Berlin Under Watch | Men's T-Shirt White/Black

This photograph was taken in Friedrichshain, Berlin. Just a few streets from where we used to live. If you look closely, you can see the Berlin Wall in the background. In the foreground we added a border around the people passing by. It's the kind of border drawn by object detection algorithms to identify a target. In this case, the target is a human.

Object detection is not something malevolent in itself. It is used to count cars, track whether a player is offside at football, or monitor crop growth. The same capability that identifies a package on a conveyor belt can also identify a face in a crowd. And from there: a person of interest, a political dissident, or a whole demographic to be monitored. The step from useful to malevolent is always way shorter than we hope for.

For The Anti Tech, the choice of this photograph is not a coincidence. Berlin has its own history with surveillance and while that history might feel like a long time ago, we should not be naïve about what is happening now. Today it doesn't require a government: it just requires your consent to terms of use.

Think you are playing a fun free game? Millions of Pokémon Go players spent years scanning their surroundings for in-game rewards, contributing to a 3D navigation system now deployed in military drones.

Think you are just getting directions? Your maps app has been logging every location you have ever visited, available to data brokers, advertisers, and in some cases law enforcement.

Think you bought some useful glasses? Meta's smart glasses scans everyone and everything around them. What that data will be used for, we don't know yet.

We are holding our breath.