The Protests Prove the Need to Regulate Surveillance Tech

The Protests Prove the Need to Regulate Surveillance Tech

4 years ago
Anonymous $-9GJQVHNr8

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-protests-prove-the-need-to-regulate-surveillance-tech/

Law enforcement has used surveillance technology to monitor participants of the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, as it has with many other protests in US history. License plate readers, facial recognition, and wireless text message interception are just some of the tools at its disposal. While none of this is new, the exposure that domestic surveillance is getting in this moment is further exposing a great fallacy among policymakers.

All too often, there is a tendency among the policy community, particularly for those whose work involves national security, to discuss democratic tech regulation purely in terms of geopolitical competition. There are arguments that regulating big tech is vital to national security. There are counterarguments pushing the exact opposite—that promoting big US tech “champions” with minimal regulation is vital to US geopolitical interest, especially vis-à-vis “competing with China.” Many permutations abound.