Thank goodness we’re finally safe, everyone! I feel so incredibly safe I can barely sleep at night — partly from relief, partly from the faint red glow of the dashboard camera evaluating my facial expressions for signs of independent thought. Remember when driving was about getting somewhere? Now the car watches you, the road watches you, the toll booth photographs you, and somewhere an algorithm decides whether your blinker-to-lane-change ratio indicates sufficient loyalty to remain a licensed citizen. And those anti-distraction cameras! You’re no longer trusted to glance at a road sign without the system assuming you’re filming a TikTok. The camera knows. The camera always knows. And the camera, unlike you, never had a stressful Tuesday.

I also adore the financial supervision. Every coffee I buy with my card is lovingly noted and stored in case someone - anyone - someday needs to review my caffeine patterns for national security purposes. Two espressos before 9 AM? Possible instability. Four beers Saturday? Risk factor. Thirteen emergency Toblerones during tax season? Irrefutable character assessment.

My phone tracks my location so faithfully I couldn’t match its dedication if I tried. It knows I went to the pharmacy Thursday. It knows I took the scenic route Friday. It probably knows I stood outside the bakery six minutes deciding whether to treat myself and walked away empty-handed - proving to whichever algorithm monitors such things that I possess both self-discipline and poor decision-making skills simultaneously.

Facial recognition cameras mean I no longer suffer the indignity of walking through a city anonymously like some 2003 peasant. I’m identified, timestamped, and filed - because a free citizen moving through public space unnoticed is clearly a missed opportunity for database enrichment.

But here’s my absolute favorite part. All this magnificent safety infrastructure - every camera, every log, every database, every tracking system - it’s all in the hands of whoever happens to be in government this season. And governments change. Today’s well-meaning bureaucrat administering your data with careful oversight is tomorrow’s populist demagogue who noticed you donated to the wrong cause, attended the wrong protest, and Googled the wrong thing on a Tuesday afternoon. Maybe you were researching a school project. Maybe you were just curious. Doesn’t matter — the search history doesn’t care about context, and neither will they.

And the beauty of the pitch? Nobody ever said “we’d like to watch everything you do forever.” They said “safety”. One word, carrying all the weight, answering all questions, and conveniently foreclosing further discussion. Safety from what? Don’t worry about it. Who controls it? Interesting. Can you influence it? Adorable that you’d ask. The safest person alive is someone in a padded cell under constant supervision. Magnificent safety record. Very low satisfaction. But completely safe - until the warden changes.

For a series of incidents that have gathered international attention, it interesting to see the police and legal system double down on corruption. It like internationally advertising how crooked the cops are and how corrupt the legal system is to everyone. Do you want tourists to never visit? Because that is how you get tourists to not visit.

The lesson here is not to trust Google or other non-encrypted storage with your stuff. There are email providers that are more protective of your stuff, but more than that: don’t store everything in one place. That way if one account is compromised, not everything is exposed. And American companies are more likely to share your data than European ones.

it would seem their whole legal system is as corrupt as their government

Never let yourself become dependent on something a company has control of, if at all possible. They will use it as leverage to coerce concessions from you that drive you further toward controlling nothing at all.

We could all use a “Live without technology” day where everyone lives intentionally without using technology owned by others, learn first hand where those liabilities and leverage are in our lives, the cost of loss of access, and the alternatives. We are far more likely to accept enshitification of everything if a loss of access suddenly causes a crisis we’ve never encountered before. Awareness is a strength that would be wise to cultivate. If you can’t go one day without tech, you’re already told dependent and tbh, a threat to the community and people around you.

What was the value of the Lego collection in this scandal? 200k? It’s wild just how far people are willing to go over what’s ultimately not even enough money to retire off of, and only a couple of years’ living expenses in some cities

Am I wrong or is $100k not even money enough for how big this scandal has been?

If someone out there still thought the cops was the good guys, this is mainstream enough that its going to open some eyes to the belief that all cops are bad cops.

We’ve been saying how corrupt police are and how they are like a gang that sticks up for themselves first and foremost. Now the youth get to experience that second hand in a way that the public can’t confuse them about race issues or make it about issues anything other than what it is.

I know its stupid for reckless Ben to not use a lawyer but this way we get to see straight up every avenue they use to try to abuse their power.

So is the youtuber the one who got his lego stolen? Or is he just a journalist reporting on this story?

IIRC The Civil Rights Lawyer from Audit the Audit is helping him out. Shit is fucked if it has his attention. Hope it turns out ok.

Sooo sounds like the perfect time for Proton or any mainstream service to sponsor him.

Brick by brick!

Oh, is this what’s going to happen to me in my support of the Mormon Church by forming the cult of Mormon Occultism? Whatever. I expected this twelve years ago when the CIA contacted me, covertly, on an acid trip. Hard to explain, but I have, thoroughly, in my book. But the goal of my mission now is truthtelling, and somehow I knew there would be a lengthy legal battle with “a church” in my future during my fateful acid trip where aliens revealed themselves to me. Hard to explain, but I portray it poorly deliberately because that helps the dazzle camouflage. We know what we’re doing. But, I had an experience with the Mormon Church. God, who is that organization of three letters that’s always watching, told me to keep on keeping on. Staying silent while screaming. Has anyone ever tested you were a pedophile? It’s weird what the Mormon Church prophets from. I’m a master baiter. I’m a fisher of men, I said. I’m a cop, I said in my last post, but the silent don’t even read this far.

I’m not entirely clear on why this guy stuck out his neck so far over a situation that was never his to deal with in the first place.

It’s good to have reminders of what is and isn’t private.

Google accounts aren’t “free”.