1 week Ago
The debate on the placement of cameras in certain areas to cut down on crime versus the right to privacy seems almost moot in today’s digital age. The justice minister is trying to play down privacy concerns by saying cameras would only be placed in areas where troublemakers were known to hang out, as if they would not move to other areas to cause problems to avoid being caught on camera or wear masks, balaclavas or hoodies. Meanwhile, the data privacy commissioner appears to be clutching at straws and posturing needlessly over something that cannot ultimately be stopped – the total surveillance state.
Criminals, bad drivers, violent protesters and gangs of misbehaving juveniles are giving authorities every excuse to forge ahead with this dystopian concept. If society does not police itself by instilling certain standards of behaviour, authorities will rule by consequence. They “won’t want to” of course but “won’t have a choice”.
And there will be very little pushback. In the realm of the law abiding, most people may feel safer with more cameras and naturally want to see perpetrators brought to justice whether drunk drivers, football hooligans or burglars. At the same time, how many people, even those who may rail against the so-called surveillance state, go anywhere without their smartphones, use them to pay bills, lay out every detail of their lives on social media or sign “terms of use” they never read? Remember in the eighties and nineties when the “global conspiracy” was all about “getting microchipped” with RFID technology? Although a few thousand Swedes took the plunge, RFID is now old hat.
In some countries, especially in Asia, facial recognition is already being used to open doors, pay bills and catch jaywalkers and litterers. The issue for detractors is not the cameras themselves, but who is behind them and can they be trusted not to abuse their power? In other words, who will watch the watchers? A benign democratic government that installs cameras with the best interests of citizens at heart could one day be replaced by an authoritarian one or indeed itself become a victim of “mission creep” where the solution to every problem will be “even more surveillance”. In an article titled ‘How AI surveillance threatens democracy everywhere’, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists posited that the procurement of the technology itself could lead to the erosion of democracy.
Will governments even ask themselves this question? Probably not. A headline in Politico some time back revealed: “The EU’s top court says mass surveillance is banned. Governments do it anyway”.
It cited France and Germany as examples. Even in Cyprus, we’ve already experienced how good the police are at being authoritarian. Just a few years ago if you didn’t cover your face, you were fined.
Now there’s a proposal to ban face coverings at protests. To use a cliché, sauce, goose, gander. Advances in biometric technology combined with AI have made the surveillance state unstoppable.
It would take mass mobilisation to prevent it and those who would oppose it are unfortunately in a minority..
