The World's Tabs and The Rise of Technology

 For much of his book David Lyon has explored both the history and general effect of the growth of surveillance. However in his chapter "The Surveillance State: Keeping Tabs on You" he begins to explore the how prevalent these systems literally are in our society and in related ones. He starts the chapter by noting a system in Canada where the central government (in the 1990's) operated a total of 2,20 databases with about twenty files per person, and where 10% of the population's names were contained on the police computer. The shocking thing to imagine is if these were the levels in the 1990's, what could have the evolution of technology past that have done. Fortunately, as Lyon notes later, American systems are more likely to rely on existing systems such as Social Security instead of developing all new systems to tackle the growing amount of information available. However, the vast majority of this information in this chapter was centered around systems developing in other countries. For instance, a single network in Thailand that, in 2006, gathered personal information on 65 million Thai citizens. In addition, the chapter also contains a lot of information on British systems, such as the the practice of the "whole person concept," which means that information on citizens would be available to a variety of systems and organizations in Britain. A third foreign example was the time taken to go into the Canadian carded health care system. In Canada, the Health Number system where each citizen has a health number printed on a card that identified their type of health care and other personal information. While this system advocated more privacy and faster service, there were  concerns, legitimately expressed, over the potential for abuse of the more integrated personal health information system. This final example also noted the value of "smartcards" in a surveillance capacity. Lyon concludes the chapter by raising the question of whether or not this increased surveillance capacity truly promotes totalitarianism as the technology helping it rises or not.

Lyon's next chapter focuses more in on what I'm truly interested in in the terms of surveillance society and the rise of surveillance technology. In this chapter, Lyon delves into the aspect policing plays into information gathering and sways away from the systems that hold information in terms of the central government. To start, Lyon explores what he calls "the single most significant item" about how individuals are identified in terms of UPI's (universal personal identifiers), which are used to pinpoint individuals more easily. The context of UPI's makes it easier to learn about suspect individuals that the government requires information on, and can make tracking down certain individuals much easier by holding information about residence, place of employment, or even just a zipcode. Later, Lyon examines the use of information and registration in certain criminal cases. For example, he notes the American National Auto Theft Bureau, and how these organizations can be used to help locate cars by registration or even license plate number. However, the potential for abuse still lingers about these systems, and how integrated these systems seem to be. However, the key chunk of this section of Lyon's book lies in his statement that "All the advanced societies possess large-scale computer systems for policing." For instance, the National Crime Information Center (run by the FBI) had, in 1994, records on seventeen million people, and handled a million transactions every day. Another example would be the British Police National Computer, which was meant to hold vehicle records, but now holds fifteen million records including fingerprints, convictions, and wanted or missing persons. However, Lyon also notes that reaction to these events has not always been positive, noting unrest that occurred in Liverpool and London over "community policing." As a conclusion, Lyon goes into worldwide policing, such as the link between Britain's General Communications Headquarters and the NSA. Finally, in a note I found very interesting, Lyon makes note of the "video vigilantes" phenomenon where citizens with cameras often videotape police brutality or crimes and in doing so help policing overall, or, in other cases, rebel against the growing aspect of social control by government systems and national policing systems.

Better Late than Never, Better Private than Panopticon

It's been a long week and though that serves as no excuse for this post being days late, it is nice to get it out on this page as I describe in further detail my next foray into the world described in The Electronic Eye. David Lyon left the reader at the end of the first 50 pages of this book with a description of surveillance growth over history. Now, in his chapter entitled "From Big Brother to Electronic Panopticon, he describes the differences from feeling like "Big Brother is watching you" to the reality of how much social control comes with the gathering of data, the loss of privacy, and the transparency of individuals in society. Forwarding his analysis of data gathering he sites a prison plan from Britain in the 1790's. This prison was entitles the Panopticon penitentiary and was designed to be a form of prison rooting itself in a design that made all prisoners visible to the guards, but the guards invisible to the inmates, giving them the specific sense that, as Lyon puts it, like God, there are a set of invisible eyes watching them. In describing this, Lyon goes on to reveal that surveillance can be best described as the "accumulation of coded information" and that it refers to the "direct monitoring of subordinates within the capitalist workplace," usually without those subordinates knowing someone is watching their every move. But as Lyon's reveals, everywhere from the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) to the FBI and CIA are constantly gathering data on us whether we are suspect or not. This information can be harmless, such as driver's liscences and policitcal information, but as Lyon says, it does enclose us in a type of "electronic Panopticon." He also makes references in this chapter to George Orwell's book 1984, which describes a dystopia, a society in which, as the term goes, "Big Brother is always watching." And Lyon's key point here is that as technology increases, these metaphors for contemporary surveillance, though not descriptive of the entire problem, become more and more accurate.

Peering into The Electronic Eye

I decided to start my research into the abuse and growth of public surveillance with a book entitled The Electronic Eye, by David Lyon. Despite being written in 1994, and therefore not including some of the more recent surveillance developments, so far the book seems to have a good, rounded view of surveillance in the modern age and its implications for social privacy. Lyon begins his book with a look into the different ways in which we are impacted by surveillance on a daily basis, noting both credit information, social security numbers, the use of driver's licenses and caller ID, and several other types of data collection as ways that personal information is no longer private. He begins, in the start of this book, to explore the implications of having all personal data stored on a computer somewhere, and how easily that information can be shared and required for certain modern actions. For example, he sites his own experience moving to Canada and starting a life as a mess of data transactions and personal forms. In addition, he explores how even data given to a someone for buying a present can, by the relative sharing of that information in the private sector, lead that personal information to be recorded by the government. In short, he explores his "surveillance society" as a growing issue world wide with the growth of computers and digital technology. As two fginal notes, he mentions that the UN, in 1948, promised that "no one shall be subject to arbitrary interference in his privacy, home or correspondence." What Lyon notes and goes into is that the definition of what is "arbitrary" has been slowly changing as the definitions of what is "private" and what is "public have changed, and continue to change. In the following section, Lyon begins to explore what has led up to this modern status, and how the history of privacy legislature and practice has led us to this new "surveillance society." Later I believe he will connect this to what the implications are for the future, and what context the past should be taken in, and that's what I will be interested to see in his next segment as he continues to explore the modern publication of our own privacy.

Opening up our "Surveillance Society"

Modern technology has all but destroyed the concept of privacy in a modern society. From police cameras, to data collection, to sharing of personal data within private corporations, it almost seems like no personal information is, well, personal anymore given how much it gets spread around. Even corporations like Facebook maintain that they do give out your private information to other companies, such as advertising firms, schools, or possible jobs you might be searching for. In other words, it's hard to say these days what is private or not anymore, and to what extend privacy in the modern world should be protected, and how much it is currently being infringed upon. However, over the course of the next month or so I will be doing a significant amount of research into this aspect, with a central focus into Boston's own issues with it, though I will be exploring the larger concepts as well. My goal will be to look into the levels of information gathering that occur without our knowledge from day to day, what laws are currently in place to help protect us, and what we should be doing should our personal privacy turn out to be too public. There are certain moral rights everyone should have, and in certain ways modern society, sometimes called, in this context, surveillance society, blurs these expectations. I don't yet know enough to make a judgment about what to do about this issue, but as I learn more I will come to a better understanding of our own privacy, and how we can help protect it from abuse in this technologically changing world.