This is half a decade old news, but I only found this out myself after it accidentally came up in conversation at the DMV. The worker would not have informed me if it hadn’t come into conversation. Every DMV photo in the United States is being used for AI facial recognition, and nobody has talked about it for years. This is especially concerning given that citizens are recently being required to update their ID to a “Real ID,” which means more people than ever before are giving away the rights to their own face.
The biggest problem with privacy issues is that people talk about it for a while, but more often than not nothing ever happens to fix the problem, it simply gets forgotten. For example, in the next few years Copilot will simply become a part of people’s lives, and people will slowly stop talking about the privacy implications. What can we even do to fight the privacy practices of giants?
This was heavily discussed quite a bit since the mid 2000s. Overblown, protested, and surrounded with doom and gloom talk mostly by folks like Alex Jones. It’s been openly talked about by the government for a long time. I mean, the US has always had a form of facial recognition based on the tech at the time. And honestly you’re fooling yourself if you think avoiding the DMV or something similar is going to somehow keep you free from these databases.
It’s pretty low on my lists of concerns.
Alex Jones 2009
Real ID Act 2005
Copilot is not a new problem. Privacy concerns around search and answer tech go back to early Google days.
Well that’s easy to answer. You use democracy. You start local and fight for the people who believe in what you do. Organize. Work your way up. It’s a slow process but it can work. It has. Which is why democracy is so important to fight for EVERY election. It’s the mechanism built into this country for change. However flawed it may currently be.