Via aeon magazine
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In the future, most people will live in a total surveillance state – and some of us might even like it
Suppose you’re walking home one night, alone, and you decide to take a
shortcut through a dark alley. You make it halfway through, when
suddenly you hear some drunks stumbling behind you. Some of them are
shouting curses. They look large and powerful, and there are several of
them. Nonetheless, you feel safe, because you know someone is watching.
You know this because you live in the future where surveillance is
universal, ubiquitous and unavoidable. Governments and large
corporations have spread cameras, microphones and other tracking devices
all across the globe, and they also have the capacity to store and
process oceans of surveillance data in real time. Big Brother not only
watches your sex life, he analyses it. It sounds nightmarish — but it
might be inevitable. So far, attempts to control surveillance have
generally failed. We could be headed straight for the panopticon, and if
recent news developments are any indication, it might not take that
long to get there.
Maybe we should start preparing. And not just by wringing our hands
or mounting attempts to defeat surveillance. For if there’s a chance
that the panopticon is inevitable, we ought to do some hard thinking
about its positive aspects. Cataloguing the downsides of mass
surveillance is important, essential even. But we have a whole
literature devoted to that. Instead, let’s explore its potential
benefits.
The first, and most obvious, advantage of mass surveillance is a
drastic reduction in crime. Indeed, this is the advantage most often put
forward by surveillance proponents today. The evidence as to whether
current surveillance achieves this is ambiguous; cameras, for instance,
seem to have an effect on property crime, but not on incidences of
violence. But today’s world is very different from a panopticon full of
automatically analysed surveillance devices that leave few zones of
darkness.
If calibrated properly, total surveillance might eradicate certain
types of crime almost entirely. People respond well to inevitable
consequences, especially those that follow swiftly on the heels of their
conduct. Few would commit easily monitored crimes such as assault or
breaking and entering, if it meant being handcuffed within minutes. This
kind of ultra-efficient police capability would require not only
sensors capable of recording crimes, but also advanced computer vision
and recognition algorithms capable of detecting crimes quickly. There
has been some recent progress on such algorithms, with further
improvements expected. In theory, they would be able to alert the police
in real time, while the crime was still ongoing. Prompt police
responses would create near-perfect deterrence, and violent crime would
be reduced to a few remaining incidents of overwhelming passion or
extreme irrationality.
If surveillance recordings were stored for later analysis, other
types of crimes could be eradicated as well, because perpetrators would
fear later discovery and punishment. We could expect crimes such as
low-level corruption to vanish, because bribes would become perilous (to
demand or receive) for those who are constantly under watch. We would
likely see a similar reduction in police brutality. There might be an
initial spike in detected cases of police brutality under a total
surveillance regime, as incidents that would previously have gone
unnoticed came to light, but then, after a short while, the numbers
would tumble. Ubiquitous video recording, mobile and otherwise, has
already begun to expose such incidents.
On a smaller scale, mass surveillance would combat all kinds of
abuses that currently go unreported because the abuser has power over
the abused. You see this dynamic in a variety of scenarios, from the
dramatic (child abuse) to the more mundane (line managers insisting on
illegal, unpaid overtime). Even if the victim is too scared to report
the crime, the simple fact that the recordings existed would go a long
way towards equalising existing power differentials. There would be the
constant risk of some auditor or analyst stumbling on the recording, and
once the abused was out of the abuser’s control (grown up, in another
job) they could retaliate and complain, proof in hand. The possibility
of deferred vengeance would make abuse much less likely to occur in the
first place.
