The Last Folk Hero & The Death of Privacy
They haven’t caught him yet. It’s only a matter of time. He’s made some mistakes.
But in this interstitial moment, just this few days, a collective projection, a Rorschach of the American soul. The memes, the folk songs, the surprisingly excellent art, the video-game-like animations. Does not hurt that he is beautiful, from what we can see.
It’s been so long since we had a folk hero. An outlaw, a fugitive. Outfitted like a techbro, or an upscale Antifa stealth assassin.
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I recently rewatched the Bourne films, with a visceral nostalgia and almost grief for the just-passed time before smartphones and ubiquitous cameras and facial recognition. A costume change, a payphone, and some dipsy-doodle driving in an inconspicuous sedan. Human-scale, analog.
The grim inevitability now of our total surveillance state. How gleeful are the ex-NYPD talking heads about the number of cameras, the digital footprints, the triangulation. “No expectation of privacy in public.”
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This is the last fugitive, the end of an American era. The tiny cracks he found to maneuver in will soon be patched, in the name of all our safety, as is always the justification.
He kept his face covered, but not enough. He paid in cash. He took Greyhound buses, the last remaining mode of semi-anonymous transportation. He hailed cabs instead of digitally tracked rideshares. He biked, but not on the GPS-enabled CitiBikes.
But he left DNA on the water bottle, and possibly the zipper of his abandoned backpack. He dropped his burner phone, which can be force-unlocked by GrayKey, revealing location history from cell tower connections.
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Facial recognition didn’t work; the angles were wrong. His DNA was not in CODIS from prior arrests or evidence at crime scenes. But now with genetic genealogy any usable DNA will reveal your identity, no matter how or where you live, even as off the grid as possible.
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Very soon there will be a comprehensive DNA database of everybody, or just one or two degrees away from everybody. Integrated databases will track movement. The FLOCK system, which combines license-plate readers with location data to track completely benign residents across time and place, will be template for any form of transport; bikes, walking. Very soon law enforcement will level-up to facial- and gait-recognition drones, like a next-generation war. The drones will become smaller, more nimble.
And all of this data needs a home. Giant server farms to house the data we collect on one another in the name of convenience, of personalization, of safety. And that will take enormous energy, to which we will sacrifice the future of our Earth.
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Already the 4th Amendment is eviscerated in the face of so much, so easily obtained, private information. Already the smallest act of resistance is suspect. “What do you have to hide?”
I watch trials in which turning off a cell phone, or leaving it at home, or turning off location data is presented, straight-faced, as “consciousness of guilt.”
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People mourn the loss of the night sky, dark and mysterious, connecting us to the universe and our tiny home within it.
Why does it seem inevitable the pockets of darkness will grow smaller.
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