Beware. Technological vigilantes are running tens of thousands of unauthorized head shots of strangers through facial recognition apps.
The reprehensible progression of online disruptive elements has regressed to the deep and dark ocean trenches of bots and algorithms, or algorithms and bots dutifully and meticulously carrying out the programs of their human masters in leaving ambiguity and confusion in their retched wake miles beneath an uncertain surface and shouldering mountainous tons of water. Until now that is, where the disturbed element of humanity has long endured enough AI envy to spark a quest in once again attaining the vogue cutting edge status and impassioned resistance defining the retro cowboy hacking era.
Long gone are the days of the give and take backyard brawl savagery hijacking message boards and commentary forums all in good fun, as the old fashioned trolls and the entire humorous connotations of living, breathing and eating in front of a computer terminal based in mom’s basement was a lifestyle that could be worn with a shimmering badge of misplaced honor. Unfortunately, the maudlin and decrepit creatures posting anything and everything to elicit a visceral reaction in the dark days before the onset of the galactic- sized social media communities of mysterious dark matter, have reemerged as a contemporary and potentially dangerous force, and with the obligatory trait as being a annoying nuisance, digital standards of privacy hang in the balance.
Old school trolls have morphed into a cyborg construct armed with the technology they question, and adopted a defiance that scorns empathy and basic decency towards others. With smartphones affixed to their heads and donning white hazmat suits, swarms of digital protesters are literally taking to the bustling urban corridors in gratuitously snapping unauthorized portraits of tens of thousands of pedestrians, and turning the nameless faces into viable online personas through facial recognition technology. Curiously enough, the organized shenanigans commenced in the nation’s capital, which included the pirated documentation of a sole lawmaker. The alleged goal of the degenerate group is to create more transparency and changes to the privacy policy of some of the world’s largest tech firms. Mr. Cynical Skeptic, finds the whole disjointed and borderline creepy campaign a train wreck in progress, and ponders how legions of miscreants unveiling the identity of private citizens without consent while using an array of apps can lead to anything with a positive ending, while changing the world for the better.
The group responsible for the choreographed insanity, Fight for the Future, claims that the blatant and ironic disregard for the reckless assault of photo bombing random individuals and storing the images on a private server to do god only knows in scheming for a possible ulterior motive, is to raise public awareness against the latest generation of Amazon facial recognition technology, the aptly named Rekognition. Also intertwined within the misguided campaign are traces of anti-law enforcement rhetoric, based off of the unsettling narrative popular among dissidents, that the majority of cops are inherently racist. Illegally capturing facial images of individuals is one thing, but playing the race card in attempting to incite civil unrest boils down to anarchy, as much as demonstrators would like to sugar coat and label their so-called movement as a “celebration” of free speech and progress.
While the aversion of deploying a simple and reasonable methodology to alert the public about the possible risks of increased facial recognition technology, in the era of the 15-second “me, me, me” news cycle, taking drastic measures in streaming digital protesters identity harvesting and garbed in ridiculous costumes, adheres to the current hipster trend of acceptable online demeanor. What’s wrong with a sensible message of warning disseminated through social media and tactfully presented? As long as the instigator maintains anonymity in antagonizing the older generations towards certain exasperation and inconvenient angst, nothing short of precariously hanging off the cleft of a building and capturing a decadent amount of selfies with the latest GoPro camera would be a disappointment to the counter-cultural movement powered oppositional defiance.
As subtlety is being starkly selected out by an unnatural progression of social morays emphasizing gratuitous extremism, things no longer can simply be easy, and the shortest difference between two points is a value influenced by groupthink and endorsed by the bureaucrats preferring to control rather than govern with eloquent and concise notions conducive to personal freedoms. In reverence to the Orwellian literary protagonist of O’Brien encapsulating the death to privacy and ultimately the concept of individualism, the proponents of censorship and radical elements of culture will stop at nothing, before humanity is one despondent tribe and free from any colors outside the confines of the gray and stagnant apathetic doldrums.