Responses to Surveillance
For better or worse, surveillance is increasingly a part of modern life. Is it effective to continue to protest this increase, and to argue for a different tradeoff between security concerns and privacy or civil liberties? Or is it better to find an alternate way to respond to the increasing use of state-sponsored surveillance?
Professor Glenn Reynolds' recent op-ed in Popular Mechanics highlights a different response to surveillance: turning cameras and other recording devices on public officials, a practice termed sousveillance by Professor Steve Mann. Reyonlds suggests that citizen monitoring of official actions by police, politicians, and other "big shots" may be a democratizing force capable of countering the tendency towards ubiquitous surveillance. Ultimately, Reynolds asks, "Big Brother had a network of security cameras, but could that oppressive regime have survived a network of cellphones?"
At first glance, Reynolds' point seems particularly apropos given that the Congressional topic du jour is immunity for telecommunications companies that allegedly complied with illegal government surveillance requests. The debate was sparked by a series of lawsuits, including Hepting v. AT&T, that were generated due to individual citizens providing information about ongoing government surveillance efforts - an apparent case of Joe Public monitoring the activities of the government and challenging apparently illegal surveillance practices.
It is worth noting, however, that the majority of the evidence against the U.S. telecoms was generated by industry insiders, not by random observers with cell phone cameras. Thus, while they highlight the possibility of illegal surveillance even in the western world, they hardly suggest that sousveillance is a sufficient counter-measure. If anything, it seems more likely that surveillance can be used to curtail sousveillance than vice versa. As a previous ONI report documented, Burma responded to the use of the Internet and citizen journalism during the September protests not only with an Internet shutdown but also with increasing efforts to identify and punish anyone participating in efforts to document and distribute government responses to the protests.
Private monitoring of government activity clearly has an important role to play in democratic society, and Reynolds is right to note that technology can certainly enable it. However, this monitoring is most effective when targeted at specific government officials or public government action. Systemic violations, such as the alleged illegal wiretapping performed by telecommunications companies at the behest of the U.S. government, are much harder to identify and counter solely by encouraging and protecting citizen journalists. Moreover, bringing down Big Brother - or exposing U.S. surveillance or Burmese responses to democracy protests - requires more than the technology to enable individuals to expose government malfeasance; it requires tools and policies that protect those individuals from harmful consequences - be they Mark Klein of Hepting v. AT&T or Burmese activists - and limit the ability of governments to use surveillance and other tools to suppress such information.
