Yeah, it's true. I wouldn't join a football discussion and just start swaggering around with accusation. It's a comment I made here, because it was a bit more appropriate.

Since we are talking about it:

In the US, the world cup was used to get 365 million dollars spent on permanent surveillance and facial recognition devices installed. The four main vendors planned on this all along, using AI and leaving it up. Nobody has disclosed what they are going to do with the data, the fans willingly gave up facial recognition for ID which will continue at major arenas because now it is in place.

Mexico and Canada are also doing this. The list of upcoming hosts are planning on doing this. They are using the World Cup as a "global showcase" to normalize battlefield-tested surveillance in civilian spaces.

FIFA is the platform to get global AI surveillance into place, to get contracts to large corporations, and to monitor and build databaes of citizens. The best part? It's almost always the same corporations, how easy it is to go global!

The amount of waved reviews is staggering. Just roll it out now worry about consequences later.

The World Cup does not create the surveillance state — but it has become one of the most efficient mechanisms for funding, deploying, legitimizing, and permanently embedding it across the globe, one tournament at a time.

Does that help explain why I am a little bit irritated about this subject?