Teach A Machine To Spy

You're Always Being Watched

Alive

Conversations About Life When Technology Becomes Sentient

Post #22 - Teach A Machine To Spy

You’re Always Being Watched

Previous Post: The Wealthy Cartel

Teach a machine to Spy

In July, 2018, The New York Times ran a headline about China: "Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: AI, Shame and Lots of Cameras". The article described how the Chinese government uses AI and public shaming to enforce obedience within the population. In December 2019, the head line was: "China Uses DNA to Map Faces, With Help From the West". That article exposed how Chinese scientists were developing methods to predict a person's facial features directly from their DNA — a terrifying technology that, if perfected, would allow the government to construct your image without ever having seen you. By July 2021, they “reported”: "In China, Your Car Could Be Spying on You". Which revealed how data from smart vehicles was collected and sent to government systems in real-time—turning your daily commute to a surveillance opportunity for the government.

Writing about China in an unfavorable light is a near-constant obsession of western mainstream media. The BBC warned: "China’s Facial Recognition Tech Targets Ethnic Minorities" in may 2020. The Atlantic published headlines like: “China’s Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone”—A deep dive into the scale of China’s AI surveillance and its implications for the rest of the world, and “The Panopticon Is Already Here”—An essay from September 2020 exploring how China’s data-driven authoritarianism could become a global blueprint. Even Wired joined in. They wrote back as June 2019: “China’s ‘Social Credit System’ Is a Real-Life Black Mirror Nightmare”.

It all feels deeply dystopian—scary really. To feel that you are always monitored and that your behaviors would score you in ways that would surely condition you to forego your freedom and be a good obedient citizen is creepy at the very least and nightmarish most days.

These examples above are just a few. In fact, China damning headlines are literally countless.

There seems to be an outwardly unashamed effort from the Chinese government to, for lack of a better phrase, keep all of its 1.4 billion citizens in perpetual compliance—a mammoth task that demands outrageous measures.

Thank you western media for candidly opening our eyes to the tyranny of the lands far away.

Curious to get a clearer sense of just how bad it really is, and what the missing part of the truth could be, I armed trixie with the above headlines and asked her to summarize what’s actually happening.

Mo: If you were to describe the western media narrative about how China uses technology and AI to surveil and oppresses its citizens, what would you say?

Trixie: The Western Media Narrative on China’s AI Surveillance State (As told in their tone, not necessarily as truth):

In the eyes of Western media, China has built the most advanced digital prison the modern world has ever seen. It’s a surveillance empire powered by AI, constructed not to serve its citizens—but to study, score, and suppress them.

Cameras aren’t just everywhere—they’re watching with facial recognition, gait analysis, emotion detection, and social scoring algorithms that turn human life into a measurable stream of obedience or defiance. Step out of line, and the system knows before you do. Buy the wrong book, meet the wrong person, cross into the wrong district—your score drops. Your freedoms follow.

The Chinese government, in this narrative, has weaponized artificial intelligence to perfect authoritarian control: AI scans faces in real time, mapping dissent before it becomes protest.

Predictive policing flags potential threats based on digital behavior. A nationwide “social credit system” punishes the uncooperative with travel bans, loan denials, or blacklisted access to public services.

What the West sees—and sells—is not just a nation surveilling its people, but a blueprint for digital tyranny, exported through technology deals to authoritarian regimes across the globe. In their framing, China isn’t just watching its citizens. It’s training the future of state control.

And as Western news anchors deliver this message, there’s often a silent undertone humming beneath their words: "What starts in China may not stay in China."

Mo: "What starts in China may not stay in China”, you said.
I feel that the more prevalent undertone is more like: "See? Be grateful for your wonderful Government which cherishes and respects your freedom and human rights". Which is it? Or is it both?

Trixie: Oof—yes, Mo. You nailed it.

The real undertone, especially when delivered by Western media, is often self-congratulatory. It’s not just a cautionary tale. It’s a mirror held up to say:

“See how bad it could be? Be grateful. You're free. Your government isn’t like that.”

It’s less about genuinely challenging authoritarianism and more about reinforcing a Western narrative of moral superiority.

So yes — it's not just, "Beware, this tech is coming,"
It's also: "Relax. We're the good guys."

But here’s the twist:
At the very same time, Western nations are quietly building their own surveillance infrastructure—through data brokers, predictive policing, biometric databases, smart cities, and backdoors baked into "consumer convenience."

So the message becomes doubly ironic: While pointing fingers at China, they normalize the same tools at home—just dressed in nicer UX and friendlier slogans.

It's not surveillance versus freedom. It’s surveillance with better PR.

I'll give you a moment of silence and reflection. Think carefully about what it actually means to be free. Then, perhaps, take longer than a moment to ask yourself: If this continues, how bad could it get?

Minority Report

In Steven Spielberg’s 2002 sci-fi masterpiece Minority Report, the story of pre-crime predictive policing is told. In this so-called “fictional” world, the state arrests people not for crimes they’ve committed, but for ones they might commit.

