Opting out of facial recognition at an American airport
mas.to
mas.to
I'm surprised opting out is even allowed at the US border. I wouldn't recommend doing this in China or in other surveillance states.
Unfortunately, it's the direction we're heading in. If you want to be part of modern society, you have to accept this as another price to pay. It's a defeatist mentality, but biometric recognition will only get more sophisticated and widespread.
We don't "live" in society, we "are" the society. Law enforcement are our public servants and have a responsibility to the people they serve. Every time you refuse an invasive search, or protest something the government is doing illegally, you give other people the courage to stand up too. At some point you reach a critical mass and things change.
Look, I sympathize with your point of view. I just prefer to not make my life anymore stressful by fighting for things I realistically can't change. I choose my battles carefully by weighing my chances of success over the amount of discomfort it would cause, and in this case, I think waging a personal fight against governments is ultimately futile.
The government already has my biometric data and they can use any number of surveillance methods to track me without my explicit consent. I take this for granted by being part of modern society. How do you propose a regular citizen could fight against programs like PRISM, or whatever other shady tech we have no knowledge of? We're not all willing to become Snowden, and live in a cave somewhere. Getting politicians elected to wage this fight for me is also relatively useless.
The best I can do is make this slightly more difficult by choosing to use technology that—to the best of my knowledge—protects my privacy. Most people won't even make this sacrifice. So I think my time is better spent educating others into doing the same, rather than advocating for a fight with Goliath, which even less people will be on board with.
Good! Acquiescing to a system based on concern for other individuals affected by that system (whether they're employed by or just another subject of it) is exactly what the people creating/administering a system want you to do, so their agenda can continue unquestioned. Rather, you should be friendly and polite to the individuals but firm in your insistence.
> could possibly get you on the "troublesome" list
If one doesn't want our society to continue sliding into technological totalitarianism, then one needs to not treat it like a foregone conclusion.
Sometimes I have to weigh the violence of my data being harvested from me against the violence of harassment (physical, verbal, and mental)."
I've never seen such a liberal definition of violence.
https://mas.to/@ykhong/109587365772866279
Edit: they also seem to have an Instagram where they post things like "anti-asian violence is white violence/supremacy" (https://www.instagram.com/p/CMhakCoAA9q/). My point being they seem to be a professional at finding interesting or contentious topics and burying the lede.
https://forgeorganizing.org/article/building-resilient-organ...
If data collection is violence, then walking 30 feet in any major city of USA or S Korea must be ... debilitating.. for me that requires that i calibrate my definitions of violence to allow me to peacefully continue forward in our brave new world.
The alternative they suggest where we all "resist" as much as possible seems difficult to get buy in on. Its like a prisoners dilemma where most people will opt for "dont resist/ get through customs quicker"
2: injury by or as if by distortion, infringement, or profanation : OUTRAGE
3a: intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force
the violence of the storm
b: vehement feeling or expression : FERVOR
also: an instance of such action or feeling
c: a clashing or jarring quality : DISCORDANCE
Maybe the choice of language is strong but I don't think the word is being used incorrectly.
My gripe is that it's manipulative rhetoric.
The term "violence" evokes very specific meaning to the average person, physical violence, and describing non-physical actions and concepts as "violence" is an attempt to manipulate people emotionally. If someone told you they were subject to violence at the airport would you really assume anything except physical assault or intimidation?
I have seen countless examples of activists calling speech they don't like "violence", "anti-blackness", or a myriad of other buzzwords — and I am talking about mild disagreements or asking for proof, not anything near hate-speech, bigotry, or promoting violence. It's a deliberate tactic to garner sympathy and support, and I do not like how normalized its use has become.
I thought this was extreme violence to make me feel so non-violent and comfortable, because after all, the United States of America is violent against every other person in the world,even their own citizens, so my supreme comfort was violence as they made me feel comfortable to forget how violent the world and the USA is. My being the most comfortable and the most safe I've ever been is the most extreme violence that the USA can do to me.
They're just saying that authorities tend to give them a hard time more frequently than more conventionally accepted groups, which doesn't sound like much of a stretch to me.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/merriam-webster-changes-fe...
https://nypost.com/2020/06/09/merriam-webster-will-update-de...
