IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2017 - 27

Surveillance

In a Singularity, where we become
the carriers both external and inter-
nal of the very technology we found
most useful, we also lose our sense
of charge, our connection with each
other, and ultimately our own will
to live. Having failed to reach that
utopia, we reach instead an empty
transcended state. Our sense of in-
tuition, awareness of country, and
of "life force of place" [9] then is lost
if we put these technologies first.
Therefore, when we engineer a de-
vil incarnate in ourselves as cyborgs,
we take away that spiritual connection
if we fail to put country, place first. By
taking away that spiritual connection
we remove a domain of engagement
that is only felt in a physical manner.
We are in that case engineering in the
likeness of non-humanity, which is the
demise of humanity.

Surveillance is an act of oppression,
a genocide that seeks to erode our
rights as humans to remain unseen,
to be secluded by choice, to express
ourselves selectively, without the
oversight of others, first and fore-
most. The experience of privacy dif-
fers from culture to culture but inher-
ently the manner in which we grow
as a matter of personal freedom is as
fundamental to human dignity as are
the very spiritual domains in which
our cultures hold secret, remain
diverse, and in many cases the very
reason they survive.
Surveillance on the other hand
is an extension of the totalitarian
state, a means to influence and con-
trol the human population and pro-
vides a means to divide us all in an
activity known as social sorting [7].
This is often referred to as a state
of "transparency," a technology
enhanced dossier of epic propor-
tions which means in some cases
corporations have greater knowl-
edge of our daily routines, transac-
tions, web searches, and secrets
than we do ourselves. In religion, a
fast-failing agent of social control, we
see the manifestations of a human
mind, we feel the inculcations of the
charge of cultural mass, and yet in
the present day, due to digital tech-
nologies, we are moving fast to an
existential and nihilist dystopia of a
quantified self.
Ray Kurzweil [8], author, compu-
ter scientist, inventor and futurist,
Director of Engineering at Google,
would have us believe that we are
in an exponential phase of an "accel-
erating intelligence" of the human
race as a result of these new and
emergent technologies. However,
a transmogrification of humans
transcending their current biological
milieu to that of an artificial intelli-
gence enhanced Singularity is more
likely to end humanity entirely, an
unnecessary evil.
DECEMBER 2017

Veillance
Surveillance across these institutions,
across the community and across all
nations is not simply static video cam-
eras in public space. The domain of
veillances occurs in a number of
forms [10]. Firstly, it appears in the
form of surveillance and the hive of
globally network cameras and record-
ers [11]. Secondly it occurs in the
form of dataveillance and datave-
illance "reward" schemes. Thirdly it
appears in the form of sousveillance
[12] and the recalcitrance of shooting
back on the system. Lastly it will
appear as uberveillance [13], which
is the totality of all of these becoming
an embedded electrophorus, a trans-
dermal condition for all of humanity
from the moment we are born,
chipped, identifiable.
In every public place, and in many
private spaces, businesses, homes,
and workplaces, we have consistent-
ly been told through massive "aware-
ness" campaigns that surveillance in
all its forms is present for our own
safety, for our well-being and for the
good of the community. These sur-
∕

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

veillance systems extend to body
worn cameras by police, emergency,
or community services [14].
In all aspects of our daily lives we
are now as never before subject to
the gaze of authorities, whose pres-
ence and moniker in many cases
is that of one single fixed physical
object - the surveillance camera.
Repeatedly we are told that surveil-
lance is a panopticon that we need,
a necessary evil that without its
presence we descend as a human
race into outright anarchy [15].
As if we have accepted the Orwe-
llian dystopia without question [16],
we now go about our daily lives
under hundreds of cameras con-
nected to systems that track our
location, our facial and gait identity,
many of which are monitored and
the data used by corporations and
law enforcement agencies far from the
Australian shores.
The consequences of gaining a
discount at a petrol bowser to use as
reward points to gain "free" airline
flights as anything more than conve-
nience is an example of dataveillance
that permeates many households,
often indifferent to the activity of those
collecting this information. Consum-
ers seem willing to give away every
detail of their shopping activity to
organizations who use it to target fur-
ther consumption.
This "giving away" of our private
data means that we have become
the product itself, that the data we
provide is more valuable to the
retailer en masse than their entire
marketing campaigns, and in some
cases it is their sole marketing cam-
paign. This manner of dataveillance
has become an ingra ined, net-
worked, and socially acceptable way
of being. The Internet therefore, has
become not only a tool that greatly
enhances our access to knowledge
in real time but it has also become
the most successful tool of human
oppression in a modern society.

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