Mass Surveillance is Here. (But There's Hope)

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Many of us have watched movies like Eagle Eye or Fast and the Furious 7 where they have this God's eye AI program that's able to hijack any surveillance camera in the world and monitor and watch these individuals and essentially control the outcome. And then there's other examples that are more light-hearted like the Truman Show.

[00:00:19]Jim Car's character is being filmed by cameras, not just implanted in his house or his car, but literally in the very devices that he's using and the things that he has on his person. And some of us would think, well, it could happen in China or it could happen in the movies.

[00:00:34]But if it happened here where I live, I would notice it. We would resist. But what if I told you we're already living in a surveillance state? The only thing that's needed for it to be fully functioning is for the person up top to change from being for us to against us.

[00:01:07]I want to talk through three requirements of the surveillance state.

[00:01:09]Number one is the infrastructure. You need cameras everywhere or mics everywhere monitoring, recording, storing data and information about you.

[00:01:19]Number two, we would need the AI that's able to process all that data very quickly. If you have a security team in a building, you have a couple people sitting in a chair in a dark room.

[00:01:29]You've got about 20 different screens where they're watching. They're trying to make sure everything's safe, but they have to monitor all the cameras. Well, there's not enough people to monitor all of the cameras in the world. But AI is able to parse information much quicker than people are. If you have the infrastructure and then you also have the AI program in place, then the third thing you need would be just to be able to combine those two. You would need to give the AI program access to the infrastructure. And this is exactly where we are now. Believe it or not, you've probably heard of the company Palunteer. Now, Palanteer is able to process information at such a quick pace that they're essentially able to predict what's coming next. The US government is currently using Palunteer to not just access whatever information they need at the drop of a hat, but also to make decisions based on that information.

[00:02:19]Sometimes the AI is making the decisions on its own. Then we have companies like Johnson and Johnson that literally will track their employees behavior using this technology and then they'll bring them in for questioning based on predictive patterns that they've seen.

[00:02:34]The AI will say, "Hey, this person's going to be a trouble employee. You need to talk to them before they've even done the thing." So Palunteer is on one side and then on the other side we have another company called Oracle. Oracle is more of the filing cabinet, right? They are the data center, the the storage of the information because you can gather a lot of information on a person, but you have to be able to store all that information in a cloud service someplace and you also have to be able to access it quickly. And so Palunteer and Oracle have combined they they have a partnership together now to where the information is able to be stored, is able to be processed, and then a decisions able to be made. Let's go to the movies again. So many people are familiar with the Matrix trilogy. Well, there's a character in there which is an AI program called the Oracle. And this character is able to predict the future based on the amount of information that's available to it, but also the speed of processing that information and pattern recognition. So, the same pattern had taken place so many times in this program that it was able to see what was coming next. While the idea of AI becoming so smart has been a more recent development, many of these companies have been in existence and accessing and storing data for a long time. For example, Palanteer started in 2003. Oracle has its origins all the way back in 1977. So, we've got the data processing ability. We've got the AI in place. Now, we just need the infrastructure. Well, many people would say, "Okay, I know what the infrastructure is, right? It's my it's my iPhone, right? Like they've got cameras. They're listening. I've been told this. You know, I I say one thing to my spouse and the next day I get an ad about the exact same thing that I mentioned." And that's partially true, but I want to show you how it goes beyond just the devices we're holding in our hands. It's a lot more complex of a system that's in place, but it's also monitoring more than you may think.

[00:04:32]Let's take a look at Google Home. This is a system of smart devices you place around your house to monitor and control things like temperature, smart lights, playing music, answering questions, very similar to the Amazon Alexa system. But obviously Amazon is a little bit more complex with some of the abilities and some of the things that they're able to offer with some of the things that you're able to do through their devices.

[00:04:56]Things like grocery shopping, entertainment, online shopping, information systems, whether it be weather, news, reminders. And if you think about it, all of this is very helpful to the modern lifestyle to be able to have all of these different conveniences either at the touch of a button or just saying it and it responds. But the interesting thing is all of this data is being collected and it's also being used in some cases against you the user unfortunately. So I recently read an article nine things you should never ask your Google Home and it literally lists off personal information, sensitive information, medical help, legal advice, jokes, embarrassing information, financial information. And at the end of that list I'm thinking what else is there? Right?

[00:05:38]It's literally telling us, "Wonder around your smart devices in your home whispering to your spouse, be afraid of what you say in front of these devices."

[00:05:45]And they just say it as if it's normal.

[00:05:49]And my response to that is, "This is not normal." Like, I should not have to be afraid of free speech in my own home, right around the devices that I've paid for. And if you do the research, you can find that these devices technically are listening all the time, like anytime they're on. And some devices, even when they're turned off, are still listening to an extent. So, now let's take it a step further. If you watched the Super Bowl this year, you may have seen the Ring camera commercial. It's another Amazon product. It's a doorbell, but it's also a front porch monitoring system. It can be inside, can be outside, it can be different places around your house. And in this 30-second spot, this girl gets a new dog named Milo. The dog goes missing. She puts up flyers around the neighborhood, but she also posts a photo onto the Ring app.

