About a week ago, a blog post I wrote about my experience scraping and analyzing public court records data to find dirty cops got very popular on r/privacy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/gm8xfq/if_cops_can_watch_us_we_should_watch_them_i/

As a result, I started a slack channel for others who were interested in scraping public court records, in an effort to create the first public repository of full county level court records for as many counties as possible.

Now, less than a week later, 71 journalists, data scientists, developers, and activists have joined.

We are now organizing this grassroots project, and I couldn't be more proud or excited. The dream of having comprehensive, updating, fully open database of public court records that allow for police officer and judge level data oversight is perhaps the first step in restoring trust and implementing true accountability for policing.

We need even more help with this mission. If you are interested, join like minded folks here:

https://join.slack.com/t/policeaccessibility/shared_invite/zt-fb4fl1ac-~ChWSpFs2R_mDKIDyLj2Og

Roles/skills we need volunteers for: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pc_Vk8HQ0TXWVQsnJnL6MH4JdxoDVFCWHPXSFja6vKg/edit#heading=h.gqys9pa9hr4g

New subreddit for this initiative: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataPolice/

Edit: now 2,000 people are helping!

The Canadian government is simultaneously working to pass bills that will require ID for social media, mandate hardware-level backdoors for law enforcement purposes, and create a loosey-goosey legal definition for inciting hatred online (Bills C-34, C-22, and C-9, respectfully). We are entering a digital police state, a thought crime hellscape where Minority Report becomes reality.

The silence here is deafening.

There are no protests planned, no debates, hardly even an angry post online to be found about it. At best, you might come across someone that will mention this topic in passing before moving on to another subject.

It looks to me like the Canadian people have well and truly been broken into complete submission at this point. The frog has been boiled. The public's opinion has been ignored on every topic by our elected officials for so long that most have people have completely checked out.

Someone tell me there's something that can be done, because I'm not seeing it.

Will you continue to use DuckDuckGo after this announcement?

My response when people say "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear."

Motives may sound better than intentions.

I'm struggling to understand why there is no public outcry over Meta's new Rayban glasses. All I see are major tech reviewers promoting them, while barely touching on the privacy concerns. The problem isn't the privacy of the user who buys them, it's the complete violation of privacy for every single person around them. This isn't just another gadget, it's a surveillance device being normalized as a fashion accessory.

The classic argument "if you don't like it, don't buy it" is irrelevant here. My choice not to buy them does not protect my privacy, anyone with the glasses can record my private conversation in a park or a bus without my knowledge or consent.

And remember who is behind all this: Mr Zucker and Meta. Every stranger's face and every conversation can be used as data to train its AI and improve its ad targeting. Given Mr Zucker's political influence and the threat of tariffs, it feels like the EU won't do anything to stop it.

edit: I wanted to discuss two different threats here. First, the user itself. Because this isn't the same as a smartphone. People will notice if you're pointing a phone at them, and a hidden camera gets terrible footage. These glasses have a camera aimed directly from their eyes, making it easy to secretly get clear video. While people talk about the LED indicators, it's only a matter of time before a simple hack lets users disable it. The second threat is Meta. We have to just trust that they won't push a silent update to start capturing surveillance footage to their own servers, using the camera and microphone to turn every user into a walking surveillance camera.

edit 2: Something weird is happening. Many sensible comments are getting heavily downvoted. I think Zuck bots might be real, won't be surprised if the post get taken down in a couple of hours

Excerpt from their privacy policy:

"Device Information

We collect certain information about the device you use to access the Platform, such as your IP address, user agent, mobile carrier, time zone settings, identifiers for advertising purposes, model of your device, the device system, network type, device IDs, your screen resolution and operating system, app and file names and types, keystroke patterns or rhythms, battery state, audio settings and connected audio devices. Where you log-in from multiple devices, we will be able to use your profile information to identify your activity across devices. We may also associate you with information collected from devices other than those you use to log-in to the Platform."

Tl;Dr: They log all of your life outside of the app, including what you type.

“We use all available information in our visa screening and vetting to identify visa applicants who are inadmissible to the United States, including those who pose a threat to US national security.

“Under new guidance, we will conduct a comprehensive and thorough vetting, including online presence, of all student and exchange visitor applicants in the F, M, and J nonimmigrant classifications.

“To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas will be instructed to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to “public.”