The Idea Of Surveillance; of course you should be worried.

BBlaster
BBlaster
Sep 1, 2018 · 4 min read

I could potentialy write an entire thesis on modern surveillance technology. But then I wouldn’t exactly be the first, just the last six months in China would be a PhD, but don’t worry, I’ll be working myself up into a paranoid rant on that soon enough. But right now I just wanted to have a look at some concepts and ideas I keep hearing in discussions over surveillance. The stuff I’m referencing here doesn’t come from the nether-world of the internet alt-right but is related to some comments I’ve heard being bounded about in mainstream (mainly left-wing) news sources, blogs, TV and radio.

The first thing that inspired this was a throwaway comment made by a guest on The Infinite Monkey Cage on Big Data. Listen to it and then you can judge how optimistic you are by how paranoid it makes you feel. The guest refers to a cypto-party (workshops where you can learn to be more anonymous online) when she says “I couldn’t help but wonder what all these people had to hide”. This is a pretty good example of thinking backwards, maybe they don’t have anything to hide, but as much as almost everything we do online is recorded somewhere, and is traceable for anyone with basic IT skills. Which is why we need to readdress data collection as a consent issue. As in, I didn’t ask anyone to collect information on my online shopping and then use to for ‘better advertising’ (literally the last thing I need is more ads in my life). In the majority of cases whereon the collect of online data is used to increase profits for other people, I find it pretty normal that people would want to cover their tracks. To put it in a real life context, someone might break into your home without wanting to steal anything, but I still don’t want them to do so, which is why I lock the door when I leave the house.

Also some people do have something to hide, not necessarily any wrong doing; what about sex workers? Many of us are operating in countries where the practice is legalised but we still have to deal with the burden of shame on our families as well as the obvious stalker danger in a world where police don’t really care about helping us in cases of assault. Taking measures to protect ourselves online is the digital equivilent of taking self-defence classes.

What accounts for normal behaviour anyways? Human society has always treated those outside it’s cultural norms with suspician, as anyone with a disability or who has recently migrated to the west will tell you. The methods for developing CCTV cameras which can recognise potential crimes highlight how automatic surveillance is essentially targeting behaviours percieved as abnormal, and not all abnormal behaviours are criminal yet, but as our awareness of being watched increases, so does our monitering of our own behaviour. As anyone who sat through A-level philosophy can tell you.

And then of course there’s the fact that survillance isn’t for everyone. I consume loads of tech and science magazines/journals/podcasts/news pieces mainly written by middle-class white folks working in liberal professions aka the people for whom surveillance technology was created to protect. Increased neighbourhood surveillance is one of the first steps in gentrification, used to minimise deliquency (usually when it is being commited by non-whites). On an even larger scale, China is using new -surveillance technologies to heavily police the Uighur population; new biometric identity cars, and the confiscation of mens phones by police. And of course, we’ve all heard about the facial recognition software to moniter workers engagement, which sounds like it comes from a cyber-punk novel. It occured to me as I was writing this that no one has thought to use the software to check politicians for lying, or to identify police brutality. Add to the fact the numerous personal home surveillance kits currently being rolled out, which certainly aren’t being marketed to marguinalised groups to protect them from violence (for example), but to protect middle-class property values.

Of course every leap in surveillance technology has it’s impact on personal freedom, but the need for ever more sophisticated cameras is mitigated when everybody has a mobile phone and is essentially broadcasting their lives everyday. This, and the way in which smartphones have made the introduction of biometrics and facial recogonition technology not only acceptable but sexy, means that millenials (like me) are much less concerned and accepting of mass-surveillance and data collection. Case in point, my summerjob last year involved fingerprint signing ins and outs, and CCTV cameras in our lodgings. It’s a pretty elaborate way of stopping people going over their break times or lying about being late. I also worked in a workhouse/call-centre where toilet breaks were limited to 9 minutes a day. And of course we’re all used to having employers moniter us over CCTV and double checking our social media by now. The most shocking thing about this for me is how accepting my colleagues were of these conditions. Most said something along the lines of “Well I sign into my phone with my fingerprint, what’s the difference?” Coming back to the idea of consent, this sounds a lot like the good ol’ foot-in-the-door-technique, rather than informed consent of having a genuine choice over 2 options, and not just having one option jammed down your throat before you can think about it.


Originally published at bitchandablaster.wordpress.com on September 1, 2018.

BBlaster
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