Like Frogs In Boiling Water (The Age of Surveillance - Part 1)

I know a thing or two about surveillance and about technology. I have been a senior IT executive for over twenty years and spent the last three years working for the NZ Army, where I was Director of Knowledge & Information. I was also Project Manager for their future focused Land C4ISR Programme - technology in the 'operational theatre', whether that be at home or abroad..

C4ISR stands for Computers, Communications, Command & Control, Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance... quite a mouthful, eh? Well that's why the military is riddled with acronyms and everyone speaks in a sort of TLA code, but I digress.

Part of my role in Force Development and part of the role of the Battle Labs we ran was to look at an evaluate new technologies for the C4ISR capability so I was exposed to some of the latest military and civilian technology in this area. Believe me the capabilities of this stuff are scary especially when applied to the 'Homeland Security' arena and directed at the 'domestic' population, in other words the civilain populations of the very countries who are utilising this stuff. And, by the way, making big bucks selling it to other governments around the world.

Now I can't tell you all I know about the latest Surveillance tech or I would have to shoot you :-) but I just wanted to put into context some of the stuff I will be writing about in my blogs and let you know that I'm not just 'talking out of my backside' I have actually worked in this arena for the NZ Defence Force and with the allied powers of the 'Anglosphere' for the last three years.

So hopefully now that I've 'come out' this can provide some context as I delve deeper in forthcoming blogs into the issues of surveillance, electronic warfare and the brave new world of digital identities, transparency and the pervasive tracking of the online and offline activity of individuals and groups.

We are all just grist for the intelligence analysis mill and this throws up a whole lot of questions and issues, especially in regard to our concepts of privacy and freedom and some of the underlying principles our western civilisation is supposed to be built apon.

Do we live in a democracy? Do we live in a Panopticon prison with no visible walls? Do we really have any privacy or freedom in the brave new electronic age?

So in future blogs I will be examining some of these questions in an attempt to raise the profile of these issues and stimulate debate.

For to long now we have been like the proverbial Frog in the slowly warming water... if we are not careful we will boil to death because we just don't notice the change in temperature. Perhaps we need to get out before its to late.

The Panopticon and Permanent War

I had to lift my camera high above the fence that cordons off Parliament Square to get this shot. Notice the ubiquitous surveillance camera on top of the buildings tower?
Britain is