My point was that monitoring elderly people will be an early PR justification for mass, omnipresent biometric surveillance. And they'll act like it's some big surprise discovery that they're just now making even though it's been the main plan all along.
Plus, why would you need omnipresent biometric surveillance to do what localized monitoring could do just fine? By all means, use local mm wave radar if that's useful, but why impose large area biometric surveillance onto hundreds of millions of people without transparent opportunities for consensus?
And my point was that your comment came off as dismissive towards the topic of the justification. The parallel point was that presenting this sort of dismissal might fly on Hacker News but it's also why mainstream support has been iffy. I'm not arguing that the entire apparatus is good simply because it can service the elderly, I'm arguing that having a dismissive attitude towards these types of micro-issues, like helping the elderly, is why the movement has been losing steam with the general public. The general public has general needs and dismissing services because of lofty abstract principles might make for appealing tech-centric arguments but it totally fails to provide an alternate solution to the original problem. The topic is political in nature and so political desires can't be ignored or else support will wane.
Stating concerns about the ever increasing erosion of our rights is not a dismissal towards the elderly. Or the children. Or victims of crime. Or people living in the fear of terrorism. Or whatever other excuse that's used to justify abuses of power.
Plus, why would you need omnipresent biometric surveillance to do what localized monitoring could do just fine? By all means, use local mm wave radar if that's useful, but why impose large area biometric surveillance onto hundreds of millions of people without transparent opportunities for consensus?