Surveillance and Capture

Surveillance and Capture

Philip E. Agre

Privacy has become a huge issue in the 21st century. Without necessarily "trying to hide something" many people are opposed to having another individual or organization looking over their shoulder at all times. This introduction to the reading in the NMR put it well when it described how the panopticon is an exercise in control. Some people need the comfort of being controlled, and many people chaff at it. Regardless of what people's preferences are the panopticon is in full effect today, and people can not avoid it without making a conscious concerted effort to do so. Starting with all forms of electronic communication, they all can be listened to and are being listened to. The NSA, the largest spy agency in the world is responsible for intercepting global communications and processing data for enforcement action. In the past several years programs have been uncovered from domestic email monitoring, to the agency installing devices with AT&T wireless's consent to monitor all cell phone calls by that provider. It is convenient that both the carrier and a huge NSA satellite office are located in San Antonio, TX.  

Google Corp. (the host of this blog), may be the second largest harvester of personal data in the world. Unlike the government their aim is not direct human control, what they hope to control is the profitable information that comes from this data. Although they do not sell any of their data to outside providers, they make use of it in their efforts to improve their services and ad targeting in order to increase their bottom line. If you use Blogger, Gmail, Google Wave, Google Docs, Google Search with Accounts turned on, YouTube, or any other Google service, then it knows everything you said, done, or written with those services, and stores that data in their massive data centers throughout the world. 

Maybe if legal and cultural standards were more liberalized and clearly defined people wouldn't worry about these things. But when it is believed that anything you've said, written, or done in the past ten years can come back to to haunt you, it is not a very good feeling.