Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Road to Hell being paved with convenience." And the thumbnail you will see is old John Connor himself from Terminator 2, Judgment Day, the young version of John Connor, who we all know and love, the eventual head of the resistance against the cybernetic overlords that will overtake humanity. So, let me just jump in here, what are we talking about? What I'm talking about here generally is just dystopianism across the board. 

In any event, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: No more boarding passes: facial recognition to start in 6 Thai airports. Quoting directly: "An automated biometric identification system using facial recognition technology will be implemented in six Thai airports later this year to let passengers show their physical ID only once." Well okay. First off, if you go back years and years ago there were serious debates about whether or not you needed ID to even get on a plane, which I would argue there is an unfettered right to travel inherent in people; it's noted in the US Constitution. There's even inherent rights to travel noted in the UN Charter of Human Rights. That being said, not my favourite thing in the world because of the way the UN Charter frames these things. But at the end of the day, in my mind there is an unfettered right to travel. So, to throw on this facial recognition is pretty creepy stuff. Meanwhile, it also goes into this notion of well we need the Electronic Travel Authorization, the ring fence around Thailand where we digitally, basically make everyone now get a visa to come in to Thailand. Why do we need this? You have facial recognition in the airports and stuff; you're going to know who's coming and going, and don't tell me you're not because you can't check an ID. Yes, you can. I have seen the Chinese social credit system. People that pop up on their system that have no ID reference to corroborate or to correlate too, they immediately red flag those people. So, they actually put more scrutiny on the people outside the system than inside it, so don't tell me this is some "oh well, first of all you only can opt in." Yeah right, and then secondly that it's somehow tagged as some terrestrial analog system that can thereby be controlled, not so much controlled, but can be mitigated against - you can have your violation of property rights mitigated. I'm just not buying that. That said, quoting further: "The system will be ready for domestic passengers on November 1 and for international passengers on December 1, according to operated by," I think operators of, “the Airport Authority of Thailand director Kirati Kitmanawat. Quoting further: "The system will collect passengers' biometric information and travel itineraries electronically.." - yet again begging the question, why do we need the ETA? This system already exists. Quoting further: "..allowing air travellers to go from the baggage drop to the boarding gate without showing passports and boarding passes. Each registration is for only one journey." Yeah right. You're telling me that data isn't collected and put into a repository? Oh, what do they do? Purge it every 24 hours? Yeah, no, I don't buy that. 

Meanwhile, what's the point of this video? Well, the point of this video is precisely what the title says. "The road to hell is paved with convenience." And that's what you're seeing here. "Oh, it's facial recognition, don't worry about it." First of all, 15 years ago we would have all been creeped out by this, but we've been slowly conditioned to accept it. Then meanwhile, as I said before, it's paved with convenience. What will happen? I actually opted out; they were doing sort of a pilot thing. I did a flight down to Phuket recently and there was a choice, and I chose 'NO'. It was a giant pain to go through all of the checkpoints and stuff if you had clicked 'NO'. I'm sure it's going to be the same thing moving forward. This is how they always roll out this totalitarian stuff. They say, "Oh look, you can do it like this and it's easy peasy or you can do it the old way, and you can stand in line like you're in a Soviet Gulag waiting for half a quarter of bread for three and a half hours before we let you get through and board the plane." That's probably how this is going to work; we have seen it before. They will always create another option, but that option will be so odourously or onerously - I should say onerously not odorously - onerously cumbersome to deal with, that most people would just throw up their hands and just go along with it. Unfortunately, that's the way the world works. I guess I'm just making this video shouting into the abyss, but I hope maybe it informs some people and maybe there's some positive that will come out of it at the end of the day.