LITTLE BIG BROTHER...
Another example that conventional wisdom and fears may be wrong...it's not Orwellian 1984 Big Brother we need to worry about, but infinite numbers of Little Brothers (from ZDNet's Ed Gottsman, titled "Democratization of Surveillance")...
Researchers at UC Berkeley are developing a micromechanical flying "insect cam." An electrical current makes a set of piezo-electric strips vibrate at 150 times per second; the strips in turn drive a pair of wings. The devices (creatures?) are experimental today, but as MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) technology matures, they'll become not only commercial but, as Kevin Kelley might put it, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.
These creatures are part of a trend that started many years ago with the opening of "spy stores" that sell private citizens parabolic microphones, audio "bugs" (prescient name), miniature cameras and other artifacts of the clandestine arts. The trend is the democratization of surveillance, and it constitutes a much bigger threat to privacy than anything governments might do. Imagine swarms of miniature insect cams (and insect mics), each controlled by a different "hobbyist," converging on homes, cars, dorms and other places where privacy is assumed today. It's ironic that Big Brother, who can (in principle) be controlled by legislation, may prove to be a paper tiger. As anyone with younger male siblings can tell you, the real threat to privacy usually comes from inquisitive Little Brothers.
Certainly, we're not too far from it today, with the number of webcam options. I am more inclined to be in the following camp on this issue:
The oxymoronic title, "Democratization of Surveillance" comes from the lasting blog posting at ZDNet. I describe it as that because privacy advocates have invested so much time in pairing the term "surveillance" with Big Brother and other authoritarian descriptions that it seems strange to see the term paired with democracy. Yet although their article is intended to raise the hackles of readers, their title is more accurate then they realize. Privacy advocates would like to believe the surveillance society is being driven by Big Brother but the fact is that millions of individuals are chosing to sacrifice their privacy for various benefits and conveniences. Whether it is supermarket shopping cards, E-ZPass tollbooths, nanny, daycare and nursing home cams, GPS bracelets for kids, GPS car tracking for reduced insurance rates, and on and on, citizens are freely chosing in a democracy to embrace the world of surveillance. Orwell ended up getting it wrong which is okay because he was writing fiction.
Posted by Dennis Bailey
The author forgot RFID and mesh networks, but we get the point.
Of course all this highlights that truth is often stranger than fiction. And the irony is that perhaps the most successful of these new flyin' critters might actually be from Apple and called iFlynSpy.
Comments