Yes, we’ve got voice records
I was just on the phone clearing something up with my credit card company, and while I was waiting I got the usual “we will be recording this conversation” message.
I can’t remember when that first began, but I know it was years ago. I’ve always assumed it was for the sake of looking up the conversation in case there was some future dispute about what happened during the exchange, but today they added a new message that indicated my recording was being saved for voice recognition security purposes.
And that’s just my credit card company. I can only imagine what the government has.
It’s said that, before you expire, your entire life flashes before your eyes. But alternatively, if you want to view it while still alive (or at least the most recent decade or so of it), just call the government and ask them for a showing.
Twenty years ago my wife got hit by a phone scam. The scammer would record the entire conversation and got her at some point to use the word “yes.” Then they put that “yes” into an edited version of the conversation right after they asked if she wanted their service. That gave them a recorded verbal contract that we had to fight, it was a costly mess.
I watch a lot of British crime shows. In every one of recent years, immediately when the investigation begins the cops start asking “Do we have CCTV?” of the area where the crime occurred. And as the investigation proceeds it happens again when any new locale is involved. If these are anywhere near representative, CCTV is nearly omnipresent in British cities. That’s creepy, but maybe even more so is that the cops are kind of aggrieved when it isn’t available.
AT&T has more than one recording of me telling them to go f*** themselves.
watch a lot of British crime shows. In every one of recent years, immediately when the investigation begins the cops start asking “Do we have CCTV?”
I’ve noticed that. IMO, it should be pretty much verboten for public agencies to install such cameras except in government buildings and there should be a general rule that the tapes are destroyed after a modest interval.
Theodore Dalrymple has remarked on the irony. The British courts are loath to punish criminals, so the cameras hardly make a difference in the realm of crime control.
It’s got so bad that I don’t even answer the phone anymore unless it’s Mrs jack cell. If it’s important they’ll leave a message.
geoffb – I have had to deal with those scammers with the parents-in-law being the victims. I’m not surprised at the tactic, although I had not thought about doing that.
Dante’s Hell is getting new circles every day.
And rare occasion I pick up the phone on one of those scammers I go on offense … with my sells pitch to sell them something. I try to be creative!
I’ve had my credit card ripped off a few times over several decades, but just a couple weeks ago it happened for the first time via an online purchase. $1,200.00 worth of fraudulent fees went to various Chinese online vendors I’d never heard of; after the one valid purchase. All canceled or comped thankfully.
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One of the amazing things about video surveillance in the U.K. is that they actually have a significant police (or police support) contingent that sits in rooms and watches these video feeds in real time. They also make heavy use of ANPR (automatic number plate readers). That also blossomed in Silicon Valley a couple decades ago, and I expect it has quietly spread far and wide.
If they don’t have audio, video and internet recordings of your ‘activities’, how can they determine an accurate social credit score for you?
One does not have the option to refuse, to opt out of having one’s voice recorded.
We also have to listen to their stupid recorded menu options because they have always “changed”.
We are dying slow deaths of time ripped away from us by digital devices.
The ANPR (automatic number plate readers) in UK can identify if a car on the road is compliant with the required paperwork. In addition to the fixed cameras, there are also portable cameras that can be deployed about 25′ up from a van.
Speeding cameras are much more sporting. All fixed speeding cameras have been identified and are included in the local GPS databases so you get a helpful beep. Portable speeding cameras are marked with helpful signs on the side of the road about half a mile before you reach the camera.
One does not have the option to refuse, to opt out of having one’s voice recorded… We are dying slow deaths of time ripped away from us by digital devices.
Cicero:
Excellent point. And it is a “death by a thousand cuts.”
This isn’t letting up. It’s getting more intrusive by the day. I’m not a fan of Foucault by any means, but he was frighteningly spot-on with the panopticon:
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Foucault used the panopticon as a way to illustrate the proclivity of disciplinary societies subjugate its citizens. He describes the prisoner of a panopticon as being at the receiving end of asymmetrical surveillance: “He is seen, but he does not see; he is an object of information, never a subject in communication.”
https://www.mvorganizing.org/what-is-panopticism-according-to-michel-foucault/
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I worry we’ve already passed the tipping-point such that all human societies, communist or not, will be sucked down into this vortex as the tech gets better and cheaper.
huxley,
“I worry we’ve already passed the tipping-point such that all human societies, communist or not, will be sucked down into this vortex as the tech gets better and cheaper.”
People are in control of the tech and if necessary, people can be ‘dislodged’ from control. When confronted with real tyranny, the question ultimately boils down to one of, are you willing to die and kill to be free? If not, you’re only deserving of enslavement. Liberty has a price.
Bandwidth and Storage economies of scale mean that at the purchasing power level of Mega-Corporations and Government Entities, continuous real time HD Video gathering and permanent storage of *pretty much everything* they can get their hands on is a solved problem and the everything necessary is just Commodity. Forget all the boring object, face, gait detection and scene analysis stuff can be automated in real time.
Get down to the level of mere voice-grade Audio and it’s solved orders of magnitude over. You can bet your bottom dollar that everything you say is archived somewhere. Just in case. And has been for the last decade. Back to the 90s if you were making international and long distance calls back when. What’s interesting in the Audio surveillance field is that your smartphone contains so much processing power and you are surrounded by so many other people with ditto that all the old assumptions about talking in a crowded noisy environment fooling the microphones no longer applies. All that DSP capability out at the ‘Edge’ is gonna get put to good use.
It’s Over… Red (Privacy) Rover.
In 2019, during a university class, I told a classmate that I didn’t like DACA. That prompted a student who overheard me, to start crying. Then a cabal of her friends (12 students) confronted me about the class being a safe space and said that I was a d**k.
Although this incident probably belongs in Neo’s previous post about feelings vs. objective standards, the incident prompted me to start recording all of my conversations. I start recording the moment I step on campus and turn if off when I leave the campus. I want a record of my interactions.
I also started recording all my conversations with businesses over the phone. They tell me up front that the conversation will be recorded. Well I make my own recording too. I don’t always announce that I am recording since I live in a one-party state.
I save the recordings although I hope it isn’t necessary to ever use them. Talking to Amazon? Recorded. Talking to my doctor’s office. Recorded. Talking to my insurance company. Recorded. Talking to my bank. Recorded.
I don’t care if the businesses have a recording of our conversation. I have my own copy. It takes very little effort to record and the files are small. If they were deleted tomorrow, I wouldn’t care, but it gives me peace of mind if someone starts with the “he said, she said” game.
It is no different to me than the voice mails that businesses leave on my phone. I can’t opt out of my conversation being recorded, but I can opt in.
In combat, every attack vector opens up a counterattack vector. You cannot throw a punch or kick without opening up your torso/body to a counter punch or kick. It simply requires of your enemy the requisite degree of skill and speed to capitalize upon it.
The same principle applies in the digital realm.
Hackers continually demonstrate it. That currently, hackers are mostly composed of antisocial individuals, criminals and nation state actors does not preclude the rise of guerilla warfare against tyrants in the digital realm.
It would be a shame if the personal fortunes of tyrants vanished into the ether… and before the more knowledgeable claim that to be impossible, consider how often in history ‘the impossible’ has been accomplished.
Apparently the immature fools on the left never learned that, sooner or later those who play with fire get burnt.