Right now, IARPA is working on a new program that should concern all readers who value privacy.
The draft provides very specific information on how the U.S. spy community aims to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze video footage obtained from various sources, including CCTV cameras and drones, maybe even extending to webcams and phones. It gets worse. This autonomous system will also enable the identification, tracking, and tracing of individuals and motor vehicles.
Why develop such a program in the first place?
In these cities, every imaginable facility, ranging from coffee shops to schools to gyms, can be conveniently reached within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. At first glance, there may not appear to be many downsides to living in such a place. However, expediency is not always synonymous with positive outcomes; in fact, it can sometimes be perilous. This is particularly true when individuals, whether consciously or unconsciously, sacrifice their freedom in exchange for convenient access to specific services.
While FMCs may enhance the accessibility for citizens to travel between different locations, they also create opportunities for those in positions of authority to invade our privacy, exploit our personal data, and enable an even more intrusive surveillance state. We become bacteria in a petri dish, constantly being prodded, monitored, and analyzed.
Which brings us back to the Video LINCS program, which, if approved, will consist of two of what they call “technical areas”:
Re-identification (ReID): In simple English, this involves using technology to reidentify objects and individuals across multiple video sources.
Object geolocalization: Providing positions so that all objects and/or individuals can be located and tracked in real time.
Video LINCS appears to be a really invasive surveillance program, like something out of communist China, where people are monitored all day, every day.
If the ideas in the draft become reality, the Video LINCS program will undergo three distinct phases over a span of 48 months.
In short, with each stage, the system becomes “smarter.” This is because it will—again, if the draft becomes a reality—be fed more and more data. Specifically, more and more complex data. As most readers know only too well, data is very much the new oil. That means your data, a well as the data of your loved ones. The more information that government officials have on us, the easier we are to monitor and manipulate. It’s not rocket science; it’s data science.
Big Brother may be about to get many times bigger.
The Video LINCS program aims to utilize a broad range of technologies to identify and track individuals, vehicles, and objects over extended distances and time periods, including AI and soft biometrics (analysis of physical and behavioral traits).
As The Sociable warned, in addition to detecting perceived threats and aiding in the development of smart cities, Video LINCS could also be used to “identify who was present at a rally, protest, or riot—such as the one that occurred in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021—and follow their every move as they make their way back home, even when they change their clothes.”
Of course, such technology “would be invaluable to governments wishing to enforce future lockdowns or low-emission zones in 15-minute smart cities as the authorities would be able to identify who broke protocol while tracking and tracing their every move for law enforcement to hunt them down. All of this would be done autonomously and automatically.”
You have been warned. Big Brother could be about to get bigger, badder, and much more beastly in nature.
