The State of Surveillance
Business Week cover story on “The State of Surveillance.”
And here’s my essay on “The Future of Privacy.”
EDITED TO ADD (9/6): The cover story is from August 2005.
EDITED TO ADD (9/7): CIO Insight on the death of privacy.
Mr Pond • September 6, 2006 7:47 AM
An interesting article. One problem I have with it is that the autrhor uses the charectarisation of a “polcie state”. A very quick bit of research will reveal that we’re not even close. The owords “police state” conjures up images of Nazi Germany or Warsaw pact.
The author also frequently mentions the problem of intrusion. As I’ve mentioned before – if a person is in a very public place, such as a busy shopping street, then what form of privacy can they expect exactly?
I don’t think anyone would disagree with using cameras and other emerging technology to catch criminals, whether they are of a traditional variety or are bent on acts of unspeakable terror.
Lastly, CCTV is primarily a reactive tool. Pro-active use of CCTV is both difficult and time consuming. Whether investigating normal crime or indeed terrorism the primary tools are (and hopefully always will be) talented investigators and intelligence types.
Let’s be brutally honest about this – despite vast advances in technology “we the people” can’t have our cake and eat it: either we have CCTV and other types of surveillance (with the associated checks and bvalances) OR we have poor investigative capabilities and a heap of undetected crimes.