Last Thursday, the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, launched a public debate on ‘the implications of living in a surveillance society’.
The Information Commissioner’s Office hosted the 28th International Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners’ Conference in London.
Opening the conference, Thomas warned that we are waking up to a surveillance society.
A detailed report, ‘A Surveillance Society’, was specially commissioned for the conference.
The report looks at surveillance in 2006 and projects forward ten years to 2016.
It describes a surveillance society as one where technology is extensively and routinely used to track and record our activities and movements.
This includes systematic tracking and recording of travel and use of public services, automated use of CCTV, analysis of buying habits and financial transactions, and the work-place monitoring of telephone calls, email and internet use.
This can often be in ways which are invisible or not obvious to ordinary individuals as they are watched and monitored, and the report shows how pervasive surveillance looks set to accelerate in the years to come.
Information Commissioner Thomas said: ‘Two years ago I warned that we were in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance society.
‘Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us.
‘Surveillance activities can be well-intentioned and bring benefits. They may be necessary or desirable – for example to fight terrorism and serious crime, to improve entitlement and access to public and private services, and to improve healthcare.
‘But unseen, uncontrolled or excessive surveillance can foster a climate of suspicion and undermine trust.
‘As ever-more information is collected, shared and used, it intrudes into our private space and leads to decisions which directly influence people’s lives.
‘Mistakes can also easily be made with serious consequences – false matches and other cases of mistaken identity, inaccurate facts or inferences, suspicions taken as reality, and breaches of security.
‘I am keen to start a debate about where the lines should be drawn. What is acceptable and what is not?’
David Murakami Wood, from the Surveillance Studies Network which prepared the conference report, said: ‘The surveillance society has come about almost without us realising.
‘With technologies that are large-scale, taken for granted and often invisible, surveillance is increasingly everywhere.
‘We describe techniques such as automatic classification and risk-based profiling as “social sorting” which can create real problems for individuals – social exclusion, discrimination and a negative impact on their life chances.’
The report provides glimpses of life in a surveillance society in 2016, including how:
• Shoppers will be scanned as they enter stores, their clothes recognised through unique RFID tags embedded in them.
This will be matched with loyalty card data to affect the way they are treated as they do their shopping, with some given preferential treatment over others
• Cars linked to global satellite navigation systems which will provide the quickest route to avoid current congestion, automatically debit the mileage charge from bank accounts and allow police to monitor the speed of all cars and to track selected cars more closely
• Employees will be subject to biometric and psychometric tests plus lifestyle profiles with diagnostic health tests common place.
Jobs are refused to those who are seen as a health risk or don’t submit to the tests.
Staff benefit packages are drawn up depending upon any perceived future health problems that may affect their productivity
• Schools will introduce card systems to allow parents to monitor what their children eat, their attendance, record of achievement and drug test results
• Facial recognition systems will be used to monitor our movements using tiny cameras embedded in lamp-posts and in walls, with ‘friendly flying eyes in the sky’ (unmanned aerial vehicles) keeping an eye on us from above
• Older people will feel more isolated as sensors and cameras in their home provide reassurance to their families who know they are safe therefore pay fewer family visits
• Prosperous individuals will start to use personal information management services to monitor their ‘data shadow’ to make sure they are not disadvantaged by any of the vast quantities of information held about them being wrong or out of date.
Others without the resources to do this will be forced to stand on the other side of a new ‘digital divide’.
If this seems something from Sci-fi, the report charts ‘A Week in the Life of the Surveillance Society 2006’.
This uses the example of a fictional British man married to a Pakistani woman.
It describes how they are searched at and tracked through Gatwick Airport at the end of a family holiday as part of an undercover passenger profiling scheme.
The report says: ‘The profiling was part of a trial for Project Semaphore, which was introduced as part of the UK government’s e-borders programme, at selected airports from 2004.
‘Initially it targeted six million passengers a year on a number of international air routes to and from the UK.
‘It uses on-line technology and advance passenger information provided by airlines, to custom police and immigration officials before arrival to screen and record individuals as they enter and exit the UK, providing a comprehensive passenger movement audit trail which can be checked against other databases.
‘In January 2006 it was announced that this would be extended to cover all the 40 million domestic journeys made by plane or ferry.’
The report goes on to chart how the family’s surveillance is aided by the sat-nav system in their car, how CCTV follows them in the shopping mall, and how their credit cards reveal their personal details.
At home they come back to piles of junk mail triggered by this information.
There are letters from the children’s schools ‘inviting them to a parents meeting to discuss the proposal to introduce random drug testing for pupils’ and which ‘details the new access card-based systems that will be implemented during the first week of the new term.
‘The system will also be used to monitor attendance and, the letter went on, in view of Sara’s poor record last year, they will be using the system to provide parents with a monthly statement of attendance’.
The report describes the CCTV camera in the local car park and a movement sensor installed in the grandmother’s flat, and how the tower block concierge is employed by a private security company ‘to watch the CCTV monitors, listen on his audio system to any conversations and events in the block’s public areas, and keep an eye on people coming and going from the block.
‘If he hasn’t seen someone arrive or leave for two days, he is instructed to check on individuals and report anything suspicious or of concern to the police, health or social services.’