batteries or mechanical/thermal storage, electric motors, market economies, flexible micro-manufacturing, computers, and drones) over those that do (like the electric grid, large corporations, state-wide surveillance, broadcast networks, large standing armies, etc.).
Maybe instead of fighting with technology we should find ways preventing it's misuse: more open governments, electronic voting for individual laws, more surveillance over finances of elected officials.
This info may be owned by Google or Apple, but fascism is about control, not ownership. No warrant required for LEO to see that data.
The government putting devices on lights that are owned by the government, in public places - that's small potatoes in comparison.
It's featured in a new book called "Eyes in the Sky", and is said to have been used secretly over several cities in the US.
Skip to 30m mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP_T45UG1-o?t=30m29s
Dictatorship forms okay without it.
More overt surveillance is a civil maintainer. Taiwan has camera surveillance everywhere and solves above 90% crime.
It used to surprise me how in denial people can be about their own localities' surveillance. Now I think that makes sense as a consequence of the surveillance mostly being covert.
But if you want to see 1984 play out - look at parenting and children today compared to children growing up in 1984. Many freedoms removed directly and indirectly by laws on the back of child safety.
Could a startup make a dent?
A telescreen by any other name...