Aug

15

THE END OF PRIVACY

[How to Save the World]
tiaA few weeks ago, I wrote the following passage describing a bizarre dream I’d had the night before:

How about a very cheap, tiny
camera that anyone can plant anywhere and broadcast wirelessly on the
Internet to show the world what goes on in backrooms, in abusive homes,
in factory farms, in old age homes and prisons and refugee camps and
war zones and other places where atrocities depend on restricted access
or closed doors and privacy. Not government controlled, but something
anyone could buy at Radio Shack, or at least over the Internet. It
would of course mean the end of privacy, but perhaps if the world could
see what goes on in these places of horror they just wouldn’t tolerate
the atrocities and would cede their privacy as a difficult but fair
trade-off — to deter and drastically reduce human violence and crime
everywhere.


Coincidentally, David Brin, exactly one week later, played devil’s advocate in Salon.com and said this wouldn’t be bad, for real. He wrote:

Every interest group will find
some kind of opportunity in this new world. Want to protect forests?
Each and every tree on earth might have a chip fired into its bark from
the air, alerting a network if furtive loggers start transporting
stolen hardwoods. Or the same method could track whoever steals your
morning paper. Not long after this, teens and children will purchase
rolls of ultra-cheap digital eyes and casually stick them onto walls.
Millions of those “penny cams” will join in the fun, contributing to
the vast IPv6 datasphere… In the short term, expanded powers of
vision may embolden tyrants. But over the long run, these systems could
help to empower citizens and enhance mutual trust.

His thesis is that once a technology becomes available and affordable,
no amount of regulation or public opprobrium will prevent it from being
used. So we might as well use ubiquitous video surveillance technology,
too — just as government and corporations will use it for their
purposes, legitimate and nefarious, we can use it to watch the
watchers, and prevent them from getting too snoopy or too criminal.

Will such a world be better or worse? Does video ubiquity exempt us
from the need, and the obligation, to trust each other, even those we
love? Does it increase or decrease our security, and our
decision-making ability? If you know that someone could be, will be,
watching you and listening to you every moment, how will it change your
behaviour? Will it make us paranoid and stressed-out, or more
conscientious, responsible, self-conscious and diligent? And do you buy
Brin’s thesis that such technology can’t and shouldn’t be stopped?
[How to Save the World]

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