"The Economics of the Surveillance State"
by John Wilder
"“That was a Beria operation in Stalin’s time.
It was deactivated twenty years ago.”
– "The Living Daylights"
"Remember Lavrentiy Beria’s cheerful advice: “Show me the man, and I will find the crime”? Back in the Soviet Union they had so many laws on the books that everybody broke at least one before lunch, I mean, when lunch was available. And if they didn’t, they could make up something. Beria just needed enough spies and informants to spot the right violation. Beria would have loved modern America. We’ve upgraded his whole operation with better cameras, faster computers, and added actual profit margins.
Let’s start with Flock™ cameras. Flock Safety© cameras now line roads from coast to coast. More than 100,000 of the little snitches sit on poles in ditches scanning license plates 24/7 and however many metric hours in a metric day and metric days in a metric week. The cameras rolled out one quiet law enforcement contract at a time until the whole country is now blanketed.
Maps of the cameras exist online, but those rely on humans, and it shows only three of the eight within five miles of my house in Modern Mayberry. I could plot an avoidance route if I had nothing better to do than play spy versus spy on my commute, or build a detector like Benn Jordan did. Most of us have jobs and families instead. But, hey, we’ve funded a system so that every time you get on the road, you’re creating a record that will last as long as they have storage. And cops can now use this to stalk their ex-wives, so it’s a double win, right?
Next up? Ring™ doorbells joined the neighborhood watch program without asking their “owner’s” permission. When several co-eds were murdered in Idaho a couple of years ago, investigators pulled Ring© footage to track a suspect’s car. A subpoena moves quicker than a polite request and never waits for the doorbell to be answered, so they got all the data that they needed to catch the guy. I’m okay with catching murderers, but how many people will be caught in fishing dragnets for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Where exactly are you going at 2 a.m., citizen?
Laptops aren’t safe, either. A hacker got grabbed in Finland on his way out of the country. Prosecutors used the connection with Microsoft’s© handy Global Device Identifier™ to identify him. One persistent number tied his computer to all the mischief. Microsoft® handed over the records after the usual court paperwork and a feeble, “oh, stop... customer privacy...” My operating system apparently keeps better tabs on me than my own mother, but at least Ma Wilder has the excuse of being dead.
Then there is Windows Recall© on the fancy new Copilot™ machines. It snaps pictures of your screen every few seconds while you work and builds a searchable scrapbook of everything you looked at. Local storage only They promise. Pinky swear, even. Still feels like my laptop decided to start a scrapbooking hobby without telling me first.
Besides, my ISP already knows every site you visit and how long you lingered. Edward Snowden spilled the beans years ago on the big programs that pulled data straight from the servers of Microsoft™, Google®, Apple©, Facebook™ and the Rest®. Fiber-optic taps caught traffic in bulk, Then three-letter outfits and tech companies worked hand in glove. The result is giant databases full of regular people doing regular things. But don’t worry! If you’ve been good, you’re fine. And if you’re Hillary Clinton or Jeff Epstein, all the data will be lost.
Big Tech loves this data game because it prints money for them. They track my habits down to the weirdest details (really, kittens eating salami?) and sell the profiles to insurers, advertisers, and anyone else with a checkbook. My patterns become their product. They turn my life into a spreadsheet and then mark it up like a used-car dealer who knows you really need that transmission fixed today.
Speaking of cars, they’re getting chatty, too. Modern ones log every trip, every hard brake, every late-night drive. Some already phone home to the manufacturer and won’t work unless the software license is up to date. Insurance companies will pay good money for a direct feed on how I actually drive instead of guessing from your age and ZIP code. Soon enough, the car might call the cops if it thinks I had one too many. My pickup turns into the world’s most expensive designated snitch.
Ninety-nine percent of us carry cell phones that never stop reporting. Every search, every video, every song gets logged. Cops have started treating a phone left at home like suspicious behavior (I’m not making this up). The little rectangle in your pocket is the most reliable witness I never hired.
Big companies with this much reach do have a kryptonite®: governments. They do exactly what the government asks. They bent over backwards to limit talk about COVID and elections under the last administration. Books and posts that wandered off the approved script vanished from platforms: I know, I made a COVID joke on a podcast and it was sent to podcast jail.
The same tools will work just as well for whoever sits in the big chair next. They already proved they can move fast when someone important asks nicely. Harvey Silverglate spelled this out in his book "Three Felonies a Day." Federal law has grown so broad and fuzzy that a decent prosecutor can usually find something to charge anyone with. Normal life now sits inside a minefield of possible violations. Add constant surveillance and the minefield gets floodlights, motion sensors, and a searchable menu.
"The Code of Federal Regulations" stretches to roughly 190,000 pages or almost the number of words in a GloboLeftist meme. Rules multiply every year. Nobody can read the whole thing, and if they did, another 10,000 pages would have been added in the meantime. When surveillance supplies the evidence, the vague laws and regulations become precision weapons. Who cares if you’re guilty? Just being charged is punishment for the innocent. The process is the point.
Government and Big Tech® now hold detailed maps of where you drive, what you read, who you talk to, and how you spend your time. Also notice that they don’t bother to use these to catch murderers in Chicago or gang criminals. No, they’re encouraging that violence.
Beria ran on fear and informants. The updated model runs on sensors, algorithms, and sweet quarterly earnings. It costs less to operate and reaches farther and hardly ever complains about running out of vodka. The economics make perfect sense for the people building it, because collecting the data is cheap once the hardware is installed.
The Surveillance State runs on convenience for the watchers and profit for the builders. Beria would have been jealous of the efficiency and probably asked for stock options. Don’t you love it when totalitarian communism and capitalism overlap?"
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