Panopticon Artists
“If you were tasked with building a panopticon, your design might look a lot like the information stores of the U.S. federal government—a collection of large, complex agencies, each making use of enormous volumes of data provided by or collected from citizens.” Luckily, the US government has never been focused on bringing that information together and potentially weaponizing it. DOGE may mean our luck has run out. “A fragile combination of decades-old laws, norms, and jungly bureaucracy has so far prevented repositories such as these from assembling into a centralized American surveillance state. But that appears to be changing.” Ian Bogost and Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic (Gift Article) with a very interesting look at how everything known about you (which is basically everything) could become a problem. American Panopticon. “A worst-case scenario is easy to imagine. Some of this information could be useful simply for blackmail—medical diagnoses and notes, federal taxes paid, cancellation of debt. In a kleptocracy, such data could be used against members of Congress and governors, or anyone disfavored by the state. Think of it as a domesticated, systemetized version of kompromat—like opposition research on steroids: Hey, Wisconsin is considering legislation that would be harmful to us. There are four legislators on the fence. Query the database; tell me what we’ve got on them.”
+ But wait, it could be even worse. The Verge: Neurotech companies are selling your brain data. “While the concept of neural technologies may conjure up images of brain implants like Elon Musk’s Neuralink, there are far less invasive — and less regulated — neurotech products on the market, including headsets that help people meditate, purportedly trigger lucid dreaming, and promise to help users with online dating by helping them swipe through apps … These consumer products gobble up insights about users’ neurological data — and since they aren’t categorized as medical devices, the companies behind them aren’t barred from sharing that data with third parties.” (You don’t need to purchase any data to guess what I’m thinking right now.)
