Of course they could be. The same way everyone around me could be a paid actor. But that's either absurd or frightening depending on your own psychology. A person pointing a camera at you without your consent, however, is almost universally disturbing.
To me, realistic understanding implies that I'm most likely not a specific target of surveillance cameras around town. Those were not set up because of me, and there is no alert in some security office when I enter a camera's field of vision. I imagine most people think like this.
A bit besides the point, but my phone has a unique identifier associated with it that is constantly communicated to my operator. It also has tons of other tracking software I have no clue about. While this is something I'd prefer didn't exist, same logic applies here.
I'm not pro-surveillance, but pro realistic understanding of it. I know it's not great, but what can you do? Go around town filming people and creep them out thinking you're making a point when in reality you're just annoying people?
If you have a realistic understanding you know that all those hours of video are being kept essentially forever, and that current ai capabilities are more than good enough to keep an eye on your every move using that data.
Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, you, personally, are being tracked, and that traking will remain and may be actionable at any time in the future.
Just be sure you don't piss off a cop, otherwise he might just look you up on the database and see that those cameras you thought weren't watching you actually captured a number or minor infractions for which you will now be fined.
> Just be sure you don't piss off a cop, otherwise he might just look you up on the database and see that those cameras you thought weren't watching you actually captured a number or minor infractions for which you will now be fined.
You know, I'll take that any day over some random weirdo coming to film me under the pretense of making a point.
How do you know they aren't filming you specifically[1], and why do you trust them?
[1] And don't say 'I'm not interesting enough', 'cos I don't believe you.