They are already flying over some big cities and constantly capturing everything in car-level resolution, then when a "crime" happens they can roll the tape back and see the where the car came from.

https://radiolab.org/podcast/eye-sky-2306

"Persistent Surveillance System" google blackholed of course

Yep, a video about it capturing a murder (blurry video from 7 years ago I'm sure it's even better today):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJLr0KMsRAA

This is why everyone should vinyl wrap their cars. Then if anything happens, just peel it off.

A big point from the podcast isn't that the goal is to identify you or your car later as you might think. It's that they can "rewind" the footage and trace where the offender came from and show up at their doorsteps within minutes/hours. It's as much about traceability as identification. A vinyl wrap won't help that.

Also why you should wear a ski mask in every bank, in case “something happens”

Perhaps the fact that it all of a sudden became acceptable (to put it mildly) to cover the lower half of one's face has some benefits after all.

After all, who could object to a safety measure?

David Brin has idea after thinking about future making surveillanace unavoidable. The solution is that everybody can spy on everybody else. The problem is that the government and corporations can spy on us, but are immune. I'm not sure if he means it as blueprint or inevitability with the price dropping.

I think he is wrong that everybody spying will help, when everybody discussing online doesn't. But it is useful to think about what world will be like when everybody can surveil.

The linked article shows they’re not wholly immune. Some publicly available technologies can be quite powerful as Bellingcat demonstrates.

It’s certainly an asymmetrical field but, especially moving forward, I doubt it will be an entirely one-way street.

Cameras are already cheap enough that even fairly poor people can afford 24/7 cameras in and outside their home.

The #MeToo movement made me realise that we will probably choose constant surveillance for our own protection, rather than have it imposed on us by some Orwellian government.

Can you elaborate on what this has to do with the #MeToo movement?

The fact that verbal allegations of events decades ago were enough to sink multiple people’s lives.

Hence, people will choose to record every minute of their lives out of fear of something similar happening to them.