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Privacy is now just an illusion

I read an interesting piece last week which highlighted the huge amount of private-sector surveillance of the general population that is now taking place.

We're all used to being in the gaze of CCTV cameras, whether it's those operated by stores, as part of a home's front-door security or as part of police or council operated urban crime prevention. Such things have been part of our every-day life for years.

However, with the advent of AI technology, things are changing in ways we might not ever have even imagined.

There are a growing number of private data networks being created that mine countless hours of CCTV and other footage to build a profile of people, places, vehicles and more.

Phil Pennington did a great piece for RNZ over a year ago, in which he highlights the situation right here in New Zealand.

Fifteen months later, things have only become worse, from a privacy perspective.

Huge strides in AI technology now allow for all this accumulated data to be analysed and structured in even more powerful ways.

New Zealand is not alone in this of course. Overseas there are now a growing number of such networks that actually make it financially rewarding for those who contribute footage or live-camera feeds to their systems.

The tech has now reached the point where reposession companies are paying a good chunk of change to access the movement history of a vehicle, based on all the NPR (number plate recognition) hits that show up in this mass of video data. By doing this, they can more quickly track down and seize the vehicles of delinquent borrowers, based on historical and even live data.

Marketers and others are also tapping into this trove of data. Simply by reading the teeshirts people are wearing it becomes possible to ascribe things such as political leanings to people and entire districts, based on this omnipresent surveillance footage.

Until recently, this sort of tracking and analysis was solely the domain of authorities, many of who used NPR cameras to identify and track the movements of "persons of interest" but now the same, or even better technology, is in the hands of the private sector and being used regularly.

Some folk are apparently cashing in on contributing their own CCTV, doorbell or other footage to such networks by receiving a commission from repo agents who complete a job as a result of that intelligence information.

With facial recognition now becoming very advanced, your face has become the equivalent of a website cookie. It enables you to be tracked wherever you go (assuming there are involved cameras watching you) and even if it doesn't actually betray your name, it only takes one linking-event (such as a credit card purchase) to connect an identy to an image.

Although we have pretty good privacy laws, they don't actually have much in the way of punitive measures included. To get any real damages you have to go to the Human Rights Review Tribunal, something that is seldom actually done in the case of personal privacy breaches.

So what does the future hold for the concept of privacy?

Well age-gating and the introduction of what is effectively a mandatory digital-ID seem to be very much on the cards. This will effectively destroy any real hope of privacy and anonymity some time within the next few years. Add to this the private-sector's growing surveillance abilities and you might as well shower with the curtains open because it won't make any difference either way.

Carpe Diem folks!

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