With old-style printed files, a definite decision was required to search out information about someone in particular. A bank teller used to need a reason or suspicion before pulling out the file for a customer at the counter. Doing this for everyone would simply take too long. Computerised files allow routine checking. The system can be designed so that every time someone comes into a bank for a deposit or withdrawal, their file is retrieved in a matter of seconds — with, for example, the information that they are overdue on a loan repayment. What this means is that information is automatically checked: everyone is under suspicion.
Just as computers can store and manipulate information in ways impossible previously, so other new technologies make it possible to collect ever more detailed and personal information about individuals. Bugging devices have been around a long time, but they are smaller, harder to detect and provide better quality transmissions than ever before. Video cameras are apparent in many shops, but there are also many that are not so apparent, for example hidden inside lights.
For the serious snooper with enough money, the technological capabilities are awesome. Nightscopes can detect infrared radiation in order to see in the dark. Sensitive sound receivers can listen in to conversations from outside a building, by deciphering the vibrations on a window pane in a room in which people are speaking. Computer-to-computer communications can be intercepted and decoded. The information on a computer screen can be picked up in a nearby room from emitted radiation, without any direct electric connection. (On the other hand, not all fancy new technologies are as effective as promotional material may assert or fearful targets may believe.)
Some of the opportunities for surveillance are open to anyone. For example, it is easy to use a radio receiver to listen in on a neighbour’s conversations on a cordless telephone.
In the future, surveillance is likely to become ever more intrusive and unavoidable. Surveillance cameras are being used in more and more public and private places. One development under way is tiny recorders and transmitters that can be transported on miniature flying craft that could be piloted into a person’s back yard. Eventually they might be reduced to the size of insects that could enter a room and record whatever is said or done. This would be a “bug” in both senses of the word.
It is in the workplace where surveillance has long been most intense and where the new technologies are “employed” to greatest effect. Word processors have their keystrokes monitored, and indeed computers are regularly set up to monitor any routine process. Open or hidden cameras are commonplace. Beyond this, employers are seeking deeper knowledge about their workers. Psychological tests are often used to select workers or, more commonly, to rule them out. Physical features are under scrutiny too, especially in the United States, where blood and urine tests are increasingly demanded as a condition of employment. Whether the aim is to screen out workers with communicable diseases (such as AIDS) or to detect users of illegal drugs, the effect is ever greater exposure of previously private information about individuals.
Gary Marx, author of some of the most insightful studies of surveillance, points out that new technologies overcome most of the natural barriers that protected privacy in the past.[2] Surveillance technologies can operate at a distance, penetrate darkness and go through physical barriers, as in the case of various listening devices. Surveillance is harder to detect than ever before, whether through hidden cameras or remote listening devices. Surveillance requires less labour than before, since technology now can do much of the work. For example, telephone taps used to require tedious listening of all conversations; now computers with voice recognition can be used to signal the presence of “trigger” words such as “bomb.”
Surveillance has long been a central feature of institutions of social control, notably prisons and mental institutions. New technologies allow this control to be extended into the community. In a number of countries, people can serve sentences at home, so-called “home detention.” Typically, they wear electronic bracelets or anklets which communicate with a central computer, which monitors their nearness to the house. One of the arguments for such alternatives to prison is that they would reduce prison populations, but the reality is that an ever-larger number of people may be caught in the net of the criminal justice system.[3]
Surveillance and power
The above examples of surveillance today give an idea of the scope of the problem. How is the problem to be understood? There are various perspectives available. For my purposes, it is useful to analyse surveillance as a cause and consequence of inequality of power. The key issue is the surveillance of the less powerful by the more powerful.
The word “surveillance” has connotations of nastiness, but a little reflection reveals that keeping a close watch on others is not inherently bad. For example, it makes sense to keep a close watch on small children to make sure that they do not get hurt. The same applies to the sick and infirm. Many people appreciate someone watching out for them when they are doing something that is potentially risky, such as swimming in the sea or climbing a tall ladder. These are examples of “surveillance” which can be most welcomed.
When people live together, they observe a lot about each other, and this can be considered a type of surveillance. It occurs in families, among friends, and in close-knit communities. Some of the attention in these circumstances may be resented, but much of it is an inevitable consequence of living as a member of a community. It can be a joy to see friends along the street or in a restaurant or to have them visit your home, even though they thereby know more about what you are doing at any particular time.
Most people are not concerned about “surveillance” in such situations. Why not? In some of the cases, such as meeting friends, there is both a mutual agreement to participate and a rough equality of power. But in the case of a parent and a small child, there is an enormous difference in power and no real possibility of informed consent on the child’s part. What makes the close watching in this situation acceptable is the trust implicit in the relationship: the trust that the parent will look after the child. (Of course, this trust may be violated, as when a parent beats or sexually abuses a child. Such actions justify intervention by others, whether family, friends or the state.)
What is normally called surveillance then applies to cases when either there is a substantial power difference or a lack of a trust relationship, or both. A large powerful organisation that collects data on individuals is a typical case. The organisation is able to collect data because it is powerful and becomes more powerful because of the data.
Is the fundamental problem the surveillance or the inequality in power? They are linked, so perhaps these two things can’t be easily distinguished.
Note that I have couched this discussion in terms of surveillance and power rather than in terms of privacy and individual rights. Many of the writers in this area focus on privacy, assuming that there is a right to privacy and that violations of individual privacy must be weighed up against other competing values (such as increasing efficiency or stopping crime). This language of privacy and rights is typical of liberalism. It assumes that individuals are isolated entities who have agreed to participate in society according to a “contract.”
2
Gary T. Marx, “The iron fist and the velvet glove: totalitarian potentials within democratic structures,” in James F. Short, Jr. (ed.),
3
Stanley Cohen,