Who’s Really Watching Us?
Technology has evolved overtime to become a vital role in everyday life changing the way we interact with each other and creating different ways to keep a watchful eye on society. In simple terms we live in a surveillance society where our every move is being watched. You may be thinking what is a surveillance society? Well a surveillance society is a society which is organised and structured through the use of surveillance-based techniques which track one’s movement. Think about it. There are more cctv cameras than ever. Wherever you go you are most likely being watched. From taking public transport to a trip to the shops and even going for a stroll, it is more than likely your movements are being captured. Continuing on, newer video technology including facial recognition to unlock phones and the implementation of automatic video systems at shopping centres to recognise number plates has increased the number of faces being identified. Furthermore the way we showcase our identity through things such as ID cards and passports is slowly changing with talks of biometric ID cards that store fingerprints to be introduced in the near future.
Although a number of these developments are beneficial for a safer progressive society and essential to claim certain services including education and health purposes, I often question where the line of individual privacy is drawn. Our we losing our right to individual privacy? Where is our information being stored and exactly who has access to it? Not only does this spark debates about privacy, surveillance techniques can pose risks and dangers are always present in largescale systems and power does corrupt or at least skews the vision of those who wield it. Its scary to think anyone can access your personal information and use it for criminal activity with the number of reported crimes of fraud and identity theft increasing in modern society.
It is important that new software, techniques and solutions are developed to protect individual privacy but still provide security and a safe society. (Carrillo, Kalva and Magliveras) pose the idea of implementing technology that hides the identity of objects in video technology that is irrelevant and only captures the selected objects. This is achieved as the system increases the video bitrate to about 23% and expands the frame to focus on selected objects. Experiment’s carried out by the trio confirm it not only protects individuals privacy while maintaining it use for security issues but it also reasonably priced to diminish the above problems surveillance techniques can cause.
The progressive use of surveillance society should be addressed in the media as I guarantee many of you reading this didn’t realise the extent of surveillance technology that is used in society. Furthermore we can see privacy is a major issue when these technologies are implemented with personal information being stored and used by unknown sources who may use it for criminal purposes such as fraud and identity theft. Concluding it is important systems such as the one stated above should be considered to maintain individual privacy and a safe society.
