So there are some sort of speed cameras near schools, instead of changing road design, as to reduce speed naturally? The same goes for the red light cameras though, which I like you’re mentioning; they aren’t very common where I typically go, but I’ve seen them at places. Could you tell me in what country this is in?

Our neighbors had a Ring doorbell at one point, but the thing was always speaking with a voice, which constantly tried prompting the user to perform some action, so I’m quite positive it has never functioned properly. But if it did, I’d probably ask them politely to pan it differently (they have those wedges you can mount between it and the wall: changing the angle); but thankfully my neighbors have already changed it back to a regular one.

Same, despite all the (financial) incentives to get me to drive electric (including self-induced gasoline price-hiking). Do you mind expanding on what it is you’re seeing at roadsides, and in what country this takes place?

As for out in public, I have been considering a really light mouth mask, glasses and a hat. I thought I was crazy…I really thought i was turning into an irrational paranoid person.

I’ve also been there, and honestly there might be something to it, but I feel like automated systems might ironically keep a closer eye, on those wearing: a mouth mask (thanks to training-data from the COVID pandemic), glasses, and a hat. And I have no answer to it when pay-by-face (which self-checkout registers here could already do technically) becomes widely adopted. For now I completely avoid said registers (despite the manned ones also having a camera nearby, but at least not ~50cm from my face); but entries to (public) transit terminals also increasingly have cameras at facial height (which might also be in preparation of pay-by-face). So in the not so distant future, your face may be captured with every transaction (whether you use the system or not: as the camera remains in place).

It seems like concepts from e-commerce are ported to the physical world: primarily the customer tracking and digital payments. And perhaps the entire web has been a simulation, in preparation for the digitization of the physical world. It’s quite difficult to make a payment anonymously online: customer details may be shared across web shops (to check for irregularities: potentially raising a red flag, prompting the customer to supply more details), and orders are increasingly fulfilled by centralized fulfillment centers (which take the details from “independent” shops, and know exactly what goes in your box, because they store and package the products). So perhaps we should “enjoy” physical shopping while we can, because online shopping seems to be the basis for future physical shopping (that is if shops don’t go delivery or pick-up only: similar to during the COVID pandemic; which goes for some IKEAs are around here).

I wish I could, but I don’t think I’m able to now. I’ve already been through a time of pessimism, but have realized this might be exactly what they’re after: unawareness (which is the overarching majority) or ignorance (despite being aware); while exactly now is the time to act. The Dutch government typically bases related legislation on meaningless, exacerbated statistics from pseudo-studies: financed by parties having a clear conflict of interest (an insurance company’s study, on people’s use of smartphones in cars, being a prime example). I believe there need to be more, localized communities, which take care to expose such government inconsistencies: as to rob them of their excuses. Destruction of “tax payer property” will only worsen things: additional cameras might be propped up to identify the suspects, and the government is able to associate privacy-advocacy with vandalism.

The authorities don’t have to (ab)use the technology against me, in order for me to be affected by it: in the presence of camera surveillance it makes me uneasy, and thus affects me. But I agree the average person is sadly, but somewhat blissfully, unaware of modern technology eroding their rights, and only start to care when they’re in the midst of it.

If the driver was given a monetary charge for every single license plate capture, there would be rioting in the streets

I wish they were, or at least aware, of the fact that the steep increase in parking tickets, is also due to ALPR technology (at the entry of lots, or mounted to enforcement vehicles), or when they accidentally enter a pedestrian area, enforced by ALPR cameras; but the sad reality is that they don’t; and the same goes for trackers (built into modern vehicles), or some “free” navigation app they’ve installed on their smartphone (listing cheap gas stations for instance, or ironically seeks to avoid speeding tickets…). Money is indeed always the incentive, but it’s only effective if people are unaware, or ignorant enough to not be able to, or willing to, look beyond the short-term monetary gain.

Interesting, in what country is this? And is it in specific areas (like retail for example), or implemented more broadly?

