<story><title>Beware state surveillance of your lives – governments can change for the worse</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/21/beware-state-surveillance-of-your-lives-governments-can-change-afghanistan</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wildrhythms</author><text>The difference to me is that data in the hands of the government falls under- at least- some thin veil of democratic oversight and accountability in how it&amp;#x27;s handled; data in the hands of private entities goes for the most part unchecked.</text></item><item><author>betwixthewires</author><text>Personally I&amp;#x27;m wary of any surveillance of my life, period. Governments are a worry, but so are private entities, at least because they&amp;#x27;ll hand over their data to governments with minimal resistance, but also because their goal is to use information about me to influence my behavior and worldview, a very insidious proposition.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nszceta</author><text>Taliban acquires US military biometric devices that can identify Afghans who assisted coalition efforts – reports&lt;p&gt;The Taliban has reportedly seized US military biometrics equipment that could expose Afghans who helped coalition forces – since they contain identifying data like iris scans and fingerprints as well as biographical information.
An unidentified Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) official told The Intercept that the Islamist group confiscated the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE) devices during its offensive push last week. The report was backed up by three former US military personnel.&lt;p&gt;They told the news outlet that the portable devices could be used to access sensitive information from large, centralized military databases, but noted that it was still unclear how much of the biometric database collected on the Afghan population has been compromised.&lt;p&gt;According to a US Army Corps of Engineers presentation, HIIDE devices use the data collected to create a “portfolio” that can then be imported into Biometrics Automated Toolset (BAT) identification-processing software as a “digital dossier.” This can be scanned against official watch lists for threats.&lt;p&gt;Besides tracking insurgents, the Pentagon was also reportedly keen to use the devices to gather unique data on 80% of the Afghan population to check for terrorist and criminal activity. Unnamed sources said biometric details of locals who helped the US were also collected and used in identification cards.&lt;p&gt;“We processed thousands of locals a day, had to ID, sweep for suicide vests, weapons, intel gathering, etc. ... [HIIDE] was used as a biometric ID tool to help ID locals working for the coalition,” an American military contractor told the outlet.&lt;p&gt;More info &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rt.com&amp;#x2F;usa&amp;#x2F;532419-taliban-biometric-data-afghan-coalition-collaborators&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rt.com&amp;#x2F;usa&amp;#x2F;532419-taliban-biometric-data-afghan-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Beware state surveillance of your lives – governments can change for the worse</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/21/beware-state-surveillance-of-your-lives-governments-can-change-afghanistan</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wildrhythms</author><text>The difference to me is that data in the hands of the government falls under- at least- some thin veil of democratic oversight and accountability in how it&amp;#x27;s handled; data in the hands of private entities goes for the most part unchecked.</text></item><item><author>betwixthewires</author><text>Personally I&amp;#x27;m wary of any surveillance of my life, period. Governments are a worry, but so are private entities, at least because they&amp;#x27;ll hand over their data to governments with minimal resistance, but also because their goal is to use information about me to influence my behavior and worldview, a very insidious proposition.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mostertoaster</author><text>I’d say the bigger difference is governments have a monopoly on the use of force. Certain companies could make your life a living hell I guess if they wanted with how much data they have on us though.</text></comment>