by Alex Lightman
Thursday, September 30, 1999
Comments: 25 posts
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The Coming Surveillance Tsunami by Alex Lightman Thursday, September 30, 1999 Comments: 25 posts | |
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Today's Internet is a tame technology relative to what it will be once the cameras are untethered. Enjoy your one-sided watching while you can because the same Internet that you use to look at the world, with almost God-like omniscience, is about to turn its all-seeing, never-forgetting capacity to focus millions of increasingly wireless cameras onto you. And, like the Terminator, it absolutely will not stop, ever. Wearable technology will soon put little cameras (and monitors) into eyeglasses, sunglasses and apparel. Spending less than $100 will give you the ability to monitor all your conversations almost effortlessly and nearly invisibly. You will say, "Save the last 30 minutes" after you've seen something interesting or incriminating, and your wearable will comply. Once the video is stored on an Internet server (perhaps equipped with an IBM 15-gigabyte drive the size of a matchbox), you can review it, edit it and send it on. The Truth Machine, a novel by James Halperin, describes how nearly foolproof lie detectors alter society in the 2050s -- and make the founder richer than Bill Gates. Wearable cameras will initiate a similar contagion of truth telling. Imagine that every interaction that you have in business is recorded, and that everyone else's actions are as well, indexed via a Virage video logger that transcribes each word, and available via a Lycos video search engine. How far do you think people who lie, cheat or steal will go in this future society? Combine this FBI file-on-steroids with the online ratings that people can and will make about you (perhaps modeled on the eBay ratings) and ubiquitous wireless news, and a picture emerges of a society with almost no privacy, but possibly almost no lies or crime. Will we be happy? A window toward the future
Starner is the first person to build a wearable computer that converts his desktop into a device worn continuously, except in the shower. Yes, even in bed where, he says, he can read his e-mail in the dark without waking his wife. He wrote his doctoral thesis while walking around, on a one-handed pocket keyboard-like device called a Twiddler. Starner enjoys the ability to tap into Borg-like collective intelligence with others. He can be in a conversation with one person while corresponding about that person via e-mail at the same time. Mann's site shows the evolution of his camera since 1980 and says that wearable cameras change the balance of power between individuals and institutions. His interactions with, say, an employee at the return counter of an electronics store, is altered because he might just be recording the interaction. Mann can also edit the conversation as well, and ignore requests to "turn that thing off" because it is a part of his apparel. Mann points out that, over the last 500 years, punishment is getting ever more mild (compared to whipping, burning, being dragged behind horses) while becoming every more certain. There are currently tens of millions of video cameras in the world, with an increasing fraction (impossible to count) of them connected to the Internet. While many are connected to presumably secure intranets, many more feed sites like Livecam, Webcam and Earthcam for anyone to see. Wearable cameras, which will eventually cost less than $10 and be a standard feature in mobile phones, game devices and even clothes, will alter the balance by turning users into a civilian surveillance army that would be the envy of the former Russian KGB and East German Stassi. To paraphrase Alvin Toffler, they are the prosumers of surveillance, able to broadcast their conversation with you to millions even as they impress you with their blow-by-blow of events happening at sites scattered around the world. Cameras and crime Is common surveillance good on a personal level? It depends on the situation. If you are not careful with what you say or are used to taking shortcuts, you are probably going to be unhappy. A couple in Texas went to court a few years ago after winning the lottery but then breaking up over who actually won the prize, which they purchased together with their groceries. The video surveillance of them checking out revealed that the man had made the purchase. Though the surveillance proved him correct, he did not collect the prize, because the tape's resolution was fine enough to show that he paid with food stamps. Since this was illegal, the couple ended up empty handed. The Rodney King video scenario is cliché by now, but the fact that his every move has been subject to surveillance, his every ticket a subject of TV news, is a taste of what an increasing number of us will experience. On the other hand, court costs could potentially be greatly reduced by early introduction of video evidence that was correlated with other wearables taping and with sounds and other digitally recorded information. The United States has been remarkably free, relatively, of terrorist activity. Part of the credit, no doubt, can go to the National Security Agency and other agencies that routinely scan millions of e-mails, webcams, faxes and phone calls every hour. One joke, which may not be a joke, holds that e-mail is slower in Japan than America because it has to pass through three Japanese intelligence agencies in addition to the standard four American ones. Internet millionaire Patrick Naughton was nabbed after corresponding with a FBI man pretending to be a girl, perhaps in part because Internet wealth attracts more Internet surveillance. Is common surveillance good on a community or societal level? Early indicators show a qualified "yes." Crime rates have dropped astonishingly in areas that are under surveillance. David Brin, author of The Transparent Society, writes that the trend that led to over 300,000 video cameras taping Britain began in the town of King's Lynn over a decade ago. Crime in or near the zones covered by 60 surveillance cameras dropped to one-seventieth of the former rate. Monaco, which has perhaps the highest density of surveillance in a sovereign territory, can claim an ultra-low crime rate. Waiters have been known to return wallets left behind back to the owner's hotel after reviewing multiple surveillance tapes , for a possible negative crime rate, if found items can count as the inverse of crime. Changing everything The Surveillance Tsunami is coming so fast that the only way to have a choice will be to adopt hermit-like tendencies or even emigrate into oblivion, though this will be only a temporary solution. K. Eric Drexler's Foresight Institute, with Brin's participation, has been exploring the implications of nanotechnology, or molecular machines, on privacy. Reading Drexler's Nanosystems or the soon-to-be-published and breathtaking Nanomedicine by Robert Freitas, we see just how small and numerous surveillance devices can get. Like it or not, a government or corporation could use a remote sensing device so small as to be effectively invisible in thousands of offices, or deploy virus-like quantities of nanobots, some of which would watch, others of which would swim in your bloodstream, to keep track of almost everyone, almost all the time. Common surveillance will eventually transform all of our concepts of personal space, community and memory. We will need to increase our ethical sense at a faster rate than we decrease the size and cost of our cameras and microphones, or we could wind up unhappy, even in a world where crime without punishment was unknown and "don't bug me" became a polite request. Alex Lightman is producer of the Unwired World fashion technology show (which will be held Oct. 6 and 7, 1 PM, at The Jacob Javits Center, Fall Internet World, New York City), CEO of InfoCharms and a contributing editor for Red Herring magazine. He graduated from MIT in '83 but does not yet wear a wireless camera or read e-mail in bed.
Is Lightman's scenario realistic? Is common surveillance good for community? Is it good for individuals?
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10/3/99 12:25:09 AM CA
10/3/99 9:40:17 AM Dr. Evil
10/4/99 7:05:52 AM Me and My Monkey
10/4/99 11:00:36 AM ray_g
10/4/99 4:12:49 PM Robert_R
Robert_R@juno.com
10/4/99 7:28:20 PM CA
10/5/99 1:51:13 AM The Revenge Of The Paranoids
10/5/99 4:49:58 PM Ezekk
10/6/99 8:03:33 AM Robert A.McTarnaghan
DPD AIR 1@aol.com
10/27/99 7:30:16 PM MICHAEL
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