"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."
― Scott McNealy, former chairman, Sun Microsystems, 1999
Surveillance technology, amplified by machine-learning, is not going away. It's too useful as a tool to catch bad actors and enhance public safety, despite its potential for abuse, for governments to give it up.
I read a while back that anyone living in or visiting central London is likely to be captured on camera an average of 300 times/day. I suspect the figure is comparable for downtown New York―not to mention Moscow or Beijing.
This is an activity that demands fastidious government regulation. Democratically-elected legislatures need to develop general statutory authorizations and limits. Career government experts, insulated from political influence, should then conduct public hearings to which all interested parties are invited prior to developing detailed operational regulations which set specific parameters for how the surveillance is to be conducted and used, and their proposed rules should be published for public review and comment prior to implementation.
Non-governmental organizations, including especially an unregulated press, should then monitor actual practice for instances of inadequate control or outright abuse. Individuals who believe they have been injured by improper surveillance need access to an independent judicial system with sufficient authority to impose penalties on law enforcement or other government agencies that misuse the technology.
Democratic governments which have domestic intelligence services that operate in secret need to establish special oversight organizations composed of individuals with unrestricted access to the intelligence activities who are independent of the executive authorities to which the intelligence services report.
Russia, China, and various other countries with authoritarian governments?
Fuhgeddaboudit.
