Mass Surveillance

Updated: October 1, 2026

The discussion of Mass Surveillance can go quite deep. That’s my intentions with this page - deep dive into my thoughts surrounding mass surveillance, privacy, government, and all things I find wrong with how the government is always watching our every move.

As my thoughts progress on a variety of topics discussed here, this page will be updated accordingly. Transcribing my thoughts to writing is a difficult process, so I tend to babble on.

Enjoy!

Now, let’s get started.

I have nothing to hide

A phrase I hear too often when telling people my concerns with online Privacy, or privacy in general, is I have nothing to hide. Neither do I, so why is it such a huge concern? Simply put, I don’t like my privacy being breached. Companies and Government do not need to track my every move, my every search, my every click, etc. Everything you say and do is being tracked! This can be used for so many nefarious things.

Let me give some examples:

1. Did you know the CEO of Flock cameras is living behind a gated fortress, protected by security guards, and changes his car and route everyday. How ironic that the guy profiting over mass surveillance doesn’t want to be surveyed.
2. Imagine someone walking up to you, putting their hands in your pockets, taking everything inside said pockets, only to hold onto it forever and never use it – or do anything with it. Surely, you don’t mind! That’s a clear breach of privacy and if I were a betting human, you would probably have a problem with that.
3. Out to eat at a fancy restaurant, suddenly you have to excuse yourself to take a toilet clogging shit. Maybe it’s time to start eating healthy, but I digress. When you slam your pants to the ground to avoid squirting liquid chocolate all over the floor, you look over and see a small hidden camera. Instantly, your embarrassed because you can’t control your anus like a gaped out power bottom in a bathhouse (wow, you know what I’m talking about? That’s suss...). Wait...why is there a camera looking at you doing your business? Isn’t that pretty creepy? Who’s using this information? Even a step further...what if this camera was yours in your own bathroom? First off...why do you have a camera in your bathroom? You know what...let’s not go there. You get my point!
4. Spending an afternoon at the park with your wife and children sounds like a beautiful way to spend time together as a family. That is, until you look over and see someone taking pictures of your children. When they notice you have spotted them, they walk away in a hurry, never to be seen again. Yeah, that’s very odd, don’t ya think? What are their intentions with these photos? Sure, maybe it’s nothing, but maybe it’s the spark of the worst moment in your life.

Truthfully, these all seem like silly examples, but it’s something you should consider. What if the government had access to everything (which they already do)? Of course, intentions always start out pure, but how long will that last?

Time and time again, distrust in government makes itself prominent. China and North Korea are two prime examples of countries with mass surveillance states.

Instead of saying you have nothing to hide, it might be wise to ask the question: Why is my right to privacy being violated?

Walmart Surveillance Pricing

Mass Surveillance and pricing can be seen in nearly all aspects of your life. Imagine this for a moment: You walk into Walmart and pricing is dynamic based on whether you make a certain amount of money, commonly shopped items, the vehicle you drive, etc. The scary reality, this is already happening with Walmart Surveillance and their new digital price tags.

By 2027, Walmart plans to have all their paper price tags upgraded to the digital price tag. You are being followed 24/7 and now pricing of the products you buy could be different than the person standing directly next to you in the isle.

When Walmart (or other stores that are incorporating these digital price tags) start charging you more for toilet paper because they know you have diarrhea, don’t act like I didn’t tell you so!

Let’s get a bit more nerdy about retailers and their tracking systems. How they are used to identify you and the fact that all your data is being shared.

Big retailers use extremely sophisticated shopper tracking systems that use a ton of data points to identify what product you're looking at or will purchase (aggregate, and individual). Overhead cameras, WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC and Ultra wideband beacons track you through the store, more cameras, sometimes in the in the shelves to track your eyes to the level of which SKU you looked at.

All of this data is packaged and sold, with the best systems doing it in near-realtime.

