I am not understanding the significance of the panopticon claim. It's common knowledge that camera price and bandwidth and digital storage prices have gone down significantly over the years, and quality has gone up.
That the government has used them to prosecute a man who assassinated someone or a large group of traitors does not seem to be an indictment of the capabilities.
An example of the government combing through records to pile on trivial charges to throw at a peaceful protestor or otherwise "over" charge them to create a chilling effect seems more apt for a discussion about the dangers of a panopticon.
Sure, in that case let's use Cop City in Georgia. That feels more like "authoritarian state seeks to quash dissent". Plenty of grey area there, plenty of overreach by the State to shut them up.
"“See that?” whispered Granger. “It'll be you; right up at the end of
that street is our victim. See how our camera is coming in? Building
the scene. Suspense. Long shot. Right now, some poor fellow is out for
a walk. A rarity. An odd one. Don't think the police don't know the
habits of queer ducks like that, men who walk mornings for the hell of
it, or for reasons of insomnia. Anyway, the police have had him
charted for months, years. Never know when that sort of information
might be handy. And today, it turns out, it's very usable indeed. It
saves face. Oh, God, look there!”" - Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
When I brought up J6, it was not because I wanted to discuss the ideology but because this is the first time to my knowledge that we prosecuted over 1,500 people for a single event. Looking at the NPR database; Violence is 417 cases, Property destruction is 55 cases, Conspiracy is 48 cases. Assuming no overlap between those, you have ~980 people that fall into the "useful idiot" or "stupid mob" category.
Should they have been there? No of course not.
If my point can't be understood because I am using J6 as an example, please substitute J6 with Occupy Wall Street or Black Lives Matter.
The change we are seeing with technology is not the amount of data we are storing but that we are able to process this data and build it out into a model.
hypothetical We saw you on a camera on J6 in the Capital but also have cell data showing you traveled down with other people. Don't have them on camera but the cell data shows they were close to you at all times, so we can charge them.
I wanted to link to a video of a protest I saw a little while ago; it showed protestors in Black Block swarm some cops then all run under a group of people that had umbrellas. When the group moved, all the black block clothes were on the ground so the responsible parties couldn't be tracked. However this time the police drone captures some footage of them before they changed into the black block, so they were able to make arrests.
This would be able to take it further, now you could see who the protestors trained with and charge them with Conspiracy.
January 6th was not a surveillance society win. It was a flash mob that live streamed their crimes, along with identification done by private individuals sleuthing in forums and chat groups.
The Nancy Guthrie case felt like ring cameras and Flock or traffic cams should have figured it out in no time. Yet it didn't happen. I feel like this is going to be something that only really works in cases, where investigation would solve it.
That the government has used them to prosecute a man who assassinated someone or a large group of traitors does not seem to be an indictment of the capabilities.
An example of the government combing through records to pile on trivial charges to throw at a peaceful protestor or otherwise "over" charge them to create a chilling effect seems more apt for a discussion about the dangers of a panopticon.