The BBC offers us a vision of the future. To anyone who values personal privacy, it is a dystopian one dressed up in fluffy clothing. A future where even our jeans may be used to spy on us, where everyone can see everything about us, where social networking is ubiquitous. After all, if we have nothing to hide, right?
“A typical city of the future in a full IoT situation could be a matrix-like place with smart cameras everywhere, detectors and non-invasive neurosensors scanning your brain for over-activity in every street,” says Rob van Kranenburg, a member of the European Commission’s IoT expert group.
And he says this like it is a good thing… I don’t want my brain scanned for over activity, thank you very much. Indeed, unless there is a medical reason, I don’t want it scanned at all. I don’t want to be tracked. I know where I am at any given time, that is sufficient.
IoT advocates claim that overall interconnectivity would allow us to locate and monitor everything, everywhere and at any time.
I had two reactions when reading this statement. The first was revulsion. The second was; why? Why would we want to monitor everything? And, no, this is not a good thing. Not a good thing at all. Just because you can do something it doesn’t follow that you should.
But as more objects leak into the digital world, the fine line that separates the benefits of increasingly smart technology and possible privacy concerns becomes really blurred.
Blurred, eh? I think blurred somewhat understates the dangers to privacy here. Blurred is positively cuddly.
“The IoT challenge is likely to grow both in scale and complexity as seven billion humans are expected to coexist with 70 billion machines and perhaps 70,000 billion ‘smart things’, with numbers infiltrating the last redoubts of personal life,” says Gerald Santucci, head of the networked enterprise and RFID unit at the European Commission.
Ah, yes, the EC. Now, I can see why they might like the idea… Unelected officials governing from an unelected, unaccountable body might want to be ready should the proles latch on and take to the streets. It would be useful to have a means of detecting thoughtcrime and precrime, so constant surveillance will do the trick nicely. Indeed, constant surveillance doesn’t have to be constant – merely the thought that we are being watched at any given time will do -because, you see, we don’t actually know when someone is watching or not, the effect is the same. People become careful about what they do, where they go and what they say.
“In such a new context, the ethical worries are manifold: to what extent can surveillance of people be accepted? Which principles should govern the deployment of the IoT?”
To those of us who worry about such things, I’d say that it has already gone beyond what is acceptable, but given peoples willingness to sign up to social media and not use the privacy settings suggests that I am in a minority.
While there is nothing wrong with technology – it is neutral – the ease with which it allows the misuse of our privacy, with which it allows people to poke and pry, it becomes a threat. So, there is nothing wrong with a car that alerts its driver to potential problems via bluetooth, there is no need for it to go beyond that.
We don’t need a grid of interconnectivity. We don’t need neuroscanners, just as we don’t need the personalised advertising we saw in Minority Report – even f the advertisers thing it a spiffing idea.
From time to time, I take a pause and reflect on my reaction to stories such as this. Am I being a luddite, opposing the new for he sake of it? But I don’t think so. I embrace new technology for the good it does and use it willingly in my daily life. It is simply that I have boundaries. And the idea that I can be tracked by my clothing and that people think this is a good idea sends a chill down my spine. Did the DDR teach us nothing?
If this type of surveillance were rolled out, I would be scurrying poste haste to a country that has not yet embraced the telephone.
And I certainly won’t be buying any items of clothing that can track me…
Dammit, I take a break from writing a future dystopia and find the BBC are already turning it into a documentary.
Perhaps I should stick to historical. They can’t change that. Or can they?
LI – they could even have remote tobacco and alcohol sensors linked to the CCTV and the neuroscanners. They haven’t thought about that yet, so you’d better get in there quick.
The day they ban gloves and cash money is the one where I leave for a cave far far away. Or Dale Farm.
The error in thinking here is why on earth should these people want to ‘track’ and ‘manage’ others? What weird utopia do they dream of, and what psychiatric treatments will cure them? A city that tracks everyone by ‘neurosensors’? What an awful place to live that would be.
Also, what constitutes ‘over-activity’? Some people go through their lives with barely a tickle above the animal. Others walk around all day in a state of awareness with their heads buzzing. What is right for one is not right for another. Do the proposers want to ration thinking? What nonsense.
Fortunately, the EU looks like it may be on the cusp of disaster. So all these utopian dreamers may shortly be out of a job.
“Did the DDR teach us nothing?”
Yes, it taught these people that the DDR were doing it all wrong, and if it were left to them to manage that sort of thing, they’d surely get it right.
No the DDR taught us nothing, nor did the CCCP or the NSDAP, nor the originator of the police state, Jean Calvin ….
RfiD chips can easily be disabled, but built-in ones into electrical/electronic equipment are much harder to deal with.
The answer to nothing to hide, nothing to fear” is:
“OK, your 12-year-old daughters mobile ‘phone numnber is …. “
The only people who should be monitored and tracked are the politicians and control freaks who advocate this.If they stepout of line they can be ahem ‘removed’. That should concentrate their minds somewhat. Actually I agree that just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. Dangerous times ahead.
Err, where is the compulsion in all of this? Is the EC going to force us to buy RFID jeans? I doubt it. As for brain scanning it depends what it can see, if it can see that I am stressed or chilled out then I don’t care, so can anyone from my face. If it can see that I am plotting to buy an iPad then I am slightly more worried.
Why not stop panicking and wait until this stuff actually happens? Or are you like the greens?
Compulsion isn’t the issue. If it is being done without my consent, the difference is moot. The state is not the only malevolent influence out there. You may be happy to be scanned by someone – whoever, whatever – but I am not as my brain is none of their concern and I tend not to give my emotions away facially, having a poker face much of the time. Also, if everyone is selling RFID tagged clothing, compulsion isn’t the issue again, is it? I want to know who is and who isn’t so that I may make a choice. And if it is, I want to have it removed before I leave the shop. Again, I want the choice. And, no I don’t want my purchasing habits collected and stored – which is why I eschew loyalty cards.
I know a bloke whose socks used to “track” him .. they followed him around, whenever he whistled .. 😉
There would be, in a nation of sixty million (and rising) the consequence of an awful lot of data to process. Now I do understand that this a future ‘job opportunity’ for someone to sit in large room and analyse all this and more jobs made for those who report and collate.
But there are some huge issues here: untagged clothing smuggled in, immigrants having nasty brain surges (I think we may guess that those in less than modest garb in certain urban areas would excite interest and/or anger) and the real danger that people in high places suddenly turn out to be less than stable. Or saintly.
An expanded police force and enlarged court system to deal with the results inappropriate thoughts is going to be pretty busy, methinks.
XX Err, where is the compulsion in all of this? Is the EC going to force us to buy RFID jeans? I doubt it.
Comment by Blue Eyes XX
How naive of you.
Try doing ANYTHING, from getting money from your bank, to paying an electric bill, to getting a book from the library, pr even GOING into the main libraries, without I.D. Whether in the form of an “I.D card”, or a passport, or a Student union card, or whatever.
THEN they tell you “Carrying an I.D card is ‘NOT COMPULSSORY(!)'”
Now, if you are not SO naive as your comment suggests, develop the thought, and include ANYTHING mentioned in Longriders list above…..Including jeans.
It’s rather depressing that they think a future in which a tin-foil hat becomes the sensible thing to wear is one that is a good idea.
Furor – stop SHOUTING!
Re the RFID clothing… Nowt that a couple of minutes in the microwave can’t put right. 🙂