A
response to Kevin Kelly’s “Why You Should Embrace Surveillance,
Not Fight It” in Wired
In “Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It” Kevin
Kelly offers some possibilities for a positive view of ubiquitous
surveillance. The solution to our concerns about privacy, according
to Kelly, is more, rather than less surveillance. By embracing
“coveillance,” collective monitoring of one another, we can
recapture some of the influence and transparency currently lost to
surveillance, top-down monitoring of citizens by an authority.
While Kelly is right that coveillance gives us transparency, he may
be wrong about freedom. Let’s begin with the idea that Big Data
firms will pay coveillers for self-monitoring and reporting. The idea
that we could make our data more valuable by invoking a sense of
entitlement and demanding direct compensation misunderstands the
“big” in “Big Data.” The personal data of one citizen is
really not all that valuable to data analysis. You can’t create
general projections about the behavior of people without the
collected data of many individuals. When Big Data gets big enough,
very personal information does not matter at all. That’s why Google
can happily anonymize the information it collects about you. It
doesn’t need the details that distinguish you from someone very
much like you. It just needs enough information to draw some
conclusions about general trends such as buying habits.
If we do begin to press an entitlement to our personal data and
demand payment in exchange for consistent and active self-monitoring,
how much will they pay and for how much monitoring? Clearly, Big Data
is profitable with what it can get for free right now, so we have to
imagine that contracted monitors will get paid a little bit for a lot
of inconvenience. After all, there’s little incentive for Google,
Microsoft, or Facebook to pay you for what you already give them in
exchange for some mighty convenient services.
In asking for some compensation beyond free email, news, and cloud
storage, we may find ourselves in binding contracts inspired by our
favorite mobile service providers. Free email? Sure, for two years
you get a 500gb searchable inbox as long as the provider gets to
track every email-related activity and log all contacts to form a
social profile. Did I mention you’ll have to click a pop-up or sign
in again if you leave your browser open but inactive for more than 10
minutes? Well, if you don’t like the terms, you can pay our opt-out
fee. Indentured data servitude doesn’t promise the consumer more
freedom.
Likewise, the idyllic image of life in tribal societies where
everyone knows everyone else’s business obscures the extreme
constraints of a forced public life. Let’s not forget that the same
highly open societies that humankind lived in for hundreds of years
were societies of little freedom. Tyrannical chiefs or high priests
could ostracize or punish anyone for any difference from the normal.
It’s no coincidence that those same authorities also decided what
is and is not normal.
We worry about losing privacy for a good reason: the loss of
privacy is the loss of freedom. If we cannot choose what we present
about ourselves and how we present it, we lose the freedom to decide
who we are and who we trust. We lose the freedom to be different, to
be unique, and to offer that uniqueness as a token of trust and
companionship. In 1921, Russian novelist Yevgeny Zamyatin completed
We a dystopia exploration of total transparency. In We,
the citizens live in a city of clear glass. Everyone can see everyone
else, and everyone is accountable to same standards and rules.
Zamyatin’s characters live out fully transparent lives in servitude
to their city, unable to change their society or themselves for fear
of deviation and punishment. Transparency is their master, and none
of them are free.
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