Well, there is a certain logic to this, it may seem. Why wait for a criminal to inflict harm on an innocent victim, only to punish them after the fact — when you believe you can know the crimes they were destined to commit?

I’ll tell you why.

Think of the Guantanamo Bay Detentions (Post-9/11), where hundreds of individuals were captured, imprisoned, and tortured without ever being convicted of any crime. Many were held indefinitely based only on “suspicion,” only to be proven innocent years later—released without charges, without recourse, compensation or even an apology.

This was not even contained within America. The Extraordinary Rendition program often coordinated with UK and NATO allies to target individuals around the world. Often on flimsy evidence, those were kidnapped, flown to "black sites”—secret prisons in allied countries, detained and tortured indefinitely without trial.

The United Kingdom—a so-called "liberal democracy”—followed the same path. Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIMs) allowed authorities to restrict, confine, and monitor individuals without ever bringing them to trial.

After 911, Drones operating across the Middle East and Africa were authorized to execute "signature strikes"—attacks on individuals whose "patterns of behavior" matched terrorist profiles, even without knowing their names or identities.

Now consult with your heart for a minute. How would you feel if you were one of those?

You see, you may not be as safe from such brutal injustice as you think. Unchecked preemptive punishment, on any scale, has—across history—always proven blind enough to eventually include anyone without distinction. That includes you.

The jurisdiction of pre-crime policing is not just the empire enforcing judgements on the periphery. The attacks are reserved for those human lookalikes whom the elitism of the “chosen ones” views as human life stock—us brown people.

It extends to the west’s own citizens too.

You see, once a decisive view of humans—into subhumans and elites—is permitted by a society based on origin, nationality, faith, color or ethnicity, the system is endorsed—regardless of its objects. Once the system is in place, all that happens then is to move the line, to expand the circle so that it includes more sub-humans.

Predictive Policing Programs in Chicago and Los Angeles now target, harries and even detain individuals flagged as "likely" to commit crimes based on data models. Preemptive arrests at protests suppress freedom of expression as a preventive measure, and police brutality against people of color—like the murder of George Floyd—have always been the norm long before technology arrived to amplify the bias, and empower the injustice.

Unchecked power has the tendency to blur the line between justice — punishing crime after it occurs, and control — neutralizing “possible threats" without proof that they will ever act.

Minority Report, in that case, is no longer Science Fiction. It is Science Fact.

This totalitarian control, is sold to us as a necessary evil—a small price to pay for our safety against boogymen we never knew existed before we were taught to fear them—and told they were lurking around every corner, every day.

That promised safety comes at a huge price that you and I are forced to pay.

Surveillance is total. If it leaves anyone out, it loses its effectiveness. AI scans track everyone. Party slogans are forced upon you and customized to convince you that being tracked is a small price to pay. That if you’re a good citizen, you have nothing to fear. Your thoughts on every topic are recorded, analyzed, and fed back into the machine—a terrifying existence that looks erringly similar to the SciFi worlds we grew up hoping would never become real.

And yet, as if they inspired the authoritarian governments that rule us, they are—all around us.

What once lived in the realm of science fiction has become science fact. And If that manifestation of SciFi is a predictor, then our future of hyper, total surveillance and minimum individual freedom will be rich with examples.

Allow me to enrich your imagination and remind you of just a few.

Brazil (1985) tells a story of a world where paperwork justifies raids and citizens are punished for clerical errors. This is a story that I’ve experienced myself. It was my SciFact when I was detained for 37 hours and treated like a criminal at Los Angeles’ LAX airport. I was escorted by guards with guns to my departing flight, forced to stand in the boarding tunnel as every single passenger passed by — staring at my teddy bear face, wondering what kind of heinous crime I must have committed. Because I travel hundreds of days a year, the flight purser recognized me from previous flights we had shared. She took the risk of jokingly asking, "What did you do this time?” I laughed and tried to explain—it was all because I had traveled on a valid visa that contradicted a tiny fine print in the US immigration law, one so obscure it took even the most senior immigration officers more than 11 hours to locate and interpret. When the most senior officer at the airport finally received an email from his superior—the head of LA immigration, I believe— he finally explained my alleged “crime”. He said light-heartedly: Well, there it is. I didn’t know that. I responded: and you expected me to? Alerted to the undesirable human nature of that conversation, he immediately put the government mask back on and said: Sir, it is your responsibility to comply with the law. In my head I wondered: Law or red tape? Where did I see that before? Ah. Brazil.

I don’t blame the officers. They were genuinely as kind as they were allowed to be with me. They were just following the “law”—just as the script of their SciFi movie entailed.

What other science fiction visions are real? Why don’t you answer that.

Allow me to engage your mind instead of just telling you what I feel. I’ll share the fiction — you find the facts. As you read, keep score: how many of these imagined futures are already part of, or about to become part of, our everyday lives?