Call me paranoid or prescient, but it sure sounds like the "powers that be" are gleefully putting into place all the monitoring and weaponry (Cf. "militarization of the police") that they need to ensure the next great uprising (à la Ukraine, Arab Spring, etc.) will never, ever take place here. No matter how hard working conditions get for the proles slaving away in e-commerce "Fulfillment Centers", or migrants laboring in the fields.

Cross-reference that with the ongoing political tactic to encourage America's various sub-groups to vehemently dislike each other (Limbaugh, FOX, et.al.), the very limited functional political discourse in this country, and the fact that the federal USA is simply too big to functionally organize a "nationwide" resistance anyway, and you have a recipe for Happy Societal Self-Control (TM) ... :D

Now, where's my Soma?

Looks like we will get $15 an hour, but at the expense of all the terrible legislation the council can pass, because Sawant has burned up all of her political capital on a single issue, instead of leveraging her position to become an actual participant in government. But, hey, at least the salt mines will pay a living wage.

There are some benefits to this when someone is murdered and the police need to track down the killer. That's going to be the argument that gets these kinds of surveillance tools in place. There needs to be a simple rule here that can be easy to enforce due to simple clarity. Something like: Police can only access this tech/surveillance in the case of violent felonies. Anything outside that is strictly verboten.
I know it's easy to rail against this stuff, but this is here and a better solution is to make sure that the rules of its use or even access to it are simple and strictly enforced so they can't be used against the rest of us.

Congratulation on living in East German police state, America!

One simple rule we could impose to reasonably constrain use of SPD's facial recognition technology: Prohibit use when the location of the person depicted in the image is known or can easily be discovered.

Police should not be allowed to use this technology to identify people standing before them who are not required to identify themselves. If they know where the person in the picture is and wish to know who he is, detain him for questioning. If a person the police wish to identify is not required to identify herself and police are unable to identify her on sight alone, transmitting her image back to the Photo Unit at SPD HQ for analysis is unacceptable. If 100 people are reasonably suspected of the crime of pedestrian interference during a political demonstration, secretly photographing each person and transmitting each image to the Photo Unit where a trained technician will use a computer in an attempt to identify each person using facial recognition technology, then transmitting back information about any matches so that police can selectively enforce the law against known "troublemakers" is unacceptable.

Use of facial recognition technology exclusively for identifying people whose location is not known should cover most or all use cases that the public are likely to find acceptable.

@3 - Let's put RFID trackers and 24/7 lapel cameras on all police officers. With a full punitive inquiry if they ever get turned off whilst on shift.

Who watches the watchmen? Let it be All of us. Surveillance tools deployed against all, not just "some", ie., those without power.

We can start with Eric Schmidt.

@4 - The Stasi vs the NSA, a gentle comparison

@5 - "...mitting each image to the Photo Unit where a trained technician will use a computer in an atte..."

This isn't 1986, my friend. All that sort of business, assuming any particular PD has it deployed at all, is already fully automated. There is no "trained technician"; it's an app on the cops lapel camera conversing directly with their photos-database (probably linked to the main FBI database) to determine who you are. In only a few short years, your full profile will be then available on the cop's "Google Glass" variant product.

@8: See Seattle Police Manual section 12.045 Booking Photo Comparison Software.

2. Only Department Trained Photo Unit Personnel Will Use BPCS

I'm well aware that those trained personnel likely need only watch the requests roll in and across the screen to "use" the BPCS system.

I worked on a job with Booz Allen implanting microphones under the floors of every seat in the NAS Oceana training auditorium. We even spy on our military leaders. Wonder if the spys have the classified security clearance our generals do? Snowden didn't. We are not more secure giving law enforcement carte banche license to violate the Constitution as well as state and federal laws. We are all in for a less profitable, less secure America. How's your future look to you? You could be a neighbor of an power grubbing law enforcement agent & find out your life has been destroyed so he could impress his friends. I was implanted with a biochip - See A Note on Uberveillance by MG & Katina Michael or Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence by Springer. We are all doomed by the Senate "unIntelligent" Committee.