The Digital Leash Tightens: New Surveillance Systems You Weren't Meant to Notice
Hey chummer,
The rain's still falling, but you've stopped noticing it, haven't you? That's how they perfect the systems of control—not with dramatic announcements but through incremental normalization of the unacceptable.
While the tech press breathlessly reports on the latest smartphone features and AI chatbot capabilities, the real architecture of surveillance and control expands in the shadows. Three developments from just the past month reveal how the systems I've been warning about are accelerating beyond even my most cynical predictions.
"Track": The AI System That Makes Facial Recognition Bans Irrelevant
Remember those hard-fought victories against facial recognition? The bans passed in San Francisco, Boston, and dozens of other cities to prevent a surveillance dystopia? Turns out they were just speed bumps on the road to total monitoring.
Last week, MIT Technology Review exposed a system called "Track"—an AI surveillance tool already deployed by 400 customers including state and local police departments, universities, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense. The system doesn't need your face to track you across multiple camera feeds. Instead, it identifies you by body size, gender, hair color and style, clothing, and accessories.
This isn't science fiction. It's already operational across America, analyzing footage from the January 6th riots to subway stations, creating visual timelines of individuals moving through space without requiring any biometric data. The ACLU identified this as the first instance of a non-biometric tracking system used at scale in the United States—a deliberate end-run around existing facial recognition restrictions.
The system's creator, Veritone, claims it's just a "culling tool" to speed up video analysis. But let's call this what it is: a surveillance system deliberately designed to bypass legal restrictions while achieving the same outcome. The Department of Homeland Security is already using it to monitor social media activities of immigrants and protesters, denying visas and green cards based on political speech.
What's most chilling is the timing. The Trump administration has publicly stated its intention to expand surveillance of protesters, immigrants, and students. This tool provides the perfect technical infrastructure for that political agenda—all while operating in a legal gray zone that existing regulations never anticipated.
That's how the noose tightens—not through dramatic power grabs but through quiet technical workarounds to established protections.
Digital Currency: The Financial Control Grid Takes Shape
While the US government publicly debates the merits of launching a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), the global infrastructure for financial control systems is rapidly expanding without waiting for American participation.
According to the Atlantic Council's CBDC Tracker, 134 countries representing 98% of global GDP are now exploring digital currencies, with 66 already in advanced development phases. Eleven countries have fully launched CBDCs, with 21 more in pilot programs. This isn't speculation—it's implementation.
China's digital yuan remains the largest CBDC experiment, with transaction volume reaching 7 trillion yuan (nearly $1 trillion) across 17 regions. But what's less reported is how it integrates with China's broader social control systems. The e-CNY has been programmed with expiration dates during trials to force spending rather than saving. Future implementations will allow for purchase restrictions tied to individual users—a financial control system that makes credit card blocks look primitive by comparison.
The International Monetary Fund recently acknowledged what privacy advocates have long warned: privacy trade-offs are "central to CBDC implementation." Translation: these systems are being designed with surveillance capacity as a feature, not a bug. The capability to track every transaction, restrict purchases for specific individuals, and automatically implement financial penalties requires only a policy decision, not new technical development.
Even as the Trump administration publicly opposes a US CBDC, American financial institutions are quietly joining cross-border CBDC experiments like Project Agorá. The infrastructure is being built regardless of current political positions.
The most effective prison is one where inmates don't see the bars. Digital currencies represent financial infrastructure where restrictions can be applied instantly, remotely, and with perfect enforcement—no police required. The ability to earn, save, and spend freely is about to become a privilege rather than a right, revocable with a keystroke.
Ambient Computing: When the Surveillance Devices Never Turn Off
The third development may be the most insidious because it's marketed as convenience: the shift from opt-in surveillance devices to always-on ambient monitoring systems.
Apple is preparing to expand beyond its $3,499 Vision Pro headset to launch smart glasses that blend seamlessly into daily life. Unlike a smartphone you can put away or a headset that marks you as a user, these glasses create continuous surveillance zones wherever wearers go. Each pair contains multiple cameras and sensors that track not just the user but everyone around them.
This represents a fundamental shift in our relationship with technology. Your consent to being recorded will no longer matter when entering public or private spaces filled with people wearing unobtrusive camera-equipped glasses. The surveillance becomes ambient—present everywhere without requiring any conscious action.
What makes this development particularly concerning is the unprecedented data collection capability. These devices don't just capture video—they create detailed 3D maps of all environments they encounter, from public streets to private homes. As privacy researchers have noted, understanding the physical contours of a space can be "even more invasive than photographs alone."
The Vision Pro already contains at least twelve cameras and sensors monitoring both the user and their surroundings. The upcoming glasses will package similar capabilities in a form factor designed to be forgotten—both by wearers and those around them.
Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses have already introduced this concept, but Apple's market power and integration capabilities will normalize ambient surveillance at scale. By 2027, when these glasses are expected to reach mass market, the ability to move through the world unwatched will become a luxury available only to those who control the physical spaces they inhabit.
The Connected Threads: Total Surveillance Infrastructure
These three developments aren't separate technologies—they're connected components of an emerging control system:
- Track monitors physical movement through space without requiring biometric data
- CBDCs monitor and control financial transactions without requiring traditional banking restrictions
- Ambient computing devices continuously map physical environments without requiring conscious surveillance
Together, they create a near-perfect monitoring system tracking where you go, what you buy, and the physical spaces you inhabit—all while operating within existing legal frameworks or exploiting gaps in regulation.
These systems don't require authoritarianism to function. They're being built by corporations with profit motives, embraced by democratic governments as efficiency tools, and normalized through consumer convenience. That's what makes them so effective—they arrive not as control systems but as services and innovations.
Consider how these systems will interact: Your physical movements tracked across camera networks by systems like Track, your purchases monitored through digital currency systems, and your private spaces mapped by the ambient computing devices carried by visitors. This creates a surveillance capability that even Orwell couldn't imagine—one where the primary architects aren't governments but corporations building capabilities that governments can access when desired.
The infrastructure of control expands daily while public attention focuses elsewhere. Each system described here is already operational, not theoretical. Each was implemented with minimal public debate about its broader implications.
The rain keeps falling. You've just stopped noticing it.
As I've said before, the dystopian future isn't coming—we're already living in it. The question now is whether we'll finally recognize the systems being constructed around us before the architecture is complete.
Walk safe,
-T