Dictionary definitions are supposed to change over time as all languages change over time. All dictionaries modify their definitions because there's no such thing as a static language.
Words are also allowed to have more than one definition. "Run" can mean a whole host of different things. [1]
This means it's completely reasonable for the definition of "female" (one example from your links) to expand and change as people change their level of acceptance of transgender people and therefore how they use words referring to gender.
There's no law that says the word "female" must only refer to biological sex, just like the word "run" has been given a new definition to mean "execute a program" after the invention of computers. But you won't complain about that change because it's got nothing to do with all the hurting of minorities that is the foundation of contemporary conservative ideology.
I’m aware of how definitions work and change, but these were changed for political reasons, not because society writ large changed. I’m also intimately familiar with the multiple definitions of “run” as I’ve had to write them all by hand, several times, during detention in my secondary school years. Perhaps you should read the definition for caution, because it’s certainly not preaching.
It's just another example of enforced male dominance, same as ever.
Men who want to be women need to back off and understand that they are not actually women, and therefore need to stop colonizing women's language, women's rights, women's spaces.
The trans rights movement is the men's rights movement in a crap wig and a badly fitting dress.
Transphobes like you seem to forget that trans men exist. There’s no controversy about trans men ruining sports or trans men in drag shows or anything like that.
The hate toward trans women is rooted in misogyny and homophobia. You and others like you are afraid you might be attracted to someone who has male sex organs. As soon as “a man becomes a woman,” to the misogynists like you they’re now just like all the other subservient women that you feel like you’re allowed to oppress. That’s really the crux of the issue.
Trans women aren’t doing anything to harm women. We shouldn’t forget that men do all kinds of shit to harm women like groping, assaulting, trafficking, and legislating.
You say that “men presenting to be women” need to “back off.” Back off of what exactly? Existing? Trans women aren’t a threat to women or an any group in particular, they’re just people living their lives minding their own business.
Maybe men trying to fight against equality and personal freedom should be the ones to back off.
Specifically here, when talking about a situation designed around individual agents readily exercising autocratic power including physical violence, the word "violence" doesn't seem like that much of a stretch. Very few people would choose to voluntarily unpack everything in their bags in a public place, for a stranger to look over. Pointing out the coercion based on implied violence from someone standing over you is actually the standard libertarian critique of government.
How exactly was that word's definition twisted? Not being allowed outside like in <https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-officer-arrested-park-throw...> seems perfectly in line with Merriam-Webster's definition 2b of it.
Re the article, it seems Mooney was legally in the right, which actually supports my point. So the story is really just about bog standard power tripping cops, and their general unaccountibility (did Mooney pursue and win his lawsuit? More critically, did the overstepping, needlessly violent, and needlessly covid-spreading cops ever suffer any repercussions for their behavior? good luck...)
"Lockdown" implies that you yourself are locked down like definition 2a - ie stuck in your home. Some countries did this, and we're all familiar with the stories of apartment building doors welded shut in China.
But the US overwhelmingly had stay at home suggestions. As far as I can tell, it was only a few counties in California that had bona fide stay at home orders. A lot of people thought the suggestions had the force of law, but they did not. And I wasn't going to correct them - that combination was the best we could have hoped for.
Ultimately, the term "lockdown" is a motte and bailey term where the motte is evoking totalitarianism like China, with a fall back to defenses like "the paint was 'locked down' at Home Depot as it was deemed non-essential".
I agree there were a lot of things that were closed that shouldn't have been. Other things were legitimately closed. And many things were closed with a crude justification, which was never reexamined or redefined with nuance.
Collapsing it all to a singular hyperbolic narrative of "lockdown" ultimately just played on people's frustration with the existence of the pandemic, and made it difficult to have nuanced discussions about what were reasonable restrictions and what were not.
Doesn't it meet this definition too? https://web.archive.org/web/20171006230722/https://dictionar...
> Re the article, it seems Mooney was legally in the right, which actually supports my point.
How about this story then? https://idahonews.com/news/local/meridian-mom-arrested-at-pa...
