Bruce Schneier is mistaken in claiming that there is no important difference between face recognition and other kinds of surveillance systems.

The error starts in the article's first line: "The whole point of modern surveillance is to treat people differently," referring specifically to commerce. That is only one of the points of modern surveillance: repression of dissidents, whistleblowers and journalists is another. The article's reasoning simply doesn't address that.

Face recognition is especially dangerous for this because it is especially hard to avoid. It is not hard to leave a portable phones (if you have one) home one day, and pay cash for travel and food that day. But it is very hard to avoid face recognition and license plate recognition. Therefore, those two types of surveillance pose a special danger to political freedom.

Chinese local officials endangered the whole world (starting with China) by covering up the danger of the new coronavirus for a few weeks. To avoid public attention required skipping crucial precautions that would have revealed the danger of the disease.

*Republicans push to weaken court that caught them rigging elections.*

In effect, they plan to gerrymander the election of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

A campaign in Rajasthan aims to make it acceptable for women not to cover their faces in public.

I am in favor of encouraging women to go unveiled if they wish. However, I worry that requiring them to unveil in order to vote could have the harmful effect of discouraging them from voting.

Qatar will make an improvement in the laws that now effectively trap foreign workers in the country, but a new requirement might have almost the same effect as the requirement being eliminated.