Modern Surveillance in Urban Environments

Surveillance simply means keeping a watch on someone. This can either be private or small scale such as keeping a watch within a home, school or a locality often done for a specific use case. Or this can be done at a large scale such as one done by large corporations or the state. Surveillance done at scale by the government within a nation is called state surveillance or mass surveillance.

Growing technological landscape in cities today has given rise to a new debate – Mass Surveillance vs Personal Privacy. This has become more prominent in the last decade or so as technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Facial Recognition, high quality cameras and sensors etc. have begun to mature and become common even in developing countries especially in urban environments.

 

History of Surveillance

In the pre-industrial age there was no or little threat to personal privacy for the common man. This little threat came in the form of human spies and watchmen enrolled by the state. However the cost associated with the spies and its unscalable nature made them target only a selected few individuals deemed to be sensitive or a potential threat.

This changed with the advent of cameras especially the CCTVs. This was further amplified with the rise of the internet which bough new surveillance techniques and unprecedented scalability bringing every citizen and netizen on radar of the government and corporations.

Private Internet Access (PIA) article talks about the history of urban surveillance and the current extent of modern surveillance technologies in great detail.

 

Benefits for the Society

It is true that there are many real and justifiable use cases of these technologies in our society which are often cited by those in favour of state surveillance.

Some of the benefits we see are

• National Security (prevention of  terrorist activities, monitoring potential spies or illegal immigrants)
• Urban Crime (deterring and solving theft, kidnapping, burglary, homicide)
• Traffic Management (intelligent traffic lights, speed cams, vehicle monitoring)
• Public Events (ensuring public safety in crowded events)
• Smart Cities (smart street lights, better urban planning)
• Emergency Response (natural disasters, disease outbreaks, health emergencies, stampedes, riots)

However as history and rationale tells us, everything good also has some downsides. Especially anything done in excess by humans will always bring new challenges and risks in the society.

 

Issues with Excessive Surveillance

Mass surveillance by the state comes at a cost of personal privacy of even the law abiding citizens. Use of tax payer money against themselves isn’t a very comforting idea for most of the politically and socially aware citizens. There are numerous critical aspects of one’s personal lives that ideally and naturally should remain private as it always has been since millennia.

This includes but is not limited to

• Families, relatives and social circles
• Personal relationships and dating
• Sexuality and sexual activities
• Health information and genetic data
• Shopping and spending data
• Personal Photos and videos
• Current location or routine travel routes

Access to this information by the state should be considered sensitive, excessive and unnecessary in nearly all circumstances by any rational person.

 

Privacy on the Internet

Internet has become a double edged sword.

It helps us connect, entertains us, boosts productivity, saves resources like fuel and paper, makes us politically and socially aware. But then there are the risks of mis-information spreading, addiction risks, mental health issues, cyber threats and digital divide.

However one downside that was being ignored until recently was how it has been causing leakage of personal information. This became more prominent with the rise of smartphones, digital payments and social media in 2010s with continuing growth in 2020s. One way to prevent spillage of unnecessary private data on the web is to use VPN software for browsing the web.

 

Conclusion

Humans have come a long way since the pre industrial revolution and so have the methods used to seek and collect personal information of individuals. The state now has more than necessary information about individuals with growing hunger for more.

There is no shying away from the fact that we currently live almost half of our lives on the internet, and are sinking deeper into it due to addictive apps, social media and the incoming AR/VR era. Digital privacy is now more important than ever. One must know and use all the tools and techniques available to limit the collection of personal information on the internet to safeguard their privacy.

At a larger level, as citizens (and now netizens) it is our duty towards future generation to be politically and socially aware and keep the state in check. One critical area to always consider during these discussions should be personal privacy. Privacy is a human right and this should be the case for all future generations too across the world.