A British report on the threat that we all are becoming a “surveillance society.” Hard to argue that we aren’t.
Surveillance warning over ‘bigger brother’
MARTIN WILLIAMS
Regulators are struggling to keep up with the advances in technology used to track people’s lives as Britain is watched by “bigger brother”, a report warns today.
Telephones, e-mails and internet use can all be tapped and screened for key words and phrases by British and American intelligence services, the Report on the Surveillance Society says. Video cameras watch our every move, our buying habits are monitored covertly with the data sold to businesses and biometric ID cards and passports which contain data including fingerprints and iris scans on a computer chip are soon to be introduced in the UK.
Even the workplace is more closely monitored than ever for performance and productivity with managers quietly spying on our e-mails. The report, by a group of academics called the Surveillance Studies Network, predicts that by 2016 surveillance will be even further stepped up.
Shoppers may be scanned as they enter stores, schools could bring in cards allowing parents to monitor what their children eat and jobs may be refused to applicants who are seen as a health risk.
Information Commissioner Richard Thomas – who commissioned the report – warned that excessive surveillance could create a “climate of suspicion” and the loss of anonymity and privacy.
While some surveillance benefits the typical UK family, in other cases it is “personally threatening” and has wider consequences, the report warns.
But, while government and business surveillance is to increase, there is a resistance to proper regulation. The report says: “Surveillance technologies frequently get promoted unproblematically as ‘the answer’ to multiple threats, most recently to the threat of terrorism.
“However, the more that we become dependent on surveillance technologies, the more there is an apparent ‘lock-in’ which prevents other options from being considered and a comprehension gap which increases a dependence on expertise outside the democratic system.
“Regulators are constantly running behind technological innovation, unable to understand ‘how it works’.
“In this constant chase, one has to ask whether states possess the necessary tools to carry out meaningful regulation of complex surveillance practices.”
The public had become disengaged from what the report describes as “some of the most important issues of our time”.
While people can make a difference in confronting potential breaches in their privacy, there is little public discussion about the issues.
“When the surveillance system is infrastructural and when its workings are shrouded in technical mystique, it is very hard indeed to make a significant difference,” the report says. “For instance, not until some identity theft scandal breaks do consumers become aware of the extent of personal profiling carried out by major corporations.”
Mr Thomas called for greater public debate on the future of surveillance.
He added: “Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us.”
© Newsquest (Herald & Times) Ltd. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited