When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you

Some weeks ago I looked at the way that technology is changing both the way we go about our business and what it means to be human.

I also addressed the question of how technology is releasing more and more information to everyone, but especially to one policing body or another. Our movements, transactions, communications and behaviours are all under increasing observation. Big Brother is watching you.
It’s a really vexed question. When we look at how satellite tracking systems were used to find the body of Robert Houlihan we think, well that’s good, that’s really good, how they can use the technology that way. And the same technology may result in the prosecution of the murderers of Rachel O’Reilly and Siobhán McLoughlin. Even better.
It may even help to identify some of those who rioted in Dublin a couple of weeks ago. Aililiú!
But before we get too unquestioningly enthusiastic, let’s look at the implications. Big Brother isn’t all good news, not by a long shot.
The central objection is not to the technology as such. It’s to the implications for civil liberties and the right to privacy, the right to go about your business without being watched or monitored.
Even as I write, this is an issue. The State plans to deploy 600 speed cameras, ‘most of them covert and highly mobile’ according to the Irish Times. They’ll be located, we are told, at high-risk locations across the country. In Britain it’s even more draconian – you won’t be able to travel more than 400 metres without being tracked by a camera…
At face value, how can one object? The idea is to catch lawbreakers and speeders and thereby to save lives. Hawks in Government, public health administration and the media applaud. About time, they say.
But the trouble is, they snap more than just lawbreakers. Now, I know what many say – if you’re not breaking the law you’ve nothing to worry about. But it’s not that simple. You still have a right to move about the place free of surveillance.
You also have the right to surf the web free of hassle. But, as many Europeans have learned, American intelligence routinely watches internet and e-mail traffic in the hunt for terrorists. In so doing, an awful lot of innocents are caught in their nets.
You doubt this? Well, according to the Washington Post, American counterterrorism authorities have identified 325,000 people as terrorist suspects or their helpers, which is four times as many as in 2003. It may include individuals who simply logged on to websites critical of American policy – but the US National Counterterrorism Center isn’t saying.
American civil libertarians say the numbers aren’t tenable. They’re worried that lists are themselves spawning other lists, and that the intelligence-gathering process has begun to feed on itself and create an information loop. In which case, any one of us could be picked out…
It’s easy, but wrong, to blame Americans for this. The problem is not theirs alone. Two things are coming together here – fear of malign forces and the ability to gather huge volumes of information. The prospects are bleak.
In the UK, new laws are eroding civil liberties that were fought for over many centuries. Tony Blair has brought in a new law making it a crime ‘to glorify terrorism’. It is, he says, intended to send a signal to al-Qaeda. But in fact, everything it seeks to address could have been dealt with under existing UK legislation. What it actually does is erode the corpus of civil liberties enjoyed by UK citizens.
Blair may be well-meaning and trustworthy on this. Or he may not be. And we know nothing of his successors. And if we don’t know, why change?
The thing is, we’re all in a minority at some point. Dissent, especially in a Republic, is a civic duty. Only dead fish float with the stream. One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter and one decade’s terrorist is the next decade’s statesman. Nelson Mandela was once regarded as a threat.
Any one of us could be on a demonstration at some point in time. This doesn’t mean we’re about anythinmg unlawful – it mainly shows we’re alive, at least from the neck up. But does Big Brother know this?
Same thing applies to traffic monitors. The law says you can’t break a red light. You’ll get penalty points if you do. But what if the light is stuck on red?
The law recognises the idea of a ‘reasonable man’ – what would a reasonable man do in such a circumstance? He’d break the light, travelling carefully across the junction…
But the computer-based cameras can’t distinguish these things. You’ll get points for your troubles. For all the incredible capacity to gather and process data, computers can’t interpret events with anything approaching intelligence. Big Brother may be watching, but he can’t really see.
Some say that Blair’s UK is pioneering a new form of totalitarianism, the ‘controlled state’. We should be very wary here. Yes, we need to be able to fight organised crime and road madness and so on. But we also need to safeguard our freedom to speak, to write, to disagree and to be who, what and where we want to be without being watched and analysed all the time.
Watch out.