The Whole World's Watching

We know all too well how trends turn into permanent fixtures.  Bad ideas left unchallenged become the norm and new generations, unfamiliar with any other way, assume this is how things should be.

We're seeing just such a development with the rapid advances in surveillance, not only in the States but globally.  A quickly evolving technology, as well as an easily manipulated and fearful mindset in the general public, is making it all possible.  But if things keep going the way they've been, neither technology nor the public will be able to reverse the trend.

This isn't exactly a new issue.  We've been talking about the increasing amounts of surveillance since we first started publishing back in 1984.  Back then it was more of a "what if" scenario, where most of us feared what could happen if the government had the ability to track us in real time, if there were cameras everywhere, if our private information was no longer so private.

As part of the hacker community, we knew full well how fleeting any form of privacy actually was.  If there's one thing we've learned over the years, it's that those entrusted with keeping our private information secure aren't really expending all that much effort to achieve this.

So with this bit of knowledge, we can add poor security into the mix.  While the powers that be don't really need this in order to gather information on everyone, the spectre of our privacy always being invaded or compromised has the effect of lowering our overall expectations.  Every time we read a story about another few hundred thousand database records of people's confidential information being compromised, left posted on a website, or just lost when a laptop was stolen out of someone's car, we become all the more resigned to a world where keeping such data safe seems less and less likely.  So when we find that we're being watched on a more official level, it's no longer the shock it might have been once.

There's yet another element to all of this.  Perhaps as a result of this resignation to the unlikelihood of our private lives remaining private, many of us have jumped onto the bandwagon of exposing the most intimate personal details of those lives to the entire world.  Through the Facebooks, MySpaces, Twitters, and LiveJournals of the net, we can now spy on each other in ways unimaginable only a few years ago.  Students voluntarily post their class schedules, their pictures, home addresses, and phone numbers for everyone on the planet to see.

We've taken the concept of a diary, something people used to keep literally under lock and key, and turned it inside out so that now we broadcast our innermost thoughts, fears, and desires to anyone who cares to read about them.  Such self-surveillance on this level is unprecedented and not a healthy development for a free society.  Granted, there are merits to transparency, particularly when it concerns government or corporate oversight; such things affect millions of people and should be open to scrutiny.  Individuals, however, do not need to have every aspect of their lives analyzed, compared, and displayed to the rest of us.  To embrace this kind of a culture invites an inevitable pressure to conform to one kind of a standard or another.  Gone will be the days where individuals can live and interact merely with those they wish to be around.  Failure to be public and transparent in thoughts and emotions will itself be seen as suspicious.

It's still possible to be surprised by the extent of our voluntary exhibitionism.  We often have fun demonstrating this to people.  Something as innocuous as sitting in a coffee shop using a laptop can wind up being the first step towards having your entire life exposed due to your own choices.  You may see someone pop up on your local networks.

You notice they have their iTunes library publicly readable.  Now you know not only what they like to listen to but what they're listening to right now.  From there you can search for their username throughout the Internet, which often will be the same one they used here.  You will then see what they've said on public forums, where they stand politically, what kinds of experiences they've had in life.

You'll find out where they go to school, where they grew up, who they're friends with, who they have crushes on, what they hope to achieve in life.  Their personal family pictures will no doubt be displayed somewhere on Flickr, probably with the exact same username or one that can easily be gleaned from all of the other information that's obtainable about them.

You'll learn all about their relatives, where they're from, where they've been, birthdays, addresses, milestones, etc.  All of this simply from seeing them on a network in a coffee shop.  And you haven't even done anything that could be considered an invasion of privacy since they set these parameters themselves and clearly have no expectation of privacy.

And that is the problem.

We are erasing our own expectations of privacy which makes it that much less of a big deal when various authorities wipe out more and more of it.  In the city of London alone, there are well over half a million surveillance cameras, public and private, capturing the average citizen around 300 times a day.  It hasn't stopped crime and it certainly hasn't made people less fearful.

In the entire United Kingdom, there is one camera for every 14 people.  In the States, we are starting to embrace this technology and the attitude that says we must do this to stay safe.

Citizens of high crime neighborhoods are more likely to demand that cameras be installed on their streets when only a few years ago such an action would have been seen as a grievous intrusion into people's lives.  Even without any clear evidence that crime is being reduced as a result, it's the illusion of security that so many of us cling to which is enough for us to give up our very tangible right not to be monitored around the clock.

This illusion can be seen in many forms, from being forced to sign into any office building while being told that this somehow makes us safer from terrorists, to being randomly searched while in the public transportation system, to imposing "lockdowns" at the drop of a hat while forgetting that this used to be something that only went on in prisons.

We now use terms like "homeland security," "Total Information Awareness," "PATRIOT Act," and "If you see something, say something," without remembering how absurd, jingoistic, and ultimately meaningless they are.

We're even willing to accept the suspension of essential constitutional freedoms if it will allegedly speed up the process and make us feel safer.  It's all on the way to becoming normal.

You may have seen mention of something called FISA in the news recently.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 may well have escaped the radar of many, as it basically authorizes a "secret court" to approve warrants to collect foreign intelligence information in the United States.  Of the nearly 23,000 warrants requested from its inception to 2006, only five were rejected.

And yet, this secret court wasn't enough for the current administration.  The Protect America Act of 2007 basically removed the warrant requirement which allowed for an unlimited amount of wiretaps of Americans suspected of communicating with suspicious people overseas.  The most outrageous part of all of this was that the warrantless surveillance had been ongoing since 2002 as part of a secret cooperative program with the NSA and various major phone companies.

The Protect America Act allowed for those phone companies engaging in illegal and warrantless wiretaps to be retroactively immune from any civil lawsuits from citizens whose privacy was violated.

Needless to say, such detours around the Constitution are merely a foot in the door to far more egregious violations of privacy.

Under this Act, it is theoretically possible for hardware and data to be seized without a warrant if there is said to be suspicion that somehow there is a link to someone overseas.  We're certain this is but one of many potential abuses any acceptance of this Act will invite.

At press time, the Act has not been renewed pending resolution of disagreements between (((Democrats and Republicans))).  Oddly, an offer by Democrats to temporarily extend the Act by 21 days pending resolution of the disagreements was rejected, which tends to throw water on the whole premise that the country is at risk every day this Act is not in place.  It would appear this has nothing at all to do with national security.

We face a lot of troubling times ahead with regards to surveillance.

Most of the power, for the moment at least, remains in our hands and in our minds, should we choose to use them.  It is our acceptance of the elements of a surveillance state which will give it the most strength and solidify its presence for future generations.  It doesn't have to be this way.