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One of the best pieces of self-hosted software ever to exist.
Edit: This is Immich! for the folks who don't know.
You haven't heard of Ring cameras? Commercial security systems? They do basically what I'm describing, just not as well because they don't have as much of an incentive. Are end users willing to pay for these more advanced models? No, so consumer grade cameras stick to object detection like deer vs racoon instead of specific individual detection (e.g. scanning eyes).
Governments, however, are willing to pay that amount. Why? Because they think it'll help them detect criminals, and they think that helps keep people safe. It's an extension of the HOA idea, just with government-scale funds backed up with law enforcement to go after threats. That, in itself, isn't authoritarian, but setting up such a system opens the door for authoritarians to take control and misuse it.
Analogous, sure, but the HOA has no enforcement arm for non-residents, so all they can do is ask the police to intervene. That's the difference with a city, it has a police force it can order to intervene using information from that system. It's the mixing of enforcement and surveillance that makes it authoritarian.
So a surveillance system is not itself authoritarian, it's only authoritarian of there's some enforcement arm to enforce obedience or punish disobedience.
Again, I disagree. Something is only political when used for political ends.
Well there you go. It could be authoritarian, except an authoritarian govt isn't subsidizing it. Exactly like I described.
You keep walking straight into the points I'm making.
Wrong. Setting up a super invasive surveillance system is inherently authoritarian, even if they initially happen to use it for reasons that don't typify authoritarianism. You have to bend over backwards so hard to keep it from becoming authoritarian, that it will just naturally corrupt any entity that deploys it, even making the monumental assumption that an entity that deploys this didn't have the intention to use it for nefarious purposes from the start.
Is a rather clumsy piece of mental gymnastics. Not only have you said it before. You can use this argument, coupled with your earlier "it's constituent parts aren't authoritarian" to argue that nothing is authoritarian.
And again this is just the pro-gun argument. Fine on paper, useless in reality.
I'm making the argument that it is possible for software to be political even if it wasn't created as such. I only need to show that a single case is possible.
You are making the argument that it is impossible, and you keep trying to prove it by example.