Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are pushing forward with their plan to repeal a pandemic-era law that allowed the wearing of masks in public for health reasons, a move spurred in part by demonstrations against the war in Gaza that have included masked protesters camped out on college campuses
1: the reason I supported them before COVID, during, and now, and the reason I support their legalization.
But…
2: COVID has trained facial recog algorithms to identify masked faces. Those algorithms still have a hard time with identify altering makeup, but don’t seem to have any issues with masks. True privacy no longer exists. Freedom to protest in most countries is restricted to public spaces. When you privatize everything (including education), public spaces diminish, and your right to protest with it.