That's a bit of a reach, don't you think, Otokonoko? That the government must always be on the side of the good-guys?

Nazis were of course just one example, I could go on and on citing others: of course history does not repeat itself exactly, but it is paved with cases of abuse of power by authorities.

Even if there is nothing current that limits your freedoms, given their absolute powers, the authorities could at any time make and enforce immoral new legislation, and if that happened to be against your most cherished personal principles, then with the added technology you would be more likely to find yourself behind bars.

Now there happens to be one current piece of immoral legislation, so lets take it for example (and please bear in mind it's just an example) - I refer to the mandatory detention of refugees arriving by boat:

Suppose you were hiding refugees at large in your cellar out of compassion (I can safely write this because in case the government tracked my posts here, they would soon find that I have no cellar...). Assume they are genuine refugees, but the thought of incarceration was just so terrifying that they escaped, or suppose they managed to avoid the authorities and you picked them directly from their boat. Obviously this is a case where you are the good guy and the government are the villains. The more technology at their disposal, the more likely they are to incarcerate both you and your refugees.

You claim that you have nothing to hide - fair enough, YOU happen to have nothing to hide, but through your disclosures you make it easier for the authorities to find the odd one out. By creating a smoke-screen and not showing your cards (such as in the Nazi example if everyone was wearing the yellow badge which Jews were required to wear), you can help those true heroes who fight for justice and good against evil regimes.

I don't think the government must always be on the side of the good guys. However, opposing security technologies is opposing its use on those occasions when government IS on the side of the good guys as well as when it is not.

Your example is all well and good. However, for every person who breaks the law for humanitarian reasons, there are many more who break the law to the detriment of society. So that you can't be identified hiding refugees, you would ask that bank robbers, date rapists, vandals, burglars, con artists and other undesirables evade capture when facial recognition technology may allow otherwise?

This is indeed a serious moral dilemma, Otokonoko, similar to the "Runaway train" scenario (http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/fatman):

Is it right to kill one innocent person for the sake of saving 100 other lives? My answer is 'No'.

I would add that one's primary responsibility is to abstain from doing evil, rather than to make sure that others abstain. I agree that there are exceptional cases when killing another is not evil, but that requires the killer to be extremely pure and devoid of personal interests in the result of their action (death of another). That however cannot probably be said for any government in the last 1000 years.

Reducing the scale from "killing" to "incarcerating" does not change the principle. moreover so given that innocent/good/normative people tend to suffer much more in jail than hard-core criminals.

I could however support the use of facial-recognition technology, weighing it against my former case, if it were shown that it reduces the rates of incarceration of innocent people.

There is no doubt with the flase flag events of 911,that big brother of Orwellian dimenions is a reality.

So what are our feeble minded Hollywood worshippers of image over substanace going to do? Rise to the challenge of freedom and democracy or apologise to their masters for even having the temerity to question their authority.

Jo, I would suggest that all your misgivings about the ever-improving technologies available to law-enforcement agencies these days, would fade away if you or someone close to you was severely injured, or worse, as a result of crime.

Indeed, we would all welcome whatever technology was available to bring someone to justice if we were personally involved with the case.

I say the more new technologies available to make our world a safer place, the better.

Had to happen. The need for facial mapping - facial recognition - biometrics was a major issue in the robbery trial of Mundarra Smith. Police gave evidence they recognised him from bank footage, but their evidence was excluded as they had no formal qualifications in these fields. This is just technology trying to keep up with the law.