Meta plan to use political turmoil as cover for new surveillance tech rollout

Meta, the parent company for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, plans to introduce new face scanning tech while people are distracted by current political turbulence. The Trump-adjacent corporation plans to package the feature in new smart glasses. An internal Meta document seen by the New York Times (NYT) says:

We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.

The media outlet provides further info on what the tech would allow:

The feature, internally called “Name Tag,” would let wearers of smart glasses identify people and get information about them via Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant.

Smart glasses are typically paired with AI, enabling voice activated interaction with the specs. Users can instruct the device to send a text message, take a photo or record a video. Some models feature an LED that changes colour to indicate the wearer is recording.

Meta: disaster capitalism following in ICE’s wake

The cynical internal memo likely references the tumult currently sweeping the US amidst the mass criminality carried out by the brownshirts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Trump’s personal paramilitary goons have been violating laws left and right as they beat and kill their way around the US, under the pretext of an immigration crackdown.

ICE have already made extensive use of face scanning tech. Meta’s glasses would represent another privacy violating move, capturing massive amounts of personal data which may ultimately find its way into the hands of an authoritarian state. Meta has form when it comes to handing over info about customers to governments.

Metadata – which shows who called who and when – has been used by authorities, including seemingly by so-called ‘Israel’ for its genocide in Gaza. WhatsApp records are one means used by the terrorist entity to determine which Palestinians are marked for death in its genocidal AI programs Lavender and Where’s Daddy. Paul Biggar of Tech for Palestine put a series of questions to Meta about how they should be policing rogue regimes like ‘Israel’ using its data. These included:

How will Meta prevent private information being used by governments to kill WhatsApp users and their families?

Will Meta immediately rescind access to any WhatsApp information from the Israeli government, army and law enforcement?

It appears no answer was forthcoming. Meta’s plan to roll out the tech during politically chaotic times has echoes of the ‘shock doctrine’ described by author Naomi Klein. It outlines a process of ‘disaster capitalism’ in which natural disasters or political upheaval are seized upon by corporations to ram through major changes that benefit them.

It represents another example of practices first deployed by hegemonic powers abroad, only to be revisited upon a population at home. Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been an eager licker of the Trump boot, and clearly sees this as an opportune time to introduce the privacy violating tech.

Corporate and state surveillance powers must be opposed

A previous version of the glasses were able to successfully identify faces and reveal huge amounts of personal info about those it scanned. Two Harvard students paired the specs with a smartphone app they created, enabling them to almost instantaneously identify strangers.

The scan was then sent to the app, which trawled the internet for information about people, bringing back details like their job and home address within seconds. A built-in version of this tech would be even more powerful, creating even greater privacy concerns.

The British government intends to extend its use of facial recognition tech, going from 10 vans with the system, to 50. Civil rights groups are challenging this in the courts, describing it as “stop and search on steroids“. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) are looking into its use, which would be a disaster in a region where violation of rights by state authorities has previously had devastating consequences.

Fascism is often described as the fusion of corporate and state power. Both these power centres are ramping up their ability to surveil us, enabling them to amass enormous power. The prospect of them uniting to utterly crush dissent will be an ever more tempting prospect. Their efforts to advance spying powers must therefore be snuffed out in their infancy.

Featured image via the Canary