Stars of CCTV

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The Report on the Surveillance Society is a detailed examination of the issues around surveillance, and it was commissioned by the Information Commissioner, the person whose job it is, and I quote, “to promote access to official information and protect personal information.”

Much of the report concentrates on the current situation, outlining the kinds of surveillance that are in place, discussing the ‘public good’ versus ‘control’ arguments, and addressing the difficult area of regulation. If you want a solid overview of where we are at now, then it is a very good place to go.

But there is another interesting aspect to the report. If you think things are getting a bit out of hand now, and you worry about ‘function creep’ – a good example of which is the police being able to access that Oystercard database. This is a function for which it was not introduced but which has been added - you should read the theoretical look at how things might be in 2016.

Technologies posited include: a passport/ID card with information like health and criminal records sitting alongside citizenship data. Then there’s the intelligent billboards that respond to RFID chips in clothing which cross match this with consumer profiling to send appropriate personalised ads your way. How about, shopping chips embedded under the skin and loaded with prepay cash, which can be spent at the providing shopping centre and give access to member only areas and other privileges. Or remotely controlled automated mini spyplanes and CCTV in lampposts with facial recognition capability. There is plenty more.

The 2016 scenario is based on a mainly benevolent society rather than one ravaged by violent conflicts, but it is still very much a society being watched and controlled, and one increasingly socially divided too.

Reading the scenario is in many ways more like reading science fiction than a realistic attempt to suggest a possible future. But then back in the early 1980s, pre-‘axis of evil’, would anyone really have seen biometric passports or iris scanning as anything more than science fiction?

And what did we make back then of things like electronic tagging of convicted criminals, RFID, or GPS based navigation systems? Or even, come to that the Internet and mobile phones ?

So the thing is, I am not paranoid. I don’t think the government, or any other agency for that matter, is out to get me. But I don’t like way that surveillance is creeping into every day life, and I don’t like that it often seems as though it is more about control than about benevolence. Even more, I am concerned about where it might be going in the future.

Thumbs up to the Information Commissioner and the authors of this report. Now it is up to us to read the report and get informed about the issues.

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