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In todays world you do not have to look very far to see things that very well could have come out of George Orwell's novel 1984. The world is globalizing at an exponential rate compared to years past. With the advent and widespread use of the Internet and inter-continental travel the need for heightened security has grown tremendously. However, how best should our societies deal with this need?
Alarmingly, it would seem that the people with whom we have entrusted the authority to make such decisions are overstepping their bounds. The worlds policing agencies seem to be taking on the attitude of guilty until proven innocent. The use of Closed Circuit Televisions (CCTV), sophisticated electronic listening equipment, and peeking over the shoulders of Internet users from afar has risen sharply in recent years. This trend has also dramatically increased the ability of police, government agencies, employers and even regular citizens to abuse the privacy of the very people they are supposed to be protecting. Law-abiding people are having their human right to privacy eroded on a daily basis. The place where this is happening at a faster pace than anywhere in the world is Orwell's own United Kingdom.
At present there are at least 1 million CCTV units that are operational in the UK (i-contact). That number is staggering when you consider the fact that it is more than three times as many as there are in the US and in about a third the land size (i-contact). It would seem that London just might be heading more towards Winston's world than we might want to admit. Based on 600 hours of research from CCTV monitoring rooms, findings showed that suspect targets were disproportionately young, male, black and working class. Black men were more than twice as likely to be tracked as white men, and women were often tracked and observed at close detail for nothing more than kicks. Several instances of CCTV operators turning a blind eye to illegal acts have also been recorded.
One off duty officer was filmed coming out of a nightclub shouting racist garbage at three black men. When a fight broke out, 20 uniformed cops arrived and arrested two of the men, presumably letting their buddy head off to get his chips (or Victory Gin). The footage was deleted and the police officer responsible never prosecuted (Sch News). And the sad thing is that reportedly this is by no means an isolated case. As upsetting as the broad misuse of CCTV is there are other technologies and proposals that pose an even greater threat to our personal freedom. Take, for example, a program called Echelon.
Echelon is a joint project including the US, UK, and Canada and is responsible the monitoring and interception of all communications signals in the Northern Hemisphere. And while the particulars are highly classified, it is believed that the system can monitor the entire globe. It listens for keywords to pass by like Unabomber, Oklahoma City, Libya and so on and then records that segment and red flags it for a human operator who then can analyse the sample more closely. A small part of this program is located in Yorkshire and since the early 90 s has been analysing electronic messages at a rate of over 2 million a day (Tribune). It doesnt take much for a person to become a conspiracy fanatic when you start learning about Echelons abilities. It is just one more example of how our need for added security has lead us to the brink of Big Brother.
Right now in the US it is perfectly legal for employers to keep tabs on everything you do while on their computers. This seems fairly reasonable to me, after all it is company property and they are required to let you know you will be watched when they hire you. However, there are calls coming from our legislature suggesting that similar monitoring should be done on our home computers. The claim is that it would be for the good of our national security and they have a point. It is pretty easy to keep people in line when you know everything they are seeing and saying and everyone they are interacting with.
Unfortunately, because of the youth of the Internet government agencies are scrambling to make use of it as best they can. This often conflicts with general policies and often even the law, particularly the Privacy Act of 1974. Recently, a group of privacy advocates went to Congress to investigate why the Office of National Drug Control Policy was using electronic cookies on their website. A cookie can track a users Internet activities and report it back. The ONDCP said that they had not used any of the information illegally and were simply trying to tracks which of their advertisements were most effective.
They agreed to delete all of the information and issued new rules to keep it from happening again (NYTimes). The problem with this example is that for every benign incident like it there are bound to be many that are much more sinister in their intent. Thankfully, the United States has remained (at least publicly) relatively free of legislation when it comes to the Internet. However, we cant possibly know everything that is being done to our privacy by the government. As long as Echelon exists that question will remain unanswered. One of the solutions to the discussed issue could be the conformity of the interested parties to the 1984 Data Protection Act, which was passed by the Congress for the sake of stopping the misuse of users personal data stored in the computer.
The DPA is aimed at developing the set of procedures, which would prevent unauthorized access to personal information from the Internet. However, the Act has too many restrictions on what kind of data can be stored. Virtually, the data that can be protected by the Act has, first of all, to be declared and approved by the authorities for the permission to be stored. The line from the act states: No data other than the items stated [in the declaration] may be stored, and must be discarded when finished with. The real threat to Americans privacy is from the public sector.
Businesses have long bought and sold customer information with little regard to the individuals it belongs to. Failed dot-com start-ups are in a rush to sell information that as a customer you would think would remain under lock and key. They are doing this to appease their creditors as they sink. This information can legally include everything from your name, to your address, phone and credit card numbers and even information on your shopping habits (NYTimes). Again, because the Internet is such a new marketplace, there is not a sufficient legal framework to help protect us from this type of privacy abuse. It is frightening when you look into just how much privacy we are losing from day to day.
It seems as though everywhere you turn someone is watching what you are doing. From Cctv's that can pick your face or an unwanted behaviour out of a crowd, to someone watching what you do and say while on the phone or Internet. I think that if we are not careful we just might bring 1984 upon ourselves. In a rush to protect ourselves from the ever-changing bad guys we run the risk of painting ourselves into a corner where everyone will be watching. History shows us that rarely when governments are given such powers over their people do they use it for good. Lets just hope we can slow down and see what we are rushing towards before we all end up in Room 101.
Reference: Causing, Jeri. Privacy Advocates Condemn White House Drug Policy Office for Internet Tracking. Available web biotech / articles / 23 drug. html The Key to E-Commerce. Article. The Times 12 June 2000.
Available web times. co. uk / news /pages / tim / 2000 / 06 / 12 / timopnedt 01002. html. Ferguson, Ian. Public Enemy Number One.
Article. i-Contact Video Network May 1997. Available web The rise of CCTV. Article. Sch NEWS 15 October 1999. Available web RIP Information Centre Index.
Online. Internet. Available web
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