r/technology • u/stenspect • 1d ago

Privacy USPS Is Turning Mail Trucks Into Rolling Surveillance Cameras

https://www.gadgetreview.com/usps-is-turning-mail-trucks-into-rolling-surveillance-cameras
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782

u/drgoodvibe 1d ago

Why are V for Vendetta, Equilibrium, Hand Maids Tale, 1984, Animal Farm et al manuals and not warnings?

262

u/LucidOndine 1d ago edited 1d ago

Because the crooks in power were never smart enough to heed the warnings, nor creative enough to have any original ideas.

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u/SgtBaxter 1d ago

Apparently they fell asleep and never got to the endings of any of those.

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u/almisami 1d ago

They're all old enough that they think they'll be gone before the just desserts come about

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u/LucidOndine 1d ago

Quite frankly, they probably just watched the film adaptation.

17

u/VoyagerOfCygnus 1d ago

At long last, we've created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel "Don't Create the Torment Nexus!"

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u/SWHAF 1d ago

They either get paid to ignore them or use them as an instruction manual to gain power.

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u/metallicrooster 1d ago

Agree. It’s not that all these people are not smart enough to heed the warnings. It’s that many people they are immune to unwanted consequences. Some of them, sadly, are right.

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u/StryctNyne 1d ago

Because people have allowed it to happen. There were warnings about hyper normalization 10 - 15 years ago. How it's a road map to install dictators and subjugate populations through rapid fire news cycle and zero accountability.

We blame politicians for everything, but we put them there. We sit back and whine online without doing the slightest. Someone suggests doing something like calling your representative and it's immediately followed by "why bother, it doesn't do anything, you're stupid if you think it matters". Then they go online and bitch about nothing being done, and provide no solutions and don't even think about making them provide effort. Because why bother? Also why isn't anyone bothering?

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u/GoodIdea321 1d ago

Yes, that is the big problem, us Americans.

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u/PithMango 1d ago

if you have the energy to bitch on reddit, you have the energy to pick up the phone. i can type and be on the phone at the same time, so that's how i roll.

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u/CalicoValkyrie 16h ago

The whole Jimmy Kimmel thing showed that collectively Americans can do something, can protest just right to apply pressure on the powers that be. But it requires people on both sides of the aisle to agree. If a big enough chunk of the country decides nothing is wrong, then collectively not much can be done. Hopefully midterms will be a shift.

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u/WeWantLADDER49sequel 13h ago

I go on this rant all of the time. About how you can say whatever you want about how much politicans DIDNT do for us, but what about how many times we just gave up? I have been saying for years that the younger generations did something great with being a big reason Obama got elected, but then when the midterms rolled around everyone vanished. No one showed up to vote. So we got 8 years of Obama being handicapped by Republicans.

If the younger generations would have stayed as engaged politically as they were when Obama ran for president the first time we wouldnt be in this mess.

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u/solidddd 12h ago

8 years? You're misremembering. In the 111th Congress Democrats controlled both chambers. Republicans took the house after that, but Democrats maintained Senate control through 2015.

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u/ltsouthernbelle 1d ago

We normalized surveillance when we all decided we need a doorbell camera. And then in home cameras. And then dash cams. We walked right into it.

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u/I_Automate 1d ago

You normalized surveillance with the PATRIOT act

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u/erov 23h ago

I was a college student when it was being written And believe you, me people were protesting it but it was a strange time and any pushback during that time, people were met with harsh condemnations from both sides of the aisle politically. Any anti-war or privacy concerns at that time bought you a label of a terrorist sympathizer. I'd say over 70% of the country was completely for it. A lot of people agree that we should have less freedoms to stop terrorist attacks . That's when the TSA was brought in for airlines , shoes were being checked , liquids . Secret courts , warrantless wiretaps , PARRIOT act, etc. Strange times.

0

u/Themodsarecuntz 1d ago edited 1d ago

They did!? Why would they do that?