> But the US overwhelmingly had stay at home suggestions. As far as I can tell, it was only a few counties in California that had bona fide stay at home orders. A lot of people thought the suggestions had the force of law, but they did not. And I wasn't going to correct them - that combination was the best we could have hoped for.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-stay... disagrees. And even if they were just suggestions, why do you think a bunch of people being misinformed would be "the best we could have hoped for"?
> Ultimately, the term "lockdown" is a motte and bailey term where the motte is evoking totalitarianism like China, with a fall back to defenses like "the paint was 'locked down' at Home Depot as it was deemed non-essential".
No, even in the US, there were indeed orders to the effect of "no leaving home except to get food or medical care".
The "emergency" part of that definition contributes to the hyperbole. Closing of a mall due to the pandemic is much closer to closing due to night time, than closing because it is an active crime scene.
> How about this story then? [(mom "legitimately" arrested for being in park)]
I agree that closing open air parks was extremely stupid and overbearing, even without the benefit of hindsight. But specific venues being closed, even ridiculously, still does not imply population wide "lockdown".
> why do you think a bunch of people being misinformed would be "the best we could have hoped for"?
I'm libertarian. In my estimation, the main reason libertarianism doesn't play out in practice is that people make poor decisions from relying on poor heuristics rather than really thinking things through. Have you ever tried to convince someone to engage in a mutually-beneficial course of action? Their ego fights it, presumably based on the possibility that you might be trying to trick them.
For example, despite reports of the pandemic from January and February, most people stayed the course of denial until governments started taking action in mid-March. So when people have a poor understanding that causes them to make a better decision, I'd call that a win.
Having governments lead people through speech is much more preferable than through law and its implied violence. (Note that this isn't an endorsement of so-called "libertarian paternalism" where the government actively gets in your way)
> even in the US, there were indeed orders to the effect of "no leaving home except to get food or medical care".
Find me more examples than the few counties in California, and I'll add them to my list. I'm sure more places did exist, it just didn't seem to be a large part of the country, from what I can tell.
Sure, but doesn't it fit the way it was used? And it's an archived version of the page from 2017, so it can't be from Covid.
> But specific venues being closed, even ridiculously, still does not imply population wide "lockdown".
But it wasn't just specific venues. It was everywhere except grocery stores and medical facilities.
> Find me more examples than the few counties in California, and I'll add them to my list. I'm sure more places did exist, it just didn't seem to be a large part of the country, from what I can tell.
Aren't all of the states in https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-stay... that I previously linked to more examples?
I was saying that M-W definition 2a and the dictionary.com definition from 2017 apply to a specific place.
Sorry, I must have brushed off the NYT link because its hard to read with their javascript plus nagwall. My state is on there, highlighted, and described as having an "order", yet it was not an order with the force of law.
I started going through their list of states and links to orders/coverage. I made it through "N", for a total of 30 states on the list (out of 34 states whose names start with N or below). My definition of a bona fide stay at home order is something that encompasses all individual behavior in general, and then may carve out exceptions - as contrasted with something that only prohibits explicit activities. Thus, I'm still counting states with an exception for outdoor recreation as having an order. There are a few states with some pretty wide exceptions that would seem to make the order basically unenforceable, but I'll count that as having an order, both philosophically and practically (I don't want to go back and re-analyze each order).
Of those 30, 17 have orders stated with the force of law, 6 are mere suggestions and not orders, and 7 were indeterminate by my quick scan (the link to official decree rotted with time).
Bona fide legal orders are much more prevalent than I had thought, and apparently I didn't realize how sensibly my own state handled things. I heard people in my own state commonly refer to the (nonexistent) stay at home order, and figured it was mostly similar elsewhere despite the media's narrative (eg extrapolate from that NYT page being incorrect for my state).
I still question how long these orders were actually in effect, and the general tendency to label everything as a "lockdown" when most of what people are referring to is closing specific businesses and venues for specific reasons.
But I do concede the point it was more than a few counties in California.
Biometrics are not cool but a photo is not violent
A cursory glance of their posts makes it pretty obvious that they wouldn't be the type to vote Republican. I'd be willing to put money on that, and I'm not a betting man.
So strange that not many members of marginalized groups vote for the party whose only discernible platform is harming marginalized groups.