We like to think surveillance is something you can turn on for one problem and turn off afterward. In practice, that never happens. Once the machinery is in place, it stays and looks for new work. Tools justified today by "illegal immigration" won’t stop there. They drift into credit scoring, health insurance pricing, hiring and firing decisions, school admissions, housing access, travel permissions, banking, welfare eligibility, and even which online accounts are allowed to exist. Not because anyone set out to build a dystopia, but because systems, once built, naturally expand to whatever can be measured and enforced.
As Benjamin Franklin put it: those who give up essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither. The tradeoff rarely feels extreme at the time. It feels reasonable. By the time it isn’t, there’s no way back.
As Benjamin Franklin put it: those who give up essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither. The tradeoff rarely feels extreme at the time. It feels reasonable. By the time it isn’t, there’s no way back.