Dear Editors,


This NYTimes ’Opinion Editorial sends an error signal.

It's not voiced enough: as data generation is a natural byproduct of technical use, no company CEO would die if [they] did not sell consumer surveillance. That inverted power differential comes from another area of our society: government, specifically, first funders at DARPA and the Department of Defense who put onereous weaponization uses on any technology they create, fund or license. Facial Recognition is one BIMA licensed technology.

The Army and it's First Party contractors, Microsoft and possibly Amazon, suggest such sweeping public capture is for your benefit and your personal security. Nevermind the pesky fact, that the government literally violates its reason for being by asking corporations to do their job for them and then sell the data to them. It does not make us more secure when China, and other rogue nation states can steal our technology from the private sector, derived from US military patents, break our technical layers of security and then park an advanced persistent threat AI in the networks to just hoover up as much individual intelligence they can on our citizens- because we decided to do it first!!

If they can't protect it, they shouldn't collect it.

The other point, past it's not legal for the federal government to commit mass surveillance, is the consumer owns themselves and any data which comes from marketing their likeness. Companies don't like it when I assert this, but it's totally true.

As I own myself, as property owner, there is something fundamentally flawed in asking me to submit to a digital contract that states: I shall rent data peep shows to [unknowable faceless 3rd party] through the phone I own, not see the rental price or price of admission to the peep show because,"It's proprietary". It sounds like larceny and a recipe for a human trafficking scam. In fact, it sounds like the reasoning of someone in the throes of psychological projection.

I am not in any way consenting to mass surveillance by using a mobile phone. The unethical engineers ordered to weaponize ordinary means of communication and its byproduct data into a mass surveillance aperture according to spec are only partially at fault. The order was given by policy administrators to use economic lawfare as coercion (as social engineering, suitcases of cash to Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon - whatever works) for foreign intelligence gathering on the American people. If you believe the contrary, you're a simpleton for sending your taxes to pay to undermine your rights without contest.

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In other news, Dustin Volz.