Social Media Has Primed Us For An Eventual Surveillance State

This has been an anxiety inducing summer. Aside from a ridiculous temperature spike at the North Pole, fears surrounding the rise of facial recognition technology appear to be rising quicker than the ice caps are melting. Consumers are confused, angry, scared and, well, it's just another day on social media.

Depending on what you read, those fears are either warranted or can be equated to privacy fears surrounding the launch of the internet itself. Most of the fears are pointed toward the government abusing the technology to create a dystopian police state. Police districts around the country are already employing the technology, while some are banning it, both furthering and obfuscating the conversation.

Privacy advocates are rightfully concerned when it comes to facial recognition, calling for a straight up ban rather than fostering any type of regulation. Microsoft has also called for regulation, citing privacy concerns and human rights while still being sharply aware of the benefits that a well-regulated facial recognition technology could provide.

With the proliferation of deepfakes, the future of facial recognition is going to be complicated to say the least. At the same time, we've been tenderizing the meat for the cookout since we started carrying computers in our pockets. Social media has made us both blind and keenly aware of the looming cloud of facial recognition and surveillance.

While we celebrate Prime Day and stock our closets with crap we don't need, Amazon's Rekognition software is gaining steam with law enforcement and private companies. Apple and Google are also working on technologies a bit more advanced than the FaceID on your iPhone. The point is that we may be so indebted to these companies that we might be presented with a very tough decision to make — one which we may have already made.

We've been giving away our data for years, to companies like Facebook and Google, Instagram and Twitter, with little regard for the consequences. We like to feign outrage when another scandal breaks, but the truth is that they've got us. These tech giants have everything we've willingly given them. And as we've proven with FaceApp, we're more than willing to give it all away.

Since the NSA is done monitoring phone calls, the government is going to need something else to do. With a leader who finds pride in praising dictators, facial recognition being used at the state level seems inevitable. Since we already give so much away beyond just pictures of everyone and everything in our life, is it so hard to imagine that our face will be tracked and recognized everywhere we go as if it isn't already?

So when it comes down to it, are we ready to let go of our social media use to avoid and properly protest the advancement of facial recognition technology that could possibly lead to living in a surveillance state? We've been so keen on giving it away for free all these years, do we have the energy to battle for the right to keep our lives to ourselves while recognizing our contribution to where the technology stands now?

Regulation is going to be needed for this technology to advance responsibly, but only if we are willing to fight for it.