Same over here, with local chains increasingly forced to shut their doors (primarily as a result of the COVID pandemic, and the various developments ever since). And I completely agree, for most people it’s physically an unnoticeable change, but the change from: local, short-term, manual systems, to digitally transferable, long term, and automated ones, makes all the difference.

I’m quite confident most large chains were somewhat forced to have modern, GDPR-compliant systems in place (like Genetec for instance): undoubtedly allowing for integration of such analytics tools. And apart from that, they’ve had trackers in their carts (hidden in the locking-chain, or wheel-break assemblies) for as long as I can remember, and likely track user-location through app-use, or dedicated scanners too (for scanning products before you place them inside your cart); so I’m quite positive they utilize surveillance systems for that too.

Oh, did you want to opt out? Sure! You can. All you got to do is stop eating food!

I would just love to see those, that claim to be human, which are knowingly in support of these systems, try to justify the ethical ramifications in that statement alone. Which is “just” restricted to grocery shopping for now, but if the current trend continues, you’ll effectively become a prisoner to your own home. And quite rapidly so, if Europol’s ambitions to protect citizens from hypothetical adversary (kamikaze) drones, by use of drone swarms, atmospheric satellites and microphone meshes, becomes reality.

It’s an insane timeline we’re living in, and it’s so easy to give up all faith; but perhaps that is exactly what they want us to do. For us to feel powerless, and believing we are incapable of making a relevant change. I share the same ambitions as you, and I believe most human beings do naturally; but it’s becoming increasingly difficult when you have principles to stick by. I’ve already experienced this by transitioning away from big-tech platforms, and I would absolutely hate this translating into the physical world.

Surveillance surrounding car infrastructure is the most notable currently, but every larger public transportation hub has cameras all over too, together with on-board cameras in pubic transit vehicles, which are monitored in real time (despite moving around constantly). Perhaps you could give me a generalized description of your whereabouts and your activity, so I have a little bit more context on your surroundings. And yes, like I mentioned, it’s technically not allowed to have private cameras facing the public space, but without enforcement, you might as well not have it (or actually incentivizes people to hide them).

I’m quite interested in your experience in Prague, and would love to hear more about it. From your description it seems cameras in Prague are very apparent, which I consider to be a good thing. Whereas in The Netherlands surveillance systems are often installed to be unobtrusive; including those installed by authorities or businesses (which are typically recording the store’s entrance; and as a “by-product” the public space; and dome-style cameras are increasingly placed in public retail areas too: mounted (typically in groups) on poles, or to exterior of buildings).

A lot of ALPRs are well hidden here, and not uniformly recognizable (other than: being a fixed box-type camera, angled to capture the license plate (mostly the front: as to be able to capture the driver as well), and typically having an array of IR LEDs in or around the camera-body: lighting up the license plate). But as of recently, the national police has installed a mobile ALPR unit on my return-trip, and I’ve found myself in somewhat a similar situation to yours. Thankfully, they aren’t typically placed within residential areas (at least not outside of cities, which often do have pedestrianized areas or environmental zones, only permitted vehicles are allowed to enter); but I’m sure they’ll find a creative excuse for it in the near future.

I’ve tried taking a detour once, but noticed cameras above a bridge, that tick most of the boxes for being an ALPR, so it seemed to have proved fruitless (despite requiring me to pass through pedestrianized areas: slowing me down significantly). Cameras appear to be placed with care, seemingly using waterways as perimeters: forcing vehicles to drive over a bridge, underneath an aqueduct, or through a tunnel. Besides the initially mentioned ALPRs at gas stations (as you’re forced to fuel up periodically), and parking areas or other endpoints (as you’re forced to park your vehicle somewhere). It’s honestly quite clever, especially when you can potentially narrow down activity using consumer-grade or business surveillance systems.

Are you using the editor of openstreetmap.org (osm.org), or are you using some sort of app or alternative editor?

It always takes a few minutes for the map to render the updates (and often requires you to clear the cache: on the browser at least). For the routing to take the new path into consideration, it usually takes about a day or something, so I wouldn’t be waiting for that; just try again tomorrow and it should work. ;)

Because there’s no routable path there, and if there’s no indication of such a path being there, it should not be mapped. There’s cases of informal paths @[email protected]’s picture describes, and may be tagged with “informal=yes”. Other than that, I’m not aware of any routing services, which would behave like you’d want them to. The path of the starting point also seems raised (as being on a hill), compared to the endpoint; so I’m not sure how desirable this particular case would be, even if it were to be supported.

