Facial Recognition Being Normalised in the West

https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/04/06/us-army-facial-recognition-bases/

One might call this The China Effect. Already the UK is using facial recognition software and US law enforcement agencies are certainly using the software to scan through ID photo databases and social media.

And that's just what is known. In the case of the military bases, it's very simple opt in or you're out. Those signed up with the forces have already opted in but for civilian contractors and others there will be overwhelming pressure to comply and in coming years we're going to see this in other sectors of society and the economy.

Already Wal-Mart uses the technology in their stores and as I and others have pointed out it's no great leap to suggest Wal-Mart's servers and algorithms can easily connect faces to transactions and thus names, personal data and the like. If combined with camera data from outside, they can even pick out what you're driving and who came with you into the store.

We're seeing the push for so-called Real ID cards. One cannot fly or enter a federal building without it – no great loss to some of us these days.

I have found it interesting to watch the Right-wing response to all of this. There's a degree of schizophrenia at work – a hostility and fear of the government coupled with their call for security measures in light of terrorism and the like. Also, they continue to push for voter ID laws. There's something funny about Right-wing folks eager to whip out their ID cards and yet in this case it's fueled by misinformation and myths about the American voting system. They're being used by party elites who want to suppress the minority vote and circumvent Civil Rights legislation. But that doesn't sell very well so instead they have pushed the voter fraud angle and have convinced their base to aggressively push for stricter identification and registration requirements. It's not voter fraud that's the problem, but a fraudulent system.

We are sometimes creeping and sometimes racing toward a dystopian order. It's never as stark as one finds it in fiction or the movies but it's happening. There's a Christian response to all of this but it's not one that will be heard in Evangelical pulpits. They're far too given over to their mammon-motivated idolatries and all the social, political, and economic results produced by them.