I think we are likely moving in the direction of a surveillance state, but not in the way that the UK or China do it. The State won’t spend billions on an extensive network of cameras and sensors, they will merely write laws that require private companies to hand over any footage deemed relevant.
This is already happening with companies like Ring. It makes sense when I think about it, because it saves billions of dollars and offloads all the infrastructure management onto the private sector while still reaping the benifits.
I hadn’t really thought about it like that until now. It is like a distributed surveillance network with almost zero cost and overhead, scary.