
New surveillance tech means you'll never be anonymous again - xoa
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/surveillance-technology-biometrics
======
xoa
The focus of the article is (as the title states) heavily on the surveillance
implications, but most of what they discuss also represents additional forms
of potential biometric authentication and are interesting in that respect too
(and worth thinking about for people who deride biometrics as a authentication
factor, the technology is still in its infancy). Most parts of a person
contain significant individual randomness vs the general population when
measured at sufficient resolution. The article discusses identifying butts for
example, which no doubt provoked some jokes but could be genuinely pretty darn
useful in a lot of vehicle anti-theft/security setups. After all, the natural
design for these is most commonly for the driver to, well, sit down and then
go. So they've got ass-in-seat naturally by definition anyway. Having a butt
scanner embedded in the driver seat would be transparent, hard to avoid, and
represent a new challenge for an attacker to take.

------
andrerm
> we need to ask ourselves whether the future society we want to live in is
> one which constantly watches its citizens – or, more likely, one in which
> citizens are never totally sure when, how and by whom they’re being watched.

First, digital behavior is already being 24/7 surveiled. Authorities and
corporations only need to extend this to when there is no digital device
available with the subject.

But the real danger is that if nobody knows for sure when, how and by whom,
then everyone will be forced to assume that it's every time, by every means
and by everyone.

And in top of that there is the problem of never being able to truly be
forgotten (soft delete). So you lose the motivation to commit mistakes, engage
in theoric or philosophical conversations, criticise ahd inovate unless you're
going the same direction of status quo. Which only accelerates the process.

