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Privacy
Technology extends our senses. Using machines we can see further and deeper, and hear ever-fainter sounds, there is little left that our eyes and ears cannot penetrate and reveal.
But how should we use our superpowers - to increase knowledge, to attain power, to make money? To seek intimacy through voyeurism? The more we depend on technology, the more we become both its beneficiaries and its victims. Data about us now exists on hundreds of computers. Computers that are now being systematically mined by IT companies. The erosion of privacy is no longer a problem experienced by musicians, royalty, and rock stars - it's now happening to all of us as surveillance technology proliferates and economic transactions become digital, it's increasingly easy to keep track of the average person. There's a new movie out called "Enemy of the State", that dramatizes these issues.
In the movie, "Big Brother" is the government, specifically - The National Security Agency of the United States. Will Smith plays the embattled every man. It's not science fiction - the NSA possesses the most sophisticated surveillance equipment in the world. Part of the NSA's arsenal is satellite tracking - orbiting cameras with the ability to zoom in on a few square feet of ground. Says Tony Scott, Director of "Enemy of the State": "The world is covered 24 hours a day. They have satellite surveillance of every inch of the earth except for the North and South Poles."
Martin Hill-Wilson, MD of Merchants Group, London, claims: "People know an awful lot about us these days - the supplier. Think about the number of times you are actually asked to hand over your details to qualify to join the club. Think about where that information about you is, how many databases you're already sitting on. Think about what is going to happen when people get a little bit smarter and join some of those databases together. You are going to be known completely." Whether we turn our cameras outwards to the stars, or inwards at ourselves, depends largely upon our own insecurities. The rationale and justification for surveillance is always security, whether against terrorists, foreign aggressors, or, in the case of industry, the competition. South Africa is no stranger to the world of surveillance technology. Our old National Intelligence Agency has passed into infamy.
Joe Kurowski at the Spy Shop goes into details, "One can build our surveillance camera into a matchbox, into a passive, into a clock, into a tie - basically anywhere. The retail price is R1'200-00. The most common and most effective way of bugging a telephone is hardwire. It is a machine that has been modified for telephone tapping. That you will place anywhere on the telephone line and it will monitor incoming and outgoing calls, only when the phone is activated." In the information age, products such as this are like gold dust. With this kind of information, it's possible for companies to pursue their interests with pin-point accuracy. The irony is that we look to the government to protect our privacy. Legislation places limits upon how companies use personal information.
Sound far-fetched? It's not, a South African company called Metropolis has done precisely this. Jason Xenopoulos, CEO of Metropolis states: "If you take a product like our cadastral map that we developed in spacial decisions, which essentially is a digitally accurate map of the country down to earth level that has been built from information from the surveyor General's office, it allows one to really draw down to earth level, and find out details about that particular property, the ownership and so on. There is huge chance for abuse. Does that mean that we should restrain ourselves from evolving in that arena. I don't think so because I think that a move into an information driven society is going to add massive value to all of our lives and it is going to assist us in really getting closer to the things that are meaningful in our lives."
Customer databases and physical surveillance have something in common. In the world of market economics, nothing is sacred; and if it's true, as some "primitives" believed, that by photographing someone you steal their soul, well, we lost ours ages ago.
CONTACTS:
Joe Kurowski, Spy Shop.
Michael Silber
Jason Xenopoulos, CEO of Metropolis |
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Contents and images © 1998 All rights reserved |
Gene Hackman talks to us, "All of us have a bit of paranoia about people getting into our lives, that things like this can happen where somebody who has some information that the Government wants, and the Government then goes to great lengths to get that information."
But who is "Big Brother" really? In this capitalist age, it's naïve to keep pointing the finger at the government. "Big Brother" is increasingly taking the form of multinational corporations. The real threat may not derive from physical surveillance, but from their ability to digitally monitor your commercial activities.
But these days, politics is playing second fiddle to commerce - specialized equipment can now be used for industrial espionage.
"At the moment South Africa doesn't have any privacy legislation," says Michael Silber, an Attorney. "Hopefully we should all own our own personal information. We decide who we give it to and unfortunately most of us are too free to fill in questionnaires, application forms and the like, handing out our personal information. However, what would be ideal is if people actually indicated that they wanted to opt out of that information being shared. South African consumers have had their information available in various databases for many years. The reason that this issue is arising at the moment is because of the very sophisticated data mining techniques that have been developed. This means that more or less useless information can now be collated into a very useful form and really forms a massive asset in the hands of the people who own it."
The roots of the privacy dilemma are difficult to unearth. Are consumers simply passive victims of surveillance?