[00:06:37]And what it does is it sends this photo to all of the other Ring cameras around the neighborhood and all the cameras start watching for this dog using this facial recognition or dog recognition technology. And one of the other cameras spots the dog and then they let her know, she gets her dog back. End of story. It's a Disney princess story ending. But a lot of people were outraged by this commercial and and rightfully so because they saw the big brother technology at use and it was scary to see that because this technology is able to use facial recognition and if it's able to search for a dog and find it that quickly why would it not be able to search for me for example you know and it would and be able to find anything it wants to find.

[00:07:18]Here's the craziest part is this push back against this commercial actually helped the public to become more aware of the information that was already being shared. So, this feature that was shown in this commercial is actually already enabled when you purchase this product by default. You don't have to turn it on. You have to actually go in the settings to turn it off. And here's what I found about features like this is there's there's data privacy things on my iPhone that I switch off and then once the system updates, they just reset the feature sometimes. They reset the settings and it comes back on and I have to turn it off again. I don't like that as a user, right? uh but we're not guaranteed our privacy when we use these devices. Based on this backlash of this commercial, Amazon or Ring actually ended a planned partnership they had with a company named Flock Safety. And this company helps to share camera data with police and with the government. And so, do I want criminals to be caught?

[00:08:12]Absolutely. But do I want to live in a surveillance state where there's a camera on every street corner or every step I take, there's something else that's watching me? I don't think so.

[00:08:22]And and here's the reason why is because criminals being caught is one thing.

[00:08:25]That's great. But let's say there's a breakdown of democracy that happens at some point and the people that we trust to lead us in government are not just corrupt behind closed doors, but the whole system changes. At that point, the infrastructure in order to monitor and control the population is already set in place. Now, based on push back, some of this has changed. Like uh Amazon used to allow law enforcement to obtain footage without owner permission. That changed in 2024. Now they have to have a warrant. But if the type of government we ever have changes from the top down, laws don't really apply at that point, right? If the if the infrastructure, the systems already in place, they have complete control. Here's another specific example. Tesla vehicles and and a lot of different EV vehicles now have cameras all over the vehicle. They help you do things like parking. You know, I mean, obviously some of them are self-driving cars. Think about this for a second. getting up in the morning, my iPhone's been listening to me sleep. I get up, I may pass by two or three monitoring devices just to get out my front door. I'm being watched on my own porch. I'm being watched by my vehicle.

[00:09:25]And maybe I've been tracked by 17 different cameras and listening devices by the time I get to work. It's the kind of world that we're living in. And many of us don't even realize it. And here's where I think everything has changed is that not only are they able to monitor us externally, you know, and and the environment that we're in. They're able to keep track of everything, but now they're able to monitor what's happening on the inside. Obviously, someday we may have computer chips that are able to read our thoughts and all that. But before we get there, we have things like the Aura Ring. Now, I don't have one. This is just my wedding ring.

[00:09:58]But the Aura Ring is able to monitor things like the heart rate, like stress levels. It's able to monitor sleep patterns. It obviously tracks where you go. It's very similar to an iPhone, but kind of on crack. It's this idea of seeing what's happening on the inside.

[00:10:10]Now, think back to all those films for for a second, right? Uh things like Minority Report, you know, they're able to use all this data and in some cases some weird sci-fi idea to predict the future. What happens when you sit down for a lie detector test? You are your heart rate's monitored, your stress levels. They're they're reading all the internal data to see if what you're saying outwardly is true or not. We've gotten to a place where we live in a world where they're able to track not just what I say, but how I feel about what I've said. So, it's not just, well, I'm afraid to say this in front of my iPhone, but it's if I say this out loud and my my phone or my ring camera or whatever is track is watching me. It's al they also have the data of how I felt about it when I said it based on that aura ring. It's a crazy world we live in, you know, and and I want to give some hope here. This can be a dark concept and I pray that we never get to the place where somebody uses this system against us. And unfortunately, to an extent, we did give them permission, right? the the psychological twist to all of this is that we paid them to put these cameras and these monitoring devices in our houses. I think about the story the Lord of the Rings written by JRR Tolken. Even if you're unfamiliar with it, I'll walk through it briefly.

[00:11:26]There's this idea of the one ring that was created to rule them all. And the characters that can't control the ring, they they think that they by wearing it, they can control this power that the ring possesses, but it always eventually ends up controlling them. But the hope is found in that if they take the ring and they throw it back into the fire where it was forged, that they can be set free from that control. And I believe we have the same opportunity today. We can take that aura ring. We can ship it back to Amazon and say, "Sorry, I didn't really want to buy this. Didn't want to waste my $400, $500." We can say, "Hey, I'm not going to put these systems in place all around me to where you can just listen to everything all day long or see anything you want to see. Instead, I'm going to limit the amount of data you're able to collect. I'm going to limit the amount of information and thereby in some ways limiting the amount of control you have over my life. Now, that doesn't change everything that's happening at the top or in the government, but it does keep us as the public in a constant state of understanding how much data we're actually sharing. And I believe we need to stay vigilant in some ways about the systems we're allowing to be put in place around us. Because if we fall asleep to what's happening, we're going to be just like those people in the Matrix trilogy where they're all sleeping in pods. They don't realize it.

[00:12:43]They think they're fully awake and they don't realize that the machines all around them are actually the ones in control. And I don't want to be controlled by the machine. So, am I saying that's wrong to use emerging technology? No. I have an iPhone. I just try to limit how much time I spend on it, what I use it for, what I give it access to. But I am saying we can slow the expansion of this system by limiting how much access we give it to to us in our personal lives. Hopefully this is helpful. I'll see you next time.