[Molitor5901]

But what if Target security cooperates with the government, and they share capabilities, so that a facial recognition inside of a Target location would notify law enforcement who also has an interest in that person? In such a scenario.. Target would freely give its data but not necessarily acting an agent of the government.

[mc32]

People need to work to reverse the Bush and Obama initiated and then continued practice (setting precedent) of bypassing direct surveillance by buying data from data brokers. The Biden and Trump admins just continue this practice. That’s where people need to reverse the practice. I mean you had the FBI and probably others wiretapping Congress folks so… it’s like they don’t care.

[mindslight]

Or we need to focus on making data brokers illegal, period. Taking a page from the GDPR would be a good start. As long as the surveillance databases continue to exist, they will be juicy targets for anyone attracted to the power. And not just for the de jure government, but also plenty of "private" businesses that adopt them nearly in lockstep. If you get blackballed in the one used by say Target, it's not like Walmart is going to make it a point of competition to serve the small fraction of people who would be good customers but for getting tripped up by Target. Rather they will all use the same databases, shutting you off from most commerce. That's effectively creating a de facto government, independent of any de jure government adoption.