u/Ok-Sundae-1191

I’ve been following the debate over Flock cameras for a while: the license-plate tracking, the ability to reconstruct people’s movements, and especially what happens when data collected for one purpose becomes available for another.

It reminded me of a consulting trip I made to China in 2019. I spent time in Chengdu and then on the Tibetan Plateau near Hongyuan. The surveillance there was impossible to miss: cameras everywhere, biometric collection at the border, and, as I learned later, a “grid management” system in the Tibetan region I visited that divided communities into monitored blocks.

What has stayed with me isn’t simply that China surveilled its population. It’s how quickly I changed my own behavior because I knew I might be watched. No one had to threaten me. The watching did the work.

That experience eventually led me to a larger question about Flock and the surveillance infrastructure being assembled in the U.S. The cameras themselves concern me, but I’ve come to think they’re only the visible part of a much larger issue: what happens when location data, voter records, citizenship status, health data, financial information and other previously separate databases become increasingly searchable and interoperable?

I spent quite a bit of time researching that question and ended up writing an essay that combines what I saw in China and Tibet with what’s happening here now. I thought this group might be particularly interested.

I’d be interested in where people here draw the line...not just on Flock cameras themselves, but on the ability to combine the information they generate with everything else governments and private companies already know about us.

Link in the first comment.

I’ve been following the debate over Flock cameras for a while: the license-plate tracking, the ability to reconstruct people’s movements, and especially what happens when data collected for one purpose becomes available for another.

It reminded me of a consulting trip I made to China in 2019. I spent time in Chengdu and then on the Tibetan Plateau near Hongyuan. The surveillance there was impossible to miss: cameras everywhere, biometric collection at the border, and, as I learned later, a “grid management” system in the Tibetan region I visited that divided communities into monitored blocks.

What has stayed with me isn’t simply that China surveilled its population. It’s how quickly I changed my own behavior because I knew I might be watched. No one had to threaten me. The watching did the work.

That experience eventually led me to a larger question about Flock and the surveillance infrastructure being assembled in the U.S. The cameras themselves concern me, but I’ve come to think they’re only the visible part of a much larger issue: what happens when location data, voter records, citizenship status, health data, financial information and other previously separate databases become increasingly searchable and interoperable?

I spent quite a bit of time researching that question and ended up writing an essay that combines what I saw in China and Tibet with what’s happening here now. I thought this group might be particularly interested.

I’d be interested in where people here draw the line...not just on Flock cameras themselves, but on the ability to combine the information they generate with everything else governments and private companies already know about us.

Link in the first comment.

SpaceX is trading around 30 percent over its IPO price, giving the company a $2.3 trillion market cap. Elon Musk’s 82% stake would imply about $1.9 trillion of SpaceX equity alone. For scale, one trillionaire = a thousand billionaires. There are roughly 1,000 billionaires in the United States. Musk's wealth essentially equals all of their wealth combined.

John D Rockefeller, the previous record holder, was worth around $400-$500 billion (today's dollars) at the height of his wealth, representing about 2-3% of U.S. GDP. Musk's wealth is equivalent to about 5-6% of U.S. GDP. 

Edit: many have pointed out that I was wrong about Elon's stake in SpaceX. They are correct, and I admitted that down the line in the thread. He has approximately a 40% stake in a $2.3 trillion company, which gives him about $920 billion. When you add in his stakes in Tesla and other ventures, he is still well north of $1 trillion. Apologies for my math error. The 82% I referenced is his voting shares, which means he has near total control of the company. But the point remains: $1 trillion is equivalent to 1000 billionaires. There are fewer than 1000 billionaires in the United States. If you remove Musk from the pool of billionaires, the total wealth of all billionaires in the United States is about $6 trillion. Musk himself is perhaps worth about $1.5 trillion, or a quarter of the worth of all other US billionaires combined.