With reduced crime, we could also expect a significant reduction in
police work and, by extension, police numbers. Beyond a rapid-reaction
force tasked with responding to rare crimes of passion, there would be
no need to keep a large police force on hand. And there would also be no
need for them to enjoy the special rights they do today. Police
officers can, on mere suspicion, detain you, search your person,
interrogate you, and sometimes enter your home. They can also arrest you
on suspicion of vague ‘crimes’ such as ‘loitering with intent’. Our
present police force is given these powers because it needs to be able
to investigate. Police officers can’t be expected to know who committed
what crime, and when, so they need extra powers to be able to figure
this out, and still more special powers to protect themselves while they
do so. But in a total-surveillance world, there would be no need for
humans to have such extensive powers of investigation. For most crimes,
guilt or innocence would be obvious and easy to establish from the
recordings. The police’s role could be reduced to arresting specific
individuals, who have violated specific laws.
If all goes well, there might be fewer laws for the police to
enforce. Most countries currently have an excess of laws, criminalising
all sorts of behaviour. This is only tolerated because of selective
enforcement; the laws are enforced very rarely, or only against
marginalised groups. But if everyone was suddenly subject to
enforcement, there would have to be a mass legal repeal. When spliffs on
private yachts are punished as severely as spliffs in the ghetto, you
can expect the marijuana legalisation movement to gather steam. When it
becomes glaringly obvious that most people simply can’t follow all the
rules they’re supposed to, these rules will have to be reformed. In the
end, there is a chance that mass surveillance could result in more
personal freedom, not less.
The military is another arm of state power that is ripe for a
surveillance-inspired shrinking. If cross-border surveillance becomes
ubiquitous and effective, we could see a reduction in the $1.7 trillion
that the world spends on the military each year. Previous attempts to
reduce armaments have ultimately been stymied by a lack of reliable
verification. Countries can never trust that their enemies aren’t
cheating, and that encourages them to cheat themselves. Arms races are
also made worse by a psychological phenomenon, whereby each side
interprets the actions of the other as a dangerous provocation, while
interpreting its own as purely defensive or reactive. With cross-border
mass surveillance, countries could check that others are abiding by the
rules, and that they weren’t covertly preparing for an attack. If
intelligence agencies were to use all the new data to become more
sophisticated observers, countries might develop a better understanding
of each other. Not in the hand-holding, peace-and-love sense, but in
knowing what is a genuine threat and what is bluster or posturing. Freed
from fear of surprising new weapons, and surprise attacks, countries
could safely shrink their militaries. And with reduced armies, we should
be able to expect reduced warfare, continuing the historical trend in
conflict reduction since the end of the Second World War.
Of course, these considerations pale when
compared with the potential for mass surveillance to help prevent global
catastrophic risks, and other huge disasters. Pandemics, to name just
one example, are among the deadliest dangers facing the human race. The
Black Death killed a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century
and, in the early 20th century, the Spanish Flu killed off between 50
and 100 million people. In addition, smallpox buried more people than
the two world wars combined. There is no reason to think that great
pandemics are a thing of the past, and in fact there are reasons to
think that another plague could be due soon. There is also the
possibility that a pandemic could arise from synthetic biology, the
human manipulation of microbes to perform specific tasks. Experts are
divided as to the risks involved in this new technology, but they could
be tremendous, especially if someone were to release, accidentally or
malevolently, infectious agents deliberately engineered for high
transmissibility and deadliness.
You can imagine how many lives would have been saved had AIDS been sniffed out by epidemiologists more swiftly
Mass surveillance could help greatly here, by catching lethal
pandemics in their earliest stages, or beforehand, if we were to see one
being created artificially. It could also expose lax safety standards
or dangerous practices in legitimate organisations. Surveillance could
allow for quicker quarantines, and more effective treatment of
pandemics. Medicines and doctors could be rushed to exactly the right
places, and micro-quarantines could be instituted. More dramatic
measures, such as airport closures, are hard to implement on a large
scale, but these quick-response tactics could be implemented narrowly
and selectively. Most importantly, those infected could be rapidly
informed of their condition, allowing them to seek prompt treatment.
With proper procedures and perfect surveillance, we could avoid
pandemics altogether. Infections would be quickly isolated and
eliminated, and eradication campaigns would be shockingly efficient.
