I taught a course at the University of California, Santa Cruz [LGST 196], which I titled, "Privacy, Technology, And Freedom." Officially, LGST 196 is called the "Legal Studies Senior Capstone." Passing this course is a graduation requirement for all students who major in Legal Studies.
The main issue explored in the course, as I taught it, was revealed by the title: Will our ever-increasing commitment to "Technology" have a potentially adverse impact on both our "Privacy" and our "Freedom"?
In 2020, reflecting my preoccupation with this topic, one of my blog posts was titled, "The Pajama Police." In that blog posting, I discussed how facial recognition technology allowed the Chinese government quickly to identify and sanction anyone who dared to wear pajamas on the public streets. Here is one of my comments from that blog posting:
This "pajama shaming" case should make us all aware, in case we haven't been paying attention, that facial recognition technologies, though useful in some cases, can have profoundly totalitarian effects.
Well, an article in the November 19, 2024, edition of The Wall Street Journal reminded me of that earlier blog posting. The article, by Allison Pohle, described an opportunity now provided to travelers at the nation's airports: "Best-Kept Secret of Fliers: New Fast Airport Security Line."
If you are one of those "travelers in the know" who are willing to let a private company take all your biometric information (you have to pay for the privilege, incidentally) you can speed right through what are sometimes exceedingly long "security" lines at the airport.
Of course, if you do choose to provide that information, you will have lost control of it forever, and when malign law enforcement agencies (including those operating under the direction of whoever is in charge of the United States government, including our current president) will be able to spot you, wherever you are, whenever you are in a public space. In other words, we don't need to install a Chinese-style totalitarian government to get to the same end result.
Ain't private enterprise grand?
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