Technology

This is just one small step in the multi-decade implementation of mass surveillance.

"In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D."

"We're already scanning all of your files for X. Why don't we also scan them for all other crimes, A-Z?"

Statistical models and inference are mathematically guaranteed to have false positives and false negatives. False positives in this context mean entirely innocent people will be flagged and scrutinised, and have their private data shared, or potentially be investigated, when they have done nothing wrong at all. If fingerprints are one in a 1 million, and you have a database of a billion people, on average you'll implicate ~1000 innocent people every time you run a print. That's how you end up with millions of people on a watchlist. It's criminally incompetent, at best.