Intelligence operatives had a terrific view of Depeche Mode’s recent two-night stint at the Accor Arena, thanks to AI-powered mass surveillance algorithms. Smart cameras captured everything, everyone, in the name of protection.

French law enforcement and intelligence deployed the “threat-detecting” software as a trial run for the widespread surveillance that police of every rank will use during the 2024 Summer Olympics, which will take place from July 26 to August 11, 2024.

It turns out that Big Brother isn’t monitoring us, because we’re doing all the work for him.

Authorities will divide Paris into various zones, connected by checkpoints that require passes via QR code.

Spectacle is at play, lads and lassies. And what better stage for spectacular lust and hatred than the Olympics, originally a mud-fight between intelligent beefcakes?

The Paris Police Chief Laurent Nunez hailed the state overreach as “largely successful.”

One of the software platforms is Wintics, whose Cityvision provides “video analysis software for urban stakeholders.”

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Beyond the bone-chilling gravity of mass surveillance called “Cityvision,” especially when paired with the word “stakeholder,” the software's capabilities are unknowable. One of the biggest investors in Wintics is Ardian, a French private investment company that handles billions of dollars in assets and has assured us that Cityvision is a fantastic idea.

The media, meanwhile, has been vaguely giddy. The Washington Post announced that “AI is powering a revolution in policing, at the Olympics and beyond.”

Paris security perimeter to be enforced week before 2024 Olympics opening ceremony • FRANCE 24 www.youtube.com

Human Rights Watch in its World Report 2024 concluded that “surveillance technology at the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games poses risks to fundamental rights.”

Amnesty International urged French lawmakers to “reject any plans to use video surveillance powered by artificial intelligence (AI) at the 2024 Paris Olympics,” because “such draconian technologies of mass surveillance violate the rights to privacy and can lead to violations of the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” potentially leading to “dystopian levels of surveillance in the future.”

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this technological hyper-revolution, a war that we’d already surrendered to, outfoxed by the prevailing methods of digital control: self-surveillance and willing surrender of our privacy and some of our lesser freedoms, caught in an increasingly elaborate state of exception.

The urban fortress

France’s historic role in the spread and ubiquity of surveillance rivals its prestigious cuisine. “Surveillance” is a French word, after all. In the 11th century, this emerged in the restructuring of the city, leading the mid-1700s' invention of the urban fortress.

Law enforcement had figured out how to spy.

Napoleon was the first to use aerial surveillance — a new kind of espionage.

Suddenly, warfare was secretive. Invisible. Military violence became clandestine, the task of secret police, an “army of the interior.” Its weapons were surveillance and disinformation.

The war could take place behind the scenes. Nobody even had to know who was fighting. It was a game the elites could play on their own but through society.

This marks a shift from passive surveillance to active, AI-driven mass surveillance.

Modern warfare is about depriving the enemy. Containing its movement. The ability to move is the mark of freedom. This is part of the reason governments often want to centralize.

Where’s the revolution?

There’s a funny connection between surveillance and disinformation. We like to think that surveillance is designed to get rid of disinformation. In reality, surveillance and disinformation are like two con men pretending to fight.

They’re both working for intelligence agencies and secret services. Their job is to confuse us. To make us dumb. To believe in the right illusion. We’re supposed to feel tired and outraged.The funny thing about disinformation is that it’s a counterattack. It’s an assault on truth. It’s a way to silence. But in order to work, intelligence elites have to know what we think, feel, and believe.

Modern wartime always leads to a flood of propaganda, especially in the social media era. War is when the elites put all their knowledge of propaganda to use. Surveillance is how we lose our privacy and our personal information. Our information gives the powerful people even more power. Intelligence agencies use that information to make disinformation. Worse, they’re doing it all right before our eyes.

It turns out that Big Brother isn’t monitoring us, because we’re doing all the work for him.

We are experts at self-surveillance. We do it with a smile. For the sake of convenience, we surrender our privacy and some of our freedoms. All the while, a new totalitarianism is on the rise. Our future is a world of surveillance. Nonstop surveillance. More and more, we’ll be watched, scanned, monitored, ranked, punished, spied on, and evaluated.