The police state also won the pandemic

Not only has the disastrous month of April 2020 shifted the dynamics of wealth and power even further to the extreme advantage of the nation's oligarchs, it has also provided new and exciting excuses for the rapid expansion of the police state.  In New Orleans, for example, we've spent the pandemic rolling out new unconstitutional(and unsafe for virus prevention) checkpoint practices while also finding new excuses to throw money at unscrupulous surveillance contractors.

On March 15, the city entered into an agreement with Israeli tech firm Carbyne, which asks users dialing 911 in crisis to agree to be surveilled without regulations or limits. A month later, NOPD began instituting police checkpoints across the city, despite public outcry that eventually ended the checkpoints.

City Council members agree that this lack of process and transparency needs to change. After halting the installation of over 100 new cameras that would have fed into the city’s Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) recently, Councilmember Jason Williams admitted, “It’s important that we be extremely concerned about the unintentional impacts that can come from a well meaning initiative.” He said the city needs comprehensive limits and regulations on surveillance tools before they are allowed to proliferate further.

It's nice of Jason to say he is "extremely concerned."  But he does want to be D.A.  I  wonder how concerned he will be as the city's top prosecutor.  I imagine his laughable assertion that a project to place security cameras up the butt of every New Orleanian was at any time a "well meaning initiative" can give us some insight into that.