So you get the shits after you go in to your workplace, you leave and decide to see your doctor for treatment. Maybe you work for a decently large company, the cloud-based HRMS software records a sick-leave absence. This data might be anonymized, packaged and sold.

• The Flock Safety cameras that your city councilors approved the installation of (because Flock bribed them) that have tracked your morning commute now catch you going outside of expected behavior. This data is packaged and sold.
• You're at the doctor's office, they note in their cloud-based EMR system that you have diarrhea, but you decline a prescription because the copay makes your Bristol Stool Scale 7 look better in comparison. This data is anonymized (we'll come back to this later), packaged and sold.
• As you walk to your vehicle, a Bluetooth beacon in the pharmacy records the presence of your mobile device. This data is packaged and sold.
• You drive to your favorite Walmart, Flock be doing Flock things again, recording your journey. There's probably some Flock cameras in the parking lot.
• As you enter Walmart, their Bluetooth beacons record the presence of your mobile device.
• You've been there several times before and haven't even looked down the gastro aisle of the medicine section, maybe they already know through your Meta or Google advertising profile that you haven't visited walmart.com in the last 9 months, and they know that no local affiliate TV network is running advertising from Kenvue Inc, maybe they can infer that you have very little consciousness of what your over-the-counter medication normally retails for (within "reason").
• The Walmart datacenter in Colorado Springs knows everything you've ever done in any Walmart in the US, along with your family (they came with you once or twice, carrying their own mobile devices).
• That datacenter is also ingesting massive amounts of data from brokers selling the aforementioned packaged data.
• They can correlate an abnormal drive to a doctor (vehicle plate XXX-XXX). Your local law enforcement provides direct license and registration data to entitles like Flock and Palantir (for LEO convenience and corporate revenue streams), they know you're cspinelive.
• Anonymized patient #1294471287 happened to be around your doctor's office at the same time as diarrhea was recorded in the EMR system hmmm.jpg, says the machine learning model.
• Walmart will calculate a probability that csplinelive, Walmart shopper 25c0b7e9-226d-4623-86fd-19d6eed00dad and anonymized patient #1294471287 are the same person.
• If the probability score reaches their configured thresholds, as long as other customers aren't around to notice (or the system can confirm that their eyes aren't literally looking at the Immodium price tag), the tag can be updated via radio-frequency before you glance at it.
• Based on publicly sold data, they likely know your income level (thanks TurboTax) and where you live (thanks TenantCloud/Zillow). They will calculate a willingness to pay value that is specific to you.
• You grab the Immodium and head over to the checkout. The checkout knows you're 25c0b7e9-226d-4623-86fd-19d6eed00dad, so you scan your Immiodium and it's 220% above MSRP. You're desperate and about to shit yourself (Walmart knows how long it took you to drive over here, and the average amount of time between bouts of liquid shit), you pay the troll toll. Your willingness to be abused as a consumer is recorded, packaged, and sold by Walmart to other retailers, selling data is a decent revenue stream for them.
• Home Depot knows all these things too, including what you bought at Walmart. HD has nothing to do with your diarrhea journey today, but now they know some of this correlated data too. This data is packaged and sold. Next time you go buy weed killer at HD, Walmart shopper 25c0b7e9-226d-4623-86fd-19d6eed00dad might be offered a coupon in the hopes that, next time, you go to Walmart instead of Home Depot ("ooh, what a treat, thanks Walmart for saving me money" you say.)

On "anonymized" data: A single anonymized data point can be truly anonymous. For every. Single. Additional. Anonymized datapoint, the entire point cloud closes in on the verymuch de-anonymized YOU. Every classification point is an additional circle in the Venn Diagram. If I told you my timezone, you could figure out the east/west range of where I'm located in the country. Combine that with the available coverage of your health insurance network, they might get down to a few states. Your Bluetooth/UWB beacons are triggered within 100mi of [GPS Lat, GPS Lng], down to the city. Refine, refine, refine, use statistical analysis to positively correlate actions over time. Once you're identified you can never again be anonymous.