The increasing surveillance in today's society

For once, the topic of the week is about an issue that even I can’t judge black or white: The issue of the increasing surveillance throughout Society. Nobody would say something like the more surveillance – the better. Meanwhile, a very limited number of people would argue for no surveillance at all. In this text, I will try to elaborate on what I think is a reasonable degree of surveillance. Assuming the world could be split into a ‘real’ and a ‘virtual’ world makes the analysis somewhat easier.

In the ‘real’ world, violence exists. People become raped, beaten and even killed. Due to this, many means to counteract these severe crimes could easily be justified. One expedient that is readily used – at least in larger cities – is surveillance cameras, which indeed are as much Orwellian as they could be; no doubt they constitute an infringement on the personal integrity. However, I believe, we must accept this infringement in order to save lives and serious injuries. That doesn’t mean it’s unproblematic. The truth is quite the contrary. Therefore, the new technology that allows persons being identified only upon certain sounds (e.g. someone squealing) or other disturbances is very promising.

In the so-called ‘virtual’ world (the name is a misnomer, since just because this ‘world’ is based on computers doesn’t mean it’s not real) the situation is different. As most young people are too well aware of, a very limited percentage of crimes on the Internet has anything to do with violence. Therefore, in this case, the pros of surveillance do not outweigh the cons. Besides, there is also another difference: In the ‘real’ world it would – at least in theory – be possible to track a person throughout an arbitrarily large number of hours by asking arbitrarily many people if and where they have spotted the person in question; one is indeed not disguised when moving around in society. In front of your computer, however, the situation could be another; here you could be truly private.

Furthermore, there is definitely a zone of transition between the two worlds, since so much of the transactions (in shops, buses, trains, et cetera) are nowadays digitalised. This is a major issue; it would be possible to have an almost complete coverage of a person’s behaviour simply by looking at his/her credit card account. What is more, the question is complicated by the fact that most card users probably want to have a posteriori access to the record – perhaps even through the Internet… A natural solution in this case, would certainly be that the card customer could choose that all records could be deleted on purpose or even immediately following a transaction.

Instead of legislating that Internet access providers have to record for example all sent e-mails, it would be more appropriate the do the opposite: no record at all should be the rule. Generally, the police have enough to do with ‘real’ crimes. Even though recording e-mailing and surfing habits would solve some crimes, this does not justify a wholesale recording of the digital life of all citizens.

To summarise, surveillance and digital recording ought to be at a minimum, except where the risk of violence validates exceptions. Indeed, I would welcome surveillance cameras on certain places even in a town like Karlstad. But, cameras with disguising abilities would be most welcome due to the strongly improved integrity.