If you have a surveillance state, it will not "will up the game by referencing other data". It will simply make the gears illegal, and the price to pay harsh. Now you won't dare wearing them and if you do, you are guilty even if you are not a criminal, and tagging yourself as such, making it easier for the police to find you.
Most people will just accept the new surveillance reality and then act according to the state's wishes, exactly as most drivers slow down when they see a cop by the side of the road.
A large railway station can have 15 to 100 million passenger entries per year [1]. That means if 0.1% of people hide from facial recognition, cops at such stations could arrest 40-270 people per day. And with a suspect arrested, a photo showing them in disguise, and a police witness, it's an open-and-shut case.
That's way more cases closed per cop-hour than investigating complex crimes like burglary, murder or rape. Just what you want, if your police chief is judged on their clean-up/arrest rates.
And if order of fewer people than that are avoiding facial recognition? Then you've got a surveillance state.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_railway_statio...
You need to make one mistake, just one. Plus, these people stick like sore thumbs
Addition: and our best and brightest are working at Google and Facebook to develop the necessary infrastructure.
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
Of course governments and bussiness don't want this to change because they can take advantage of this with the new technology.
But it doesn't mean that the previous laws are appropriate for today, nor imo should any legal precedents apply any more because the situation has significantly changed.
That is true in a legal sense. That's why I put "legally" at the beginning.
The point is there are no legal hurdles to overcome for the government. These are the most difficult and this is absolutely true. Legally we have very little if any privacy in public. The only hurdles are technological ones, which automate the inspection of people in public areas. (i.e. facial recognition cameras).
Police can spy on your in your own home legally, if you leave a window open, because you just made that part of your home public. They'll setup across your yard and watch you with telescopic lenses. Police also spy on people in their own homes using IR and thermal cameras, which cannot be defeated easily, and this crosses (leaps) the boundary of your home being private. Apparently the thermal radiation emitted is now public space. I remember this in court, but don't remember the outcome.
I suspect though that when these laws were made, lawmakers didn't anticipate the ease and scope of which automation could make spying. Maybe they'll reconsider, but the police departments have a lot of sway over lawmakers, so I seriously doubt it.
Have no doubt though, police aren't interested in your privacy, they are interested in arrest counts. Privacy laws are an inconvenient burden to their jobs and they will use any methods they can think of to circumvent your privacy rights and argue technicalities in court. They will usually win.
Of course, all of this was enabled with the War on Drugs.
The legal ability of police to spy that we have today is such circumvention.
But to your point, if the government of the last 5 decades is willing to skirt the constitution as written, I'm not sure how much a new one with stronger verbiage will fair.
Note that if you completely change everything about you, a system could detect that something is fishy because it can't match you with anyone. A work-around would then be to instead mimic someone (and make sure that the someone is not being seen by any camera at the same time as you, and that they could realistically be in the same place as you).
This is already happening btw, with bans on facial covering clothing (e.g. the niqab, but it's automatically extended to balaclavas and full helmets when worn off of a motorcycle) in e.g. France.
Amongst some other projects by Adam Harvey centered on facial recognition: https://ahprojects.com/projects/
I don't think you would last long, though. And horses are probably not allowed at most concerts.
Most of the time people contact me by instant message or comments for social stuff, and emails for work stuff. It's rare that I get a call that wasn't pre-arranged.
Actually I'd feel rude phoning someone without arranging it first. Not terribly rude, but a little uncomfortable. What if they are driving or in an important meeting?
So maybe phones are there to let me check messages and alerts when convenient. A huge proportion of the money you paid for that phone went on the data modem after all. It isn't really a phone means voice, or sound. But folders on a computer are not made of paper. It's just a word.
Not that I'd suggest putting your phone in a bag.
Then they don't answer it. It's called self control!
LOL
Literally as I typed that above my phone started ringing, I didn't recognize the number, answered it, and it was a spam call. Lasted 12 second. That's the only one in my "recent" calls, which go back to March 27th. What are the chances.
Things have evolved to this? How do you arrange the phone call? Call them to ask if you can call them :) ? If you have to think about it or are unsure, then don't call them.
I'm happy to say that my problem is different, I'm not fond of phone calls, but when I call them, they're thrilled.
But wearing large sunglasses in the evening, or a hat that covers part of your face, can be used as a signal that you're hiding something.