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With modern surveillance, no longer can the watched watch the watchers. Being under reciprocal social surveillance may have been the norm for humans, meaning l
by mLuby 5y ago
With modern surveillance, no longer can the watched watch the watchers.
Being under reciprocal social surveillance may have been the norm for humans, meaning living in tight-knit villages or open floor-plan, multi-generation homes—situations where there's always someone else around to see or hear what you do. But so too do you hear and see what they do, meaning you (or the community) can enact social and sometimes physical consequences for snooping, spying, snitching, and gossiping.
Cameras, even one-way glass, and especially mass communication snooping makes that surveillance unilateral—an expression of bureaucratic power over the individual. We can't tell what the corp or agency is doing with our data, how it will be used for good or ill, and we have little recourse (i.e. standing in court).
If, as they claim, these new forms of surveillance are essential for national security, protecting the children, and robust economic growth, then perhaps what's missing is the ability of ordinary citizen(-journalists) to likewise watch these faceless voyeurs and powerful officials to the same degree, returning to that "norm" of reciprocal surveillance.
- roody15 5y agoGreat comment. Who watches the watchers is an extremely important aspect of whether society evolves to something better or entrenches some form of corporate dystopian nightmare. Current outlook is not good.
- chuckee 5y agoThis misses possibly the most important aspect: Privacy is a shield for the powerless. In your example of reciprocal social surveillance, people had reasonably similar amounts of social and physical power, and lived next to each-other. Compare that to a drone operator and someone hiding in a cave, that learn of each-other's location. Or revealing the political preferences of those who support the party in power, and those who support the banned party. The surveillance may be reciprocal in those cases, but the results are anything but.
- mLuby 5y agoI might quibble that the troglodyte doesn't know the drone operator's location, but I think we agree on the larger point: privacy and surveillance are about power and vulnerability. Surveillance increases the vulnerability of those watched and privacy decreases it.