When I used it on GrapheneOS, it was to ensure untrusted apps (especially banking apps requiring Google Play Services) no longer remaining active after using them; but if you never close the work profile, they indeed remain active. But it’s a good measure regardless: to ensure you don’t accidentally give WhatsApp or whatever, permission to personal media; even if it means added inconvenience (which is the most common trade-off with privacy).

I would say the feature is quite easily avoidable, as it only seems to require one manual visit, for it to show in the suggestions; which I believe are sorted based on interactions with pages (so just interact more with pages, you want to be suggested more strongly). I would personally advise against using the feature, primarily because it ties all browsers, on multiple separate devices, to a common Mozilla account. So why broaden your attack surface, for advantages easily reproduced manually? Is the little bit of added convenience, worth the (potential) trade-off?

Welp, this was bound to happen, wasn’t it? I’m pretty sure they’re referring to this application, which I stumbled upon a while back. If I remember correctly, the app “allows” (or implicitly forces) the user to store a government issued identity: able to attest to an age-restricted website, whether or not the user is of age.

It does this, supposedly by “just” sharing an age-bracket with the website; but here’s the kicker: the Union, in its generosity, has granted their citizens an in-app option, to withdraw this signal from the websites it has been provided to. What this means in practice, is the app storing one’s government-issued identify, also ties back to every account requiring “age-verification”…

So now, every device containing the app, has the owner’s government-issued identify on it, together with connections to every age-restricted service. And considering the apps are maintained by the Union, or member states (through their own implementations), creating a backdoor to the application’s contents… I mean to “observe app usage”, would be absolutely trivial.

Again, I’ve read it a while back, so some things might’ve changed, and my memory might be spotty; but I’m quite sure it’s along the lines I’ve described.

Generally the rule of thumb is: if a service (including one focused on privacy and/or security) actively advertises itself (which Proton does a lot: especially through content creator sponsor-deals), be extremely wary. I was once also considering migrating to Proton, but luckily tried integrating the account into Thunderbird first; which led me to second-guess Proton’s intentions. It really didn’t sit well with me, they’re baiting users into (over-)committing to their service, encrypt their (primary) mailbox’s contents, and as a result paywall the process of data-migration (including to third-party email clients).

I instead went with a humble Disroot mailbox (I make a yearly donation to), and use fully separate Proton addresses as effective aliases: as I’m not interested in them being associated to my personal email anyway. Other than that, I’ve simply integrated all email accounts (I care about) into Thunderbird. For the big-tech accounts, I’ve backed-up their contents in Thunderbird, re-imported them locally (to be able to search them), and deleted all contents from the servers. I’ve changed the email of more important services to the Disroot account, and listen for any others I might’ve forgotten, on the empty big-tech accounts (which rarely receive anything).

For password managers I’ve always used KeePassXC: synced across devices by having the (encrypted) database on Google Drive, and later synced locally using Syncthing. The KeePassXC-Browser extension does the filling on the browser, and I’ve always used Keepass2Android for mobile (through the keyboard). Nowadays I just use my laptop for anything requiring login, and rarely use secondary (mobile) devices to begin with: eliminating the need for cross-device syncing altogether. The KeePass database lives on my secondary hard drive, and make sure to create backups periodically (which also goes for Thunderbird contents).

Limiting the services you depend upon also helps tremendously, so that even if all passwords are lost, you rarely feel affected. I’m confident I could lose 99% of my passwords, and wouldn’t care whatsoever. In fact, I’ve effectively been through that process already (when changing all recursive passwords to stronger, unique ones: through the “forgot your password?” fields), and could easily do it for important services once more. The most valuable piece of advice I could give, is to identify the important parts, and start from there. If you care enough for the emails effectively held ransom by Proton, perhaps configure the bridge once and extract the data; never to return.