What you guys are talking about is not inconsistent with what I said. Private businesses are not public property. To behave consistently, non-fraudulently, they must disclose what they are doing.

However, fundamentally, the problem are not these private businesses, it's the government. In the eyes of those who are in control, everything is theirs and nothing is private. They infect everything and use their system of regulations, threats, legal, etc, to force stores to give them this information, against the consent of the users of said business. What is a business to do? Go against the government and have legal nightmares, or comply and keep running a business. Sadly, most people don't care about principles and will just comply.

I was speaking an ideal. In the current system we are millions of miles from an ideal and government does whatever the hell it wants because the people allow them.

What about when you go to the stores & supermarket and there are facial recognition cameras everywhere, cameras on the self-checkers, bodycams on the staff, little cameras on the card and payment machines. Cameras in public toilets. Surveillance cameras all the way along the roads, drones following you along the highway, everywhere along the street/footpath, on advertising billboards that profile as you approach and gives you an appropriate ad for sex, age etc.. Facial rec on public transport? cctv on the outside of people's houses, doorbell cams. What about when they want your biometrics (retina, thumb print, or voice) to pay for something and so much more I've forgotten. These are all a reality right now. It's at the point where if someone wants to try to avoid it they will just have to not leave the house at all. It's not just a case of not going into a specific shop, cafe or place, it's ubiquitous.

What you say makes sense. The problem is private data is being used for public services too. Without express opt-in and without as you say any disclosure. There is almost no private space anymore in cities. Weather via in-house speakers (microphones), door cams, gps location and the like. All data is fed back to law enforcement or whatever reason they label it.

Personally hope we see pocket scrambling technology being normalised. Rather than you having to stand out from the crowd with clothing or being manipulated to opt-in, it would be opt-out by default. Many electronics would be built to handle people going dark and not working for a few seconds/minutes. An actual investigation and real old-fashioned police work would be warranted if they were to be used for ulterior motives.

I agree in principle, but would also expect the real beneficiaries of any public access surveillance data to be private companies. Google, Meta and the rest wouldn't miss a beat to enrich their data. Not to mention general bad actors (e.g. stalkers)