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Posted Dec 3, 2011 by Jon Evans (@rezendi), Columnist
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Gillmor Gang 12.3.11 (TCTV)
[surveillance.jpg?w=400]
Your phone might be spying on you. The many cameras you pass every day
can recognize your face. Facebook, despite its grudging concessions,
still wants you to broadcast your personal life. “Eye in the sky”
drones are already watching over borders; next, they’ll patrol the
Olympics. It won’t be long before police drones are omnipresent in the
skies over every major city, and then every town. Welcome to the 21st
century. Smile! You’re probably on TV.
Especially if you live in the kind of repressive state that imprisons
its citizens without trial. (You know, like America, if the US Senate
has its way.) According to both Wikileaks and that well-known bastion
of the left wing The Wall Street Journal, such regimes have been buying
up Western-made high-tech surveillance systems like business travellers
on unlimited expense accounts. To quote the former, “companies are
making billions selling sophisticated tracking tools to government
buyers, flouting export rules, and turning a blind eye to dictatorial
regimes that abuse human rights.”
Which kind of puts Facebook privacy violations in perspective, so I’m
not going to bash Mark Zuckerberg, for once. The guy probably genuinely
believes in the merits of a transparency society where everybody’s life
is essentially on display all the time. Or even if he doesn’t, he
figures that our ever-doubling tech level means we’re inevitably
heading there anyways, so he may as well make a few dozen billion
dollars from that sea change while he’s at it. Fair enough.
But a transparent society can’t work if it’s built out of one-way
glass. The powers that be are thrilled by the prospect of using all
this new surveillance tech to keep an eye on the unruly masses, but
they seem much less excited about its effect on their own privacy. The
Occupy movement (which, you may recall, I have mixed emotions about)
can cite a whole bunch of examples of protestors arrested or shot with
rubber bullets for the sin of photographing police, and of the police
expelling and restricting media from the evictions in NYC and LA.
Dear Media: When the police tell you to leave IS WHEN YOU STAY.
You're supposed to be a check on this kind of power!
— Wil Wheaton (@wilw) November 30, 2011
Earlier this year the chief minister of India’s Kerala state had a
webcam installed in his office. A cheap gimmick, yes, but a powerful
symbol. If we’re headed into a world where everything becomes public,
so be it–but shouldn’t the first people to surrender their privacy be
those in authority?
This is partly an economic issue: if Greece hadn’t lied about its
finances for many years, the euro wouldn’t be in quite as parlous a
state right now. But mostly it’s a moral one. Why aren’t police, border
guards, and the TSA required to carry always-on shoulder cameras while
on duty, so that the data recorded can be used in court and subjected
to Freedom Of Information requests? Why are vague, unsubstantiated
“security reasons” always enough to close doors, shut events, squelch
protests, fence off areas from the public, and harass photographers and
the media, when more surveillance is supposed to make us more secure?
The answer, of course, is that security is only rarely the real issue.
Two-way surveillance, the much-touted transparent society, is about the
complex dynamic between the relative merits of privacy and public
information–and they do both have their merits. But one-way
surveillance is all about raw naked power. It worries me that the
powers that be all seem to be touting the former while actually trying
to implement the latter.
Image credit: zigazou76, Flickr.
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Posted Dec 3, 2011
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