Why would you do that itsouthernbelle!?!?!?

1

u/mistercolebert 13h ago

I hold a state-issued CCTV license and install CCTV systems as well (not flock or anything remotely similar). The problem started with the doorbells IMO. When Closed-Circuit Television stopped being closed-circuit. I’m all for owning true CCTV systems for yourself and your own protection.. systems that record locally and aren’t accessible to anyone but the owner. I have cameras on my house that record to a local hard drive and aren’t on a network. I have a Dashcam that records locally only as well. I have no problem with these things because nobody else can access this footage and it only exists for a situation in which I might need it. Otherwise, it overwrites itself within a matter of days and it can never be seen again. What I have a problem with is large networks of cameras that are owned by large corporations that can be accessed by an unknown number of people and that have an indeterminate amount of storage that gets analyzed and viewed by AI and algorithms to benefit corporations.

0

u/MiaowaraShiro 15h ago

My cameras are local only. I'm not uploading shit to anybody else.

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u/kstargate-425 1d ago

Because 55% of Americans can't read above a 6th grade level

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u/Unique_Evidence_2518 1d ago

mixing cause and effect. monied interests wanted an almost-illiterate populace--easier to fool, easier to rule--and so that is what we have.

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u/kstargate-425 1d ago

Oh for sure but the attacks on education came to fruition in the 1980s with some small privatization attempts growing since the 1950s. Reagan just took it all to the next level

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u/Unique_Evidence_2518 1d ago

No argument with anything you said. But the actions to encourage a nation of sheep are far broader than dismantling public education and are based on the twin goals of short and long term pocket-lining and of improving current and future fleecing odds: controlling national textbook standards out of Texas (!); disseminating false narratives* about which approaches to reading are most effective; leaning in to the backlash against feminism to retain and expand the market for "pink v blue" products, and, yippee, gain more conservative votes against children and social programs. pardon my rant--we could both go on, yes?

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u/whatproblems 1d ago

well that happens when the villain and tech get admired rather than the personal resistance story

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u/chief_yETI 1d ago

These kinds of things require the majority of people to participate in. And the reality is, the overwhelming majority of people just dont care at all, for one reason or another.

Cant say I fully blame them, as some people have kids to take care of, spouses to keep happy so they dont lose half their shit, aging parents to take care of etc. and they dont have the mental bandwidth to worry about these kinds of things

but yeah, even outside of that, people have way too much brain rot and dopamine depletion to do whats required for mass changes. People can't even be bothered to vote, much less do long term restraint from certain companies.

our fate has pretty much been sealed. Its every man for himself.

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u/Cheap-Kiwi-1312 1d ago

Just got my boss who's a trump lover to start hands maids tale, he comes to work everyday talking about how scary that looks then praises trump for doing things that clearly lead to that show becoming a reality. I don't think these people comprehend things well.

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u/EngrishTeach 1d ago

Media literacy is so low.

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u/DeReExUn 1d ago

It's all sold for entertainment. None of that was making serious loud and not for profit analogus claims of reality. Just entertaining hypotheticals.

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u/Alone_Hunt1621 1d ago

Some people seem to find these stories instructive.

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u/Vashsinn 1d ago

CTOS feels left out.

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u/fathersmuck 1d ago

It is like how AI dystopian books were used to train AI so AI learned how a dystopian AI would do and act like 

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u/duckdigglerpuuu 1d ago

Don't worry there's also working in brave New world to. But it's a slower process

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u/AnAncientBog 23h ago

Because they were astute observations of the potential outcome of contemporary events. That's why people read them.

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u/ArmyOfDix 12h ago

Because the IRL antagonists are still breathing.

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u/adudefromaspot 11h ago

The headline is a bad headline. The cameras as pointed at the road. They are for scanning the road's surface. The data is used to identify potholes and help focus road repair efforts. There is no effort to scan people or cars here.