Eyes in the Skies II

In the last issue of the Uncommon Denominator, a number of questions were posed about the advent of consumer-friendly surveillance technology, particularly such software as Google Earth and Microsoft's Virtual Earth: How will widely available satellite and photographic imagery change our understanding of public space? Can our new image technologies reinvigorate the ancient ideal of the agora, or will they pervert it? Who wins and who loses? To what degree will these technologies help to distribute power more broadly, and to what degree will they concentrate power in fewer hands? The case was made, speculatively, that imaging technology might have the potential to stimulate new forms of environmentalism by helping people to see what is taking place on the face of the earth.

We should look a little more carefully, however, at the dark side of a technology that would seem to erode further the already crumbling boundaries of our personal space. Even before the development of Google Earth, Virtual Earth, and their emergent cousins, libertarians and privacy advocates were sounding the alarm about government and corporate intrusiveness. In Spying with Maps: Surveillance Technologies and the Future of Privacy (University of Chicago, 2002), Mark Monmonier efficiently summarized the surveillance climate as it then existed:

In the new cartographies of surveillance, the maps one looks at are less important than the spatial data systems that store and integrate facts about where we live and work. Location is a powerful key for relating disparate databanks and unearthing information about possessions, spending habits, and an assortment of behaviors and preferences, real or imagined. What's more, these electronic maps are becoming increasingly detailed and timely, if not more reliable. What gets into the system as well as who can use the data and for what purposes makes privacy in mapping a key concern of anyone who fills out surveys, owns a home, or registers a car or firearm.

 
The key difference, it should be noted, between what Monmonier has described and what we confront today is that surveillance has become democratized, or at least decentralized. All it takes is a personal computer and an internet connection, and a person can visually zoom in to just about any place on the globe: the Kremlin, a Hawaiian beach, their neighbor's backyard. Although it's still not possible to track individual people in real-time, in coming years the power of this technology to make us all more visible is certain to increase. That's in the nature of technology -- or, more accurately, of the people who design it.

Whether or not we think that there should be laws regulating such technology, we should agree that its potential for harm is real. There are both tangible and intangible negatives to continuing to break down the walls of privacy separating individuals from their fellow human beings -- and it is the intangible ones that are particularly disturbing. Tangibly, surveillance technology opens the door wider for various kinds of financial, professional, and even physical abuse. When there are fewer and fewer places where we can rest free from the eye of a camera; when our actions not only in banks but in parking lots and outdoor cafes can be monitored; when one practically has to go into a closet to pick one's nose -- then we should fear for our safety.

But that's precisely where the intangible, insidious effects of widespread surveillance technology enter in. Perhaps we will cease being jealous of our own privacy and guarding it vigilantly. As these technologies are made friendlier and friendlier, what is at stake is our sense of privacy itself. In other words, it seems possible that what we will lose is actually the fear of our loss of privacy, and that we will be gently reconciled to the idea that there's no space that's truly our own.

It's simply a fact of our day and age that we've grown more and more comfortable with turning over our private information to corporations, in a way that we never would to government -- at least not yet. So the growing access we enjoy to satellite imaging software represents a logical extension of what we have already gotten used to. And the satellites -- brought to us courteous of both our government and our major corporations -- come to seem like just helpful assistants, or guardians watching over us. They have been brought into the American home like a new friend of the family.

One has only to read "Mark Monmonier” put out by the Boeing Satellite Development Center, to see how a potentially scary technology is being softened and made nice for public consumption. "A satellite," Boeing explains, "is something that goes around and around a larger something, like the earth or another planet. Some satellites are natural, like the moon, which is a natural satellite of the earth. Other satellites are made by scientists and technologists to go around the earth and do certain jobs." Note especially how the technology is made to seem less threatening by its association with natural satellites. In addition: "Satellites do many things for people. Their most important job is helping people communicate with other people, wherever they are in the world." They are humanity's faithful helpers. And they don't bring us out of contact with each other, but help to strengthen human community.

Certain problems can be addressed through legislation: limiting the maximum resolution of consumer-available satellite imagery; prohibiting the sale or transfer of images; and restricting the coordination of mapping or surveillance technology with the gathering or distribution of personal data. But the deeper threat cannot be legislated away. That threat is to our commitment to the integrity and sanctity of personal space. It can only be addressed by a sustained and passionate defense of the right to privacy and of the places that we hallow with our presence.

After all, there are other troubling technologies on the horizon that will pose new challenges. If you think retail surveillance is a problem, wait until robotics come into their own.

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