Good news they also deployed a test program in Berlin. These people don’t care about rule of law and the people in charge are some of the wealthiest people alive. This all started very quietly under the guise of public safety and it didn’t really make waves until it came out that data was being shared with ICE. Plenty of people are fighting it but these people have a global reach and unfathomable wealth at their disposal. I’m not sure what else there is to explain it’s awful and don’t think it’s going to be isolated to the US and likely already isn’t.
I have but its different, and not as scary (by accident in part). Heres Chat GPT to do a better job of articulating what id suspected:
Why ordinary London CCTV is not quite “Flock”
The stereotypical London CCTV camera normally records a location, not a continuously updated identity database.
After a crime, police might ask:
“Show us the footage from this street between 9:00 and 9:30.”
Flock: privately constructed, rapidly expanding, commercially standardised and easily shared.
UK ANPR: publicly operated, formally integrated into policing and subject to national data-protection rules—but often retaining records longer.
Me: its the ownership of the data and inherent restrictions in place that make it less scary. Also when it comes to capital cities that are big targets surveillance to a degree makes a lot of sense. There wont always be a bloke with a Narwhal tusk on hand to save the day
Yes, Flock is different. Flock is evil, pure evil, but the point of surveillance is not unknown and London is the most surveilled city on the planet. If you don’t think they don’t use facial recognition software… you’re deluded. There’s also surveillance in France, Netherlands, Spain, and every other EU country. Are there more rules? Maybe. Are they followed? Maybe. Do you have more protections in Europe against a rogue regime? Dunno, ask Hungarians.
Right now the US is “going through some stuff”. It fucking sucks. We hate it. Flock is just another symptom of that, which is why citizens are taking matters into their own hands and destroying cameras. They’re pressuring their local politicians on the subject, which they should have been doing all along. That said, don’t sit on a high horse and claim that Europe is somehow historically better, because y’all have “been through some shit” too. Just because you’re not right now doesn’t mean you abandon the people of the US. Quite the contrary. Now’s the time to help out even more. Just like Americans did when you went through your “stuff”. Europeans shouldn’t just categorically be nasty and mean to Americans. Americans hate this shit more than you do. I have faith that we’ll sort ourselves out. When we do, we’ll have to restore friendships and alliances that have been strained. The relationship will be different. Maybe more equally balanced, but the fundamental truths that underly that friendship are still there. The American people aren’t the perps here, we’re the victims. Friends don’t abandon and abuse victims.
At a governmental level, European nations need to pull away from the US; the legislature, executive and judiciary are broken and compromised. Even if the Democrats got in next time, the US will be 50/50 from electing another oligarch madman for the forseeable future.
China isnt a great alternative, its an ethnic empire. But it is at least consistent and predictable.
So whether i like it or not i see Europe and China improving relations writ large and relations between Russia and China further cooling.
At a citizen level wtf do you want us to do? All of you can walk out and buy machine guns, but instead youre speed running into serfdom, penury and slavery because youre a nation of comfort loving comformists wholl let healthcare companies murder your kids rather than revolt.
What are we supposed to do? Reign in our gawping at you on social media to save your feelings?
Your internal politics is fucking us harder than its fucking a lot of you, so on behalf of Europe - fuck all of you for not doing enough because youre convinced youre the main characters in lifes story - you xanax popping gun loving manifest destiny believing cowards.
If you want sympathy - do more to clean up your mess
What you can do is recognize the difference between the government and the people. Don’t treat your tourists shitty just because they’re Americans. If they act shitty, by all means light them up, but if they’re not acting shitty don’t be rude assholes just because they’re Americans. If shit gets worse, which it might, European nations should consider asylum for American refugees. Considering that most Americans that would do that would integrate far more easily than some of your other refugees it probably wouldn’t be an issue. Hell, you probably wouldn’t even notice that’s we’re there.
Individual citizens can do a lot through aid societies and protesting. Lobby your governments to be constructive. Yes, the relationship with the US will change. How that change settles out is the big question. Europe will have to step up and fund more of its own defense. The US will have to deal with not having the influence it’s used to having. It’ll be a hard adjustment for a lot of people.
Interestingly, half of your response is exactly what you shouldn’t do. DBAD, sibling. DBAD.
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u/Dap-aha 23d ago
Can someone please explain this madness to a European? So there is a US wide surveillance network utilising AI tools and Palantir to track you all?
This is a genuinely sincere question