Since 9/11, DHS, the FBI, the CIA, and countless other alphabet soup agencies have turned the United States into a public surveillance monstrosity.
In 19 years, one terrorist attack has done what no one else could have dreamed of: turn America's freedoms into a distant memory.
Abusing citizen's rights and privacy used to be the hallmark of dictatorships and police states like the CCCP or North Korea.
A recent study conducted by Comparitech, rated 50 countries from best to worst at protecting citizen's biometric data.
The study found that America is one of the world's worst abusers of citizen's biometric privacy.
"While China topping the list perhaps doesn't come as too much of a surprise, residents of (and travelers to) other countries may be surprised and concerned at the extent of biometric information that is being collected on them and what is happening to it afterward."This really should not come as a surprise, because last year Comparitech revealed that American and Chinese cities lead the world in spying on their citizens. Last week, I wrote an article explaining how 2019 would go down as the year that facial recognition and corporate surveillance became commonplace in America.
Comparitech's recent study on biometric privacy compared how 50 countries collect and use data to identify innocent people:
- Many countries collect travelers' biometric data, often through visas or biometric checks at airports
- Every country we studied is using biometrics for bank accounts, e.g. fingerprints to access online app data and/or to confirm identities within the banks themselves
- Despite many countries recognizing biometric data as sensitive, increased biometric use is widely accepted
- Facial recognition CCTV is being implemented in a large number of countries, or at least being tested
- EU countries scored better overall than non-EU countries due to GDPR regulations protecting the use of biometrics in the workplace (to some extent)
How can that be you ask?
According to Comparitech, the United States scores highly in most areas due to:
- Having biometrics in passports, ID cards, and bank accounts.
- Having a biometric voting system (optical scan equipment used in a large number of states).
- Not having a specific law to protect citizens' biometrics. While there is a handful of state laws that protect state residents' biometrics (as can be seen in our state privacy study), this does leave many US citizens' biometrics exposed as there is no federal law in place.
- Implementing the widespread use of facial recognition cameras with law enforcement pushing for further use in the identification of criminals. For example, the FBI and ICE have recently been criticized due to their use of facial recognition technology to scan drivers' license photos without gaining the citizens' consent beforehand. Equally, some city-level bans have been put in place with San Francisco (CA), Oakland (CA), Berkeley (CA), and Somerville (MA) banning government use of facial recognition technology.
- The growing use of biometrics in the workplace. Many companies use employees' biometrics for certain actions, e.g. using a fingerprint to gain access to a work computer. Again, some state laws offer a little more protection but this still leaves many employees' biometrics exposed.
- Fingerprints being required for most American visas and everyone's fingerprints being collected upon entry to the country.
The other countries listed in the top ten worst abusers of citizens biometric privacy rights, India, South Africa, Brazil, Nigeria, and Argentina are all countries one might expect to be in or near the top but a neighbor to America's north is also one of the worst, Canada.
As I mentioned earlier, the Western world has used 9/11 as an excuse to abuse citizen's privacy rights and, sadly, Canada is no exception.
What does this study teach us?
That countries like Canada and the United States, once bastion's of a free society, are now near mirror-images of surveillance states, like China, Malaysia, Pakistan, India, the Philippines and Taiwan is horrifying.
The Carnegie Endowment For Peace whitepaper titled, AI Global Surveillance (AIGS) Index warned, that AI surveillance is being used by 176 countries to track individuals.
"As the spread of AI surveillance continues unabated. Its use by repressive regimes to engineer crackdowns against targeted populations has already sounded alarm bells."
And, hopefully, that is what you will take away from this story: our government increasingly uses biometrics and AI surveillance to track everyone.
2 And the We the Peoples ran through the streets, looting and pillaging while weeping and gnashing their teeth.
3 The Lord looked down upon them and laughed aloud as His technology still functioned.
4 The Lord was bemused at the buffoons and baboons that could no longer function as intelligent beings, as 98% of their brainpower was reliant on the demon known as Google.
5 In that day those that had worshiped the Lord now cursed His Holy name.
6 The Lord did not like the unwashed behaving in a manner that did not hold His name on high.
7 So the Lord ordered his Holy Guard to enter the streets and slay any of the unwashed that did not bow to His authority.
8 But soon too, the Holy Guard was rendered impotent, as their machines of death stopped moving, and the broadband that kept them organized was destroyed by another blast from the sun.
9 And then the earth became cold, and without the technology and carbon fuels, the We the Peoples languished in horror and terror, and took to the gun of the hand to destroy what remained.
10 In the final days, before the great beginning, nearly the whole of the earth was frozen, and those men that remained lived in a small paradise that existed on the central band of the earth.
11 Men of those times decided that Lords were actually hoarders of We the Peoples labor, and the value of it, and the value of everything.
12 And whenever a Lord came to reveal itself, it was smitten.