Sliding Into Surveillance

When you take the time to think about it the communications technologies available to us are quite astonishing. They offer us the capacity for a degree of interconnectedness not available to any previous civilization. In a world of around 7.7 billion people, it is literally mind-blowing that we can connect with almost anyone, anywhere, at any time, and for any reason at all.

Unfortunately, new technologies always bring new problems in their wake. Right now we have a convergence of issues. And these issues are congealing into a moral dilemma.

New digital interfaces, allowing us to locate and to connect, expand our capacity to keep tabs on one another, stay in touch, and communicate at will. At the same time many governments, concerned to improve security, through installing biometric sensors in airports, or algorithms monitoring usage in order to effect more efficient scheduling of public transport, for example, are using these same devices in ways that could easily curtail individual freedoms. Your liberty as a sovereign citizen to choose whom you permit to know where you are, what you are doing, and with whom you are doing it, is at risk.

Both developments are potentially beneficial. Both can be abused. The question becomes: How can these new technologies be used for the public good without suppressing individual freedom? While that is indeed the moral dilemma I have in mind, a number of governments are pondering a different dilemma altogether. Emboldened by the use of facial recognition technologies, they ask: How can we install the capacity to control our society without citizens knowing or being unduly concerned?

Much depends on how the data is used of course, what motivates that use, and how secure the data is. However, it is not just the data that should really concern us. No matter how the system is used, or by whom, what is being constructed here is an architecture for repression.

How would you feel if, under legal edict, Apple and Google were required to install location devices on their smartphone platforms that are incapable of being turned off? In other words, your location was known at all times to anyone with the wherewithal to view the data?

As it happens these two companies, in an unholy partnership, have already developed an app that alerts users if they have come into contact with a person infected by COVID-19. At this juncture, you must opt-in to the system. But it has the potential to monitor about a third of the world’s population. Do you feel comfortable with that?

Would you feel more comfortable if the World Health Organization told you that such a level of real-time surveillance is part of what is required for life to return to a sense of normality in a world without a vaccine? In responding to this question be aware of any unintended consequences. Emergency powers often fail to live up to their potential, yet long outlive their emergencies. Civil libertarians are already cautioning that the public has little ability to challenge any such authoritarian calisthenics once the immediate threat has passed. Besides, it is far easier for a bureaucracy simply to keep the technology on hold, ready for the next pandemic or crisis.

That is not to say that mass surveillance methods could not save lives around the world. In fact, improved monitoring and data sharing would probably allow us to track and curb the spread of future pandemics with a speed and accuracy not possible today. But how would we ensure that the data was not misused?

This is not a comforting question to pose in a world where trust in even our most venerable institutions is rapidly eroding and the members of a small, obscenely wealthy and influential plutocracy, are fearful of losing everything they have devoted a lifetime to create.

Any global crisis is bound to send shockwaves through society to the extent that ordinary citizens begin to awake to new possibilities, including alternative ways of living. We can expect new trends, themes, and strategies to emerge from the current pandemic – just as they did in ages gone by. The Black Death in 14th century Europe, for example, hastened an appreciation of personal hygiene and sewerage systems in urbanized communities. Likewise, the H1N1 flu pandemic of 1918, which killed between 50 million or more, gave rise to the deployment of a social welfare safety net for those caught in the poverty trap.

It is interesting to consider what might now arise out of the current interruption to normality. While there are usually benefits arising from emergencies of this magnitude, it is also highly probable that we will face a few unwelcome surprises.

Existing power structures invariably grab hold of any opportunity to roll out their authoritarian schemas, usually under the pretext of safeguarding ordinary people. This ploy is most evident in cases like the US Patriot Act following 9/11, for example, but has been the norm throughout history. We also know that oppressive programs are typically already well developed before a crisis hits. Furthermore, in modern capitalist societies, the lobbyists for large corporations and banks have already worked out what their demands of the government will be far in advance of any emergency or economic misfortune.

The reasons for such plans are obvious when you think about it:

1.    Our most life-critical systems have reached the end of their shelf-life. They no longer work for humanity as a whole. So change is inevitable.

2.    The powerful are afraid of the public, and even more terrified of losing their wealth and influence. Their fear is justified. Revolutions are not conjured out of thin air. They arise through a chafing between the dominant narrative, created and sustained by those in power, and the sense of deprivation and unfairness felt by society.

3.    On top of this already volatile mix, there is now a convergence between widely-held popular frustration and our ability to network and share our personal pain in real-time.

The environment is ripe for a popular uprising against the status quo. The exploitative nature of the economy, together with an awareness from many millions of young people that they are going to be worse off than their parents, has created a seething fury. A culture war, not among differing ethnic groups but between ideologies, is imminent. We have already witnessed anti-government and anti-corporate protests emerging everywhere from Chile to Hong Kong. We will most likely see more as they link up and the rage is amplified.

In this milieu, leaders are already skittish. Western media have gone into overdrive in a vain attempt to control the reactions of the populace. Internet censorship is being ramped up. Meanwhile, China watches patiently, slightly bemused perhaps, yet largely untouched by the Western ruckus, a benevolent friend to those countries most in distress from the pandemic. Anti-Chinese propaganda from the West merely fuels our own paranoia. They wait...

So how will this moral dilemma, to which I originally referred, most likely be resolved? The escalation in censorship, surveillance, corruption, authoritarian edicts, and the massive wealth transfer from ordinary taxpayers to banks and corporations, are all just a last-ditch stand for control. Policies brought in today are unlikely to be revoked after the emergency fades.

Let there be no doubt. The human family is engaged in a massive social experiment. We are now safely in our homes. Our interactions are constrained. Our mobile devices are being monitored with ever more enthusiasm and intrusiveness. If you were Rupert Murdoch or any of the ultra-rightwing populist leaders we have willingly installed, what would your next move be?

And you? What will you do?