Gaul Atreides (@gaulatreides)

Remote camera tech and video monitors were able to get past people's natural revulsion to being spied on by a peeping tom by subtracting the human element from the equation. A camera situated in the ceiling corner of a retail shop doesn't trigger an emotional reaction in a person like it would if that camera was being held and operated by another person (hovering Spiderman-like, for the funny visuals). That's how the surveillance state was able to metastasize. People had no ingrained threat detection system to deal with inanimate peeping toms. So they gradually accepted each escalation in hi-tech voyeurism, until Flock and others like it popped up along their hiking trails and on poles outside their favorite outdoor cafes. By this time, the problem has become too large and intrusive too ignore. And people have now had decades to acquaint themselves with digital modernity and its discontents, and are starting to develop a keenly felt sense that those inaminate spyware tools ultimately have a human at the other end, doing whatever he wishes with your inalienable right to sip a fucking coffee in the morning without having your photo taken and uploaded to ten different data centers.