Tracking the movements and actions of those who fell ill would make it
much easier to research the causes and pathology of diseases. You can
imagine how many lives would have been saved had AIDS been sniffed out
by epidemiologists more swiftly.
Likewise, mass surveillance could prevent the terrorist use of nukes,
dirty bombs, or other futuristic weapons. Instead of blanket bans in
dangerous research areas, we could allow research to proceed and use
surveillance to catch bad actors and bad practices. We might even see an
increase in academic freedom.
Surveillance could also be useful in smaller, more conventional
disasters. Knowing where everyone in a city was at the moment an
earthquake struck would make rescue services much more effective, and
the more cameras around when hurricanes hit, the better. Over time, all
of this footage would increase our understanding of disasters, and help
us to mitigate their effects.
Indeed, there are whole new bodies of research that could emerge from
the data provided by mass surveillance. Instead of formulating theories
and laboriously recruiting a biased and sometimes unwilling group for
testing, social scientists, economists and epidemiologists could use
surveillance data to test their ideas. And they could do it from home,
immediately, and have access to the world’s entire population. Many
theories could be rapidly confirmed or discarded, with great benefit to
society. The panopticon would be a research nirvana.
Lying and hypocrisy would become practically impossible, and one could no longer project a false image of oneself
Mass surveillance could also make our lives more convenient, by
eliminating the need for passwords. The surveillance system itself could
be used for identification, provided the algorithms were sufficiently
effective. Instead of Mr John Smith typing in ‘passw0rd!!!’ to access
his computer or ‘2345’ to access his money, the system could simply
track where he was at all times, and grant him access to any computers
and money he had the right to. Long security lines at airports could
also be eliminated. If surveillance can detect prohibited items, then
searches are a waste of time. Effective crime detection and deterrence
would mean that people would have little reason to lock their cars or
their doors.
Doing business in a mass surveillance society would be smoother, too.
Outdoor festivals and concerts would no longer need high fences,
security patrols, and intimidating warnings. They could simply replace
them with clear signs along the boundary of the event, as anyone
attending would be identified and billed directly. People could dash
into a shop, grab what they needed, and run out, without having to wait
in line or check out. The camera system would have already billed them.
Drivers who crashed into parked cars would no longer need to leave a
note. They’d be tracked anyway, and insurance companies would have
already settled the matter by the time they returned home. Everyday
human interactions would be changed in far-reaching ways. Lying and
hypocrisy would become practically impossible, and one could no longer
project a false image of oneself. In the realm of personal identity,
there would be less place for imagination or reinvention, and more place
for honesty.
Today’s intricate copyright laws could be simplified, and there would
be no need for the infantilising mess of reduced functionality that is
‘Digital Rights Management’. Surveillance would render DRM completely
unnecessary, meaning that anyone who purchased a song could play it
anytime, on any machine, while copying it and reusing it to their
heart’s content. There would be no point in restricting these uses,
because the behaviour that copyrights holders object to — passing the
music on to others — would be detected and tagged separately. Every time
you bought a song, a book, or even a movie, you’d do so knowing that it
would be with you wherever you went for the rest of your life.
The virtues and vices of surveillance are the imagined virtues and
vices of small villages, which tend to be safe and neighbourly, but
prejudiced and judgemental. With the whole world as the village, we can
hope that the multiplicity of cultures and lifestyles would reduce a
global surveillance culture’s built-in potential for prejudice and
judgment. With people more trusting, and less fearful, of each other, we
could become more willing to help out, more willing to take part in
common projects, more pro-social and more considerate. Yes, these
potential benefits aren’t the whole story on mass surveillance, and I
would never argue that they outweigh the potential downsides. But if
we’re headed into a future panopticon, we’d better brush up on the
possible upsides. Because governments might not bestow these benefits
willingly — we will have to make sure to demand them.