Probably the ones I never suspected at the time I adopted them - like Gmail, Google Translate, and all the speech recognition that has moved from being a program and speech engine that was only on your hard drive to now being shit like Otter.ai and other types that are sending your words off your drive and analyzing them, and training AI, etc off them.

The latter is particularly bad news for disabled people who rely on speech recognition and many don't realize this aspect of it.

I think I gotta go with license plate reading cameras. Government essentially building a graph of who goes where when, there have been hacks leading to theft of that data before (MA I think?), and like most things it starts out as "but terrorists" and then ends up being used for a minor tax fraud thing.

Maybe more generally, I feel that between all the cameras, license plate OCR, it is now pretty much impossible to anonymously go somewhere.

AI agents. No consent. Ring Cameras. No consent. Meta’s Glasses. No consent.

Decisions made by other extremely stupid people that I can’t do anything about.

- License Plate Readers and Facial Recognition Scanners

You can't opt out of them. Facial Recognition you can try to thwart, but thats a moving target. LPRs its illegal to obfuscate your license plate.

Social networks.

Because people voluntarily provide all the information we don't even ask for.

Surveillance capitalism… I despise it. Mandatory GAFAM AI companions and the surveillance infrastructure that wants me to be so transparent that the translucence would turn me into a syncopated chess piece—a smombie who could be controlled and data-farmed without me even realizing it. Do not want… ✅ 💡 😅 #fckbigtech #fcksurveillancecapitalism

Rick and Morty - I Am Alive #yt

youtu.be/t2r5AfCYEp4

The mobile because they've created something that everyone has, including kids, that everyone depends on and can't live without.
Furthermore, there are very few alternatives, essential apps often don't work (bank apps), and they're very expensive (Linux phones).

They've been very clever at creating a very convenient piece of technology by turning it into a spy and an object of addiction.

Always connected vehicles. Not only is it a huge invasion of privacy and one that you have no way to escape if you need a new car but it also brings with it subscription capitalism requiring you to continually pay for things you already bought.

#Privacy #Surveillance

ONT-Routers from my ISP. It must be riddled with Autocracy Inc. malware from ages, now (no firmware updates since the Big Bang).

Buses' chinese "CCTVs". Though I got no proof, all points to the information being leaked to Xi.

Public WiFi signals. No way to prevent being tracked (not even without any electronics on me)!

WhatsApp. Because nobody cares what apps they use, as long as everybody else is using it.

E-mail. Because almost nobody uses E2EE with it (e.g.: OpenKeychain)

Picking a #1 is hard!

But for its absolute ubiquity, I'd have to pick Google Analytics. I think that marked the first really pivotal moment of the conversion of the web from useful tool to shiny distracting toy hiding spyware etc.

Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) specifically. It's basically impossible to avoid them when driving. (In addition to fixed cameras, they are often mounted on police cars.)

In my home state (Florida), it's illegal to hide or obscure your auto tag. The only viable option is to not drive. 😡

-The mobile phone
-credit cards

It’s where the total surveillance society started and then just went bananas

Anything meta, tiktok or temu and adjacent

They're very aggressive and most people are completely unaware of and usually refuse to believe any wrongdoings or risks the entities pose.

Now google is bad in its own right, but honestly I'd still rather have it over the others. Google atleast has some decent software with decent security.

Screw the search engine and browser though.

It's a shame they are not all that concerned about having a Stalinist president who enjoys the company of communist dictators and former KGB officers.

#MAGA #Stalinism #USPolitics #oligarchs #billionaires