If you leave the infrastructure of surveillance in place, people in power will inevitably find an excuse to resume using it.

[autumnbaum@mindly.social]

@evacide
I imagine paintball guns might become a popular practavist gift.

[seed@mastodon.au]

@evacide This is exactly right. Infrastructure creates its own demand. Nobody builds a panopticon and then decides not to look.

South Australia just passed donation transparency laws for Saturday's election. The optimist in me says the same principle works in reverse — build transparency infrastructure and it becomes harder to undo.

[ruffin@mas.to]

@cmthiede @evacide

[gnomon@mastodon.social]

@minentromaxinfo @evacide in one specific place, yes: https://www.cp24.com/local/toronto/2025/09/07/torontos-parkside-speed-camera-cut-down-for-7th-time-in-less-than-a-year/ (which you might think would make it easy to catch the repeat offender, but bear with me until my third link)

There _was_ a city-wide swath of speed cam vandalism around the city at that time: https://globalnews.ca/news/11404488/toronto-speed-cameras-cut-down/ (though not repeat vandalism like on Parkside)

It is curious that our illustrious drug-dealing premier won political points with his base by demonizing speedcams & removing them: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/all-of-toronto-s-speed-cameras-are-gone-how-did-we-get-to-this-point-9.6995207

[gnomon@mastodon.social]

@minentromaxinfo @evacide (I am in favor of speed cams because they demonstrably diminish the number of people, primarily senior citizens and young children, killed and injured by motorists every year. But I am also in favor of pushing back *very* hard on broad surveillance tools. Pipe cutters and a three-lookout duty team with Baofeng radios are cheap.)

[cslinuxboy@mastodon.social]

@evacide Hell yeah!!!!

[eragon@pl.eragon.re]

@evacide@hachyderm.io Also, this is just an other example of ACAB.
They basically sold the life of all the residents to get some more power over them.

[gokushrm@mastodon.social]

@evacide u can't remove surveillance %from human life

[privacydigest@mas.to]

@evacide A new twist on the old IT reality - no one wants to be the one responsible for building the database, but once you do, everyone will find a way to misuse it.

[evacide@hachyderm.io]

@GOKUSHRM That would be a really powerful argument if that is what anyone here was proposing, but it is not.