Discuss: The Tips of Your Fingers

Surveillance in the service of state-controlled police and immigration services is a meager technology. A far greater threat to the rights of the subject including ‘privacy’, and ‘unimpeded’ identity is ‘data mining’ which will put the minutiae of every citizen’s economic history, -personal retail and cultural preferences, disposable income, success rates of responses to previous types of ads, important life events of you and those around you- into the service of growth-oriented corporations. As you enter stores, irresistible ads of exactly what you’re looking for will display themselves at the entrance-way and over your mobile. Everywhere you go, you will be a completely known and recognized phenomenon. Imagine the conformity this will promote.  There will be a tyranny of temptations based on your personal records. There will be no freedom anymore. Not even consumerism’s illusion of freedom of choice. Data mining will begin the moment you’re born and will only end when you die. It’s as though the old nightmare of Big Brother had been revised by the makers of ‘The Matrix’. Biometrics is creepy, but it’s a small part of what’s to come. We will be owned.

This stuff is entirely un-pragmatic. While the argument typically used by supporters of surveillance (if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear) may not fall short for obvious reasons, and there must be a limit to the extensions of surveillance, it doesn’t bother me as it is currently used because it seeks to serve a vital purpose in the interest of public health and safety. The world may not be black and white, but it IS either/or, and in this case we either allow the state to gain limited access to our activities or we suffer the consequences of unregulated entry into our homeland.

Scratch the “not” in the second sentence.

In considering surveillance, we should recognize the difference between privacy and anonymity. We like to go about in public with no one recognizing us. That is not possible in a small town and has not been possible in communities for much of history. Surveillance in large cities may destroy anonymity. But that is not a privacy issue.

You mean the theme song from “Cheers” lied to us?!