A
looming question: Is today's a'bornin' surveillance
state in America an aberration? Or is it the
unavoidable future of mankind? A spasm, like
Prohibition, the Sixties, McCarthyism? Or an
inevitable consequence of technological
advance-something that must follow the spread of
computers and networking as remorselessly as suburbs
and shopping malls followed the automobile? Do we have
a choice?
The
technology exists today for a degree of control, of
watchfulness, of spying even, unimaginable two decades
ago. You can buy most of the hardware at a shopping
mall. We need only use what we have: the internet,
cameras, software, electronics. Step by step,
sometimes inadvertently, not always realizing the
consequences, we begin to use it. I don't think it is
controllable.
Think
about it. The capacity to store and search
information, to transmit it over any distance, is
today for practical purposes unlimited. A lowly
mail-order pc is so powerful that it is difficult to
grasp just how powerful it is. Technically, wiring the
world is only slightly harder than wiring a country.
The very innocence of it all makes it insidious: The
tools of an iron control come into existence for
practical reasons of efficiency and convenience.
Vast,
multitudinous, and efficient data bases are already
kept on us, innocently, by Visa, the Social Security
Administration, telephone companies, banks, the
police, and hundreds of others. They do it for reasons
of convenience and efficiency. It is not possible to
argue against these. Yet . . . when once these
repositories of information are in place, linking them
is technically easy. The Pentagon wants to do it.
We
all know about data bases. I don't think many people
know about some of the other, spookier things that
exist today in the world of surveillance. For example,
there are chips called RFIDs (radio-frequency
identification devices).* These, smaller than a grain
of rice, transmit an identifying number when they pass
an electronic reader. They are expected to cost
perhaps five cents each in mass manufacture.
Department stores want to use them for innocent
purposes of inventory control. The readers can be
inconspicuously built into almost anything. You don't
know you are being tracked.
They
are so cheap, so easy, so useful.
The
government is probably not going to force us to build
these chips into things so that it can watch us. We
are going to do it ourselves, for reasons of
practicality and convenience. For example, RFIDs built
irremovably into automobiles, so that passing police
cars could read them, would make car theft far more
difficult. The serial of a stolen car would go
electronically onto a watch list. Put readers in toll
booths, in stop lights, or in gas stations, and stolen
cars would become virtually undrivable.
Who
could be against stopping theft of automobiles? But
the same chips would allow the government to keep
records of where your car was, when. They could also
be used to calculate your speed and, should it be
excessive, call the cops or send you a threatening
letter. We would never be unwatched.
How
much surveillance are we willing to bear in order to
prevent how much crime?
(There
is, or was, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington a
stretch of road where speed monitoring was done,
though not with RFIDs. A sign flashed something like:
"Slow Down! You are making 47 mph!" It was
unsettling, as it was to start to cross an
intersection against a light when no traffic was
coming, and then to realize that a camera was pointed
at you.)
Constantly
being watched is intimidating, whether you are doing
anything wrong or not. More and more we are watched,
everywhere. In Washington's subway, if you stand near
the trackway, an officious busybody in the kiosk above
will admonish you over the PA system to stand back.
Cameras. You begin half-consciously tailoring your
behavior to the desires of the unknown chaperones.
Presumably,
overt dictatorships such as China will simply impose
whatever surveillance they wish. Can the galloping
growth of surveillance in the United States be
controlled? I think not (though I'd love to be wrong),
for several reasons.
First,
there is no way to object. We are not really a
democracy. With an aggressive president, a legislative
branch sinking into impotence, and an all-powerful and
unaccountable judiciary, the public has little
recourse but to do as it is told. The government will
just do what it wants.
Second,
fear is an effective way to get people to give up
independence, privacy, and freedom. It is being used,
and it is working. Tell people that they are in
danger, that they are being attacked or about to be
attacked or might be attacked. Tell them that the
government needs to watch every detail of their lives
to protect them. Throw in a bit of theater about bomb
shelters, survival kits, and duct tape to give a sense
of immediacy. Test the air raid sirens every Monday.
America
frightens easily. We are afraid of second-hand smoke,
terrorists, plastic guns, and little boys who point
their fingers and say "bang." It isn't the
attitude of Davy Crockett, but neither is it the
America of Davy Crockett. The United States is perhaps
the world's most timid nation. It will accept much in
the name of security. Once people get used to the loss
of rights, it is almost impossible to get them back.
Third,
the mechanisms of control go so painlessly into place.
When the FBI was installing its software for
monitoring email, there was a brief fuss, quickly
forgotten. The software is still there. People got
used to airport searches. Changes to obscure laws
regarding warrantless access to records do not get
attention beyond the beltway. The linking of data
bases doesn't make a loud bang or produce a mushroom
cloud.
Finally,
how much do people really care about freedom? On
average, not much. Give them three hundred channels on
the cable, alcohol, food, sex, drugs, and rock and
roll, and they will be docile if not always precisely
happy.
Americans
sometimes like to think of themselves as hardy yeoman,
freedom-loving individualists, Fifth Century Athenians
with squirrel guns. No. Increasingly the country
consists of a bored suburban peasantry, politically
inert, apathetic, in intellectual decline, oscillating
from cubicle to sofa. As long as the government
doesn't crash through their doors, which it almost
never will unless opposed, the cameras won't bother
them.
There
may be no way to avoid the surveillance state. People
may or may not be happy with it. It may or may not be
particularly oppressive. I think we are about to find
out.
*RFIDs
