The End Of Privacy

People over a certain age, let's say 40, have vivid memories from the Cold War era depicting the Soviet Union spying on its citizens with cameras and hidden microphones.  In fact, this imagery has been brought to light more recently: in the 2006 movie 'The Lives Of Others' about the secret police of East Germany spying on citizens they considered to be a threat to the state, and also and reports out of the terror state North Korea.

There was also a time where the imagery of Marxist states spying on its citizens was a corollary to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in which inhabitants of the nation Oceania have no privacy at all.  Apartments, workplaces and public places are equipped with two-way television screens such that citizens could be heard and seen at all times.  Surveillance controls the citizenry.

If you are in the aforementioned age group, you might also recall the emergence of video surveillance cameras.  It started in large stores, such as Wal-Mart.  You would see a TV up above with yourself walking by.  It was for security reasons.  Then, in the 1990s, you may have seen cable shows made up of wacky surveillance video clips, usually from England.  Car accidents or close calls were shown for our entertainment.  My reaction was, "Wow, they are crazy with the surveillance cameras over there".  No, they were just ahead of the curve.  Now, there are security cameras on top of and inside most commercial buildings in the U.S.  It’s not all bad.  You can see how they assist in the hunt of crime suspects.

Despite the recent exposure of the National Security Agency's ability to intercept domestic telephone and electronic communications, most U.S. citizens (especially the under 35 crowd) has reacted with a collective shrug.  Common reactions are "only the paranoid fringe is worried about the government spying on them" and "if it will prevent a terrorist attack it’s worth it".

But, taking all of the various aspects of the creeping surveillance state into account, the only conclusion is that the U.S. is frighteningly close to the lack of privacy depicted in Nineteen-Eighty Four's Oceania and perhaps even an Iron Curtain country from the Cold War, though the state cannot be directly blamed for all of the intrusions.

Did you know that Microsoft's XBOX console is equipped with a camera that watches you?  It also contains a microphone that stays on, listening, even when the unit is off.  The given reason is that it responds to voice commands, one of which can be to turn itself on.  But, knowing the advancement of web technology and how advertisements follow you around from web site to web site, could XBOX also be listening for key words to sell to advertisers with the ultimate goal to tailor advertisements to you as predicted in the Tom Cruise movie 'Minority Report'?  Down the road, one could conceive that the NSA scour such data feeds in the interest of national security. 

Some may have seen how on Facebook, if you tag a photograph, facial recognition software immediately matches a face you have tagged with other photos of that person.  There is also a creepy new app that uses electronic facial recognition to scour the web and find pictures of someone, unbeknownst to them.  The only way to opt out is to sign up and set up a profile with this app.  The consequence of this is potentially every photograph of you on the internet, even the ones where you are a face in the crowd in the background, could get labelled with your name, without your knowledge.  With today's youth, that amounts to thousands of pictures, without a doubt...many unflattering.

By now you have heard of Google Glass, which is basically a computer you can wear as glasses.  The most infamous aspect of Google Glass, so far, is its camera and microphone feature.  If Google Glass ultimately becomes a socially accepted norm, as all of these various surveillance tools are, there will be no such thing as a private act in public.  How many times have you been in a public place, talking with friends and may have said something that could be construed as inappropriate?  Maybe you spoke before thinking.  Maybe it was a bad joke.  Or maybe someone else said something offensive and you found yourself nodding along before you realized what the person just said.  In the not-too-distant future, a video of you could be edited down to the most inflammatory bit and put on a prominent web site.  This type of thing could result in you losing your job. Or being passed over for a job...and you'll never know why.  And it could have just been a misunderstanding.  Some innocent thing said twisted to appear offensive.

What kind of society will we live in?  A society where everyone is afraid to speak their minds or laugh and joke in public?  This is the kind of society that existed in the Iron Curtain countries and currently in North Korea, where there is no creativity or original thought.  People are afraid to express themselves in any way other than conforming to the strictest of society's rules.  One could suggest that we already live under such a regime and its name is "political correctness", with the penalty for acting out of step thankfully not labor camps for you and your entire family.  However, take today's climate of political correctness and add constant and total surveillance on top of that.  The difference between that and a totalitarian state is not substantial.