RANT: WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

 

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU DRIVE—This may be more common than I realize, but recently I was offered a 10% discount on my auto insurance with CAA (Canadian Automotive Association) the other day. I have a CAA membership for free towing, etc., in case I whiplash into a ditch this winter or my battery loses its spark and needs a boost. (Don’t we all!) But here’s the catch: to get the discount I would have to install a “black box” in my car or load a special app onto my smartphone to monitor my driving habits—my speed, braking, turning, whatever. And, if I practiced safe driving techniques, my insurance premiums would be gauged accordingly. Wowser! But because I sometimes like to drive with my eyes closed and run red lights, I declined the offer. As well, I assume distances and destinations, etc., will be tagged by GPS, so that would mean I’d have to give up closing-time at “The Silver Tassel”, my local strip club. So that piece of tech is not for me.

 

BUT, I WONDER how long it will be until all cars come with built-in monitoring systems and automatic insurance premium adjustments?

Or, say that your wife is pregnant and her water just broke, and the two of you make a mad dash to the car to drive to the hospital. You lock and load and prepare to peal out of there when sensors in your car detect your elevated heart rate and blood pressure (from gripping the steering wheel so hard) and the AI in the black box decides that the use of your vehicle is “not currently available” and shuts down the engine. Well, doggies, welcome to our brave new world.  

I MENTIONED some time ago that the city where I live is changing their lakeshore parking permit system to get rid of parking tags that used to dangle behind the rear-view mirror. Now, parking cops scan license plates to check if your car has a valid permit. In the summer, it gets crowded as out-of-townees vie for parking spots with residents and no doubt there will be a few tow-aways for those who haven’t registered their cars with the city’s parking system. But dollars to doughnuts, those scanners will eventually flag dead-beat drivers who toss their speeding tickets into the glove box and forget about them, or perhaps things like over-due property taxes or unpaid fees, alimony even, or taxes, etc., perhaps generating an automatic fine for the driver, (and deducted automatically by the system’s AI from your bank account—“Thank you for your payment”), or a tow-away, or vehicle confiscation, based on the collated information.

This type of automatic monitoring and tagging of our comings and goings is an incremental step—but it is a step—towards what some call a “social credit score” system. Not China’s state driven AI assault on citizen privacy and autonomy, but with our capitalistic brand on things, with corporations and governments large and small acting in lockstep because they’re after the same thing—data harvested from the likes of you and me, and we have no idea just how much of ourselves is being hoovered up by the machinery of state and private enterprise, and ultimately for their benefit, of course.

 

BIG BROTHER IS WAKING and his gaze into the public and private lives of each and every one of us may soon become all encompassing.

 

"If we accept the bedrock premise of a free society, that government is its servant and not its master, then it is up to the state, always, to ask the citizens’ permission before it intrudes on their liberty, and to prove its necessity: it is never the citizen’s obligation to show why he may remain unmolested. That spirit is lamentably absent from the Court’s reasoning." https://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-supreme-court-twists-the-charter-of-rights-in-its-haste-to-limit-free-speech

 

 

Cheers, 

Jake.______________________________________