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Pocket panopticon: Auror

28/01/2025

Over on David Farrier’s Webworm, I have a piece about a plucky New Zealand tech company which is eroding privacy and generally just being super creeepy.

Have you visited a supermarket, been in a shopping mall, pumped gas, or been into a shop at all recently? Parked in the car park of a big box retailer, been slightly rude to a shop clerk, or acted in a weird way while buying things?

Congratulations.

Chances are you were photographed, your biometric information fed into a machine learning platform and added to a global surveillance database (which may hold other personal information about you) without your consent.

That surveillance database can be looked up by law enforcement — and retail workers with little to no privacy training — with very few checks and balances, and hardly any oversight.

You can read the full story over on Webworm.

A digital collage with a photo of a monitor showing a person shoplifting in a supermarket with security cameras crudely photoshopped on i.t
A digital collage with a photo of a monitor showing a person shoplifting in a supermarket with security cameras crudely photoshopped on i.t

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