Late last week, I got on the 8:00 a.m. bus to go my office in downtown Seattle as usual. I sat down at my usual seat and starting reading my usual Harvard Business Review. The route was the same as everyday, the driver was the same, but one thing was different. This particular bus was equipped with a passenger surveillance device to monitor and record the activities of bus passengers. In the front of the bus was a tiny video camera, almost invisible to the untrained eye, and across my seat was the recording box. I sat wondering why anyone would want to tape anything in a public space in peaceful Seattle, in a bus with the usual suburbanites commuting to their reputable jobs in a city known for its surprisingly low-crime rates.
For the past few months, surveillance frenzy has gripped this country, and more and more video cameras are being installed in public spaces around the country, in airports, in train stations, shopping malls, parking lots, commuter trains and now, Seattle-King County Transit buses. Dartmouth isn't far behind either. Football games are now being recorded and so are Homecoming bonfires at Dartmouth and God knows where else, all supposedly to ensure that no untoward incident takes place. But the videos at the Homecoming Football game were used to identify field rushers, all done without any prior announcement.
Surveillance is not limited to video alone. All new cell phones are equipped with location transmitting devices that can be used to track the user's every movement, in addition to his or her phone calls. Parents can install special devices in their children's mobile phones to keep a tab on their whereabouts. A recent New York Times article reported that companies are planning on installing such devices in company cell phones as well. Dartmouth offers its own form of person surveillance. Each time someone passes an I.D. card in front of one of the card readers, it is logged somewhere, and if you do it more than a few times, you might find an officer coming up to greet you. I am not sure what new surveillance technology is being installed in the new Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol phones that are being distributed around campus.
Several companies, moreover, employ surveillance experts to sieve through all e-mails sent from company computers and websites visited to monitor the activities of their employees, usually without any explicit disclosure. The government can request library records without any due process and keep a tab on the books you have ever checked out or read.
There has also been a recent move to introduce a large-scale recognition system using iris-based or retinal recognition information. All your information can be stored in files that can be readily from anywhere with a scan of your irises or retinas, including your credit card information, date of birth, social security information, and so on.
But what has all this surveillance really gotten us? An invasion of our much cherished privacy, that's what. The term "privacy," of course, is not mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. However, it became a constitutional right with the evolution of the doctrine of "substantive due process," drawn from the Bill of Rights provisions protecting the security of home and person, as well as freedom of association. The Supreme Court recognized this in 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the Court struck down a state law that prohibited the use of contraceptives by a married couple. The decision was later extended to protect the rights of single persons. The right was subsequently extended, somewhat controversially, in Roe v. Wade in 1973, when the High Court gave women the right to abort an unwanted pregnancy. Citizens have been able to achieve a certain degree of privacy within the structure of law and society. Most people cherish their privacy and the right to do what they want within reason. I know I do. I know libertarians do. I know limited government conservatives do as well. I know most students do.
Philip P. Agre, Professor of Information Technology at the University of California, Los Angeles, writes: "Hundreds of today's emerging technologies have privacy implications, and many of them, such as wireless data communications, have already become cheap enough to be used on a large scale. Once these technologies become commonplace, it will be nearly impossible to change them. For this reason, taking measures to protect privacy should be high on the agenda of societies throughout the world."
Tracking terrorists, criminals, and other bad characters, should, of course, be encouraged, but tracking innocent civilians and maintaining records of their everyday activities should be taboo in any democratic state. I don't think any person in his right mind would want the government or any institution invading his private life.
