this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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Will they actually devote the resources to try to pierce the anonymity of those handful of people? Everything we've seen about how tech companies operate is that they reach a threshold of "good enough for most cases" and don't bother trying to optimize the edge cases. Collecting the billions of data points to try to use dozens of analysis techniques, and then having some kind of meta analysis on how to resolve disagreements between models, would be resource intensive beyond their own profit motives.
Someone who wants to defeat gait analysis with a different pair of shoes (heel height and sole thickness and back support affect how people walk), and wears a mask might lose the arms race if the tech companies choose to continue to improve the tech even after it's already good enough.
I think it's possible but not inevitable. Especially if there's a financial reckoning for AI companies soon.
Even if businesses are willing to settle for good enough, governments most certainly will NOT. Those attempting to evade detection will be those they're most interested in identifying, which is why I mentioned that failure to successfully falsify will get you flagged as having attempted it and probably how. From a government's perspective, the ones attempting to evade detection are the ones most likely to be criminals or, even worse in their eyes, rebels. Governments, especially authoritarian ones, will make sure the tech constantly pushes the boundaries of what's possible, or at the very least defeats the vast majority of known evasion techniques.
Then, if business really has left the evaders unidentified, they'll start adopting the tech from government. Better data with no R&D? Why wouldn't they at that point? Governments might even subsidize it because it helps them spread the greater surveillance network.
Well they are building data centers like they want to have enough resources to do just that.
Given how rapidly they've been trying to tighten their grip lately? Yes. They want to know everything about everyone all the time. And they don't give two shits if we consent to it.
There's always making them wrong by being different every time.