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numeri 3 days ago

The point of this program isn't that it makes things substantially quicker at the checkpoint – it is a minor speed-up at best. The goal is to normalize the collection of biometric data, to shift the Overton window of surveillance.

snakeyjake 3 days ago | parent [-]

The collection of biometric data is already normalized.

It has been normalized since the 1920s, when the FBI's central fingerprint repository was created.

And the end goal isn't the system that currently exists. It is a system in which the movement of passengers isn't halted. Someone watched 1990's Total Recall and said "we need a security checkpoint like that".

Also, the "Overton window" is a libertarian bullshit response to the natural shifts that occur in society, usually trotted out whenever libertarians get pissed off that "muh freedom" no longer excuses their bigotry and they can't make "because their knee-grows" jokes anymore.

grepfru_it 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

So you are saying that we should just accept that we have lost our privacy rather than to continue advocating for it?

snakeyjake 3 days ago | parent [-]

Yes.

That, instead of "people who think that this is an erosion of privacy are wrong" is exactly what I am saying.

Face scanners at airports change exactly and precisely, with no room for qualifications, unequivocally, irrefutably, nothing.

southernplaces7 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>The collection of biometric data is already normalized.

So by your logic we should just fully accept its further normalization with absolutely no pushback or regard for any notion of private life and activity?

>It has been normalized since the 1920s, when the FBI's central fingerprint repository was created.

This is a blatant bullshit comparison that you can't possibly be ignorant enough to compare to modern real-time data collection accessible to many levels of government for tracking you and your personal details down to a deeply minute level almost as you live them. The U.S government of the 1920s and for decades after had its repositories and files on people, but in any given moment they were unlikely to have any clue what you were doing or where you were and lacked the means to easily know these things unless they were specifically targeting you for a particular reason.

That by the way is as it should be, a world in which a powerful state that could easily at some point turn actively hostile in some unfair way can't also passively monitor anyone and everyone as it pleases. A world in which the state, if it wants to monitor someone heavily, needs to make an effort to do it, and through means that can only be sanctioned by specific legal procedures, for specific activities, based on specific legal motives.

No, the Overton window is not "libertarian bullshit" about natural shifts in society. There's no natural law that makes total surveillance axiomatic to a society, and normalizations of dangerously abnormal permissiveness are very real in many social contexts.

>usually trotted out whenever libertarians get pissed off that "muh freedom" no longer excuses their bigotry

What the fuck are you even talking about at all here? What's bigoted about wanting personal freedom or defensible privacy? So because some random hypothetical racist libertarian likes to make off-color jokes, defending privacy is only something done by racist bigots?

snakeyjake 3 days ago | parent [-]

>So by your logic we should just fully accept its further normalization with absolutely no pushback or regard for any notion of private life and activity?

Yes.

That, instead of "people who think that this is an erosion of privacy are wrong" is exactly my logic.

Face scanners at airports change exactly and precisely, with no room for qualifications, unequivocally, irrefutably, nothing.

Sorry I hurt your libertarian feelings. Some more YouTube videos on stoicism may help. They won't, but keep thinking they will.

southernplaces7 3 days ago | parent [-]

If anything friend it's you who's got the childish little mindset about these things, and other people. What a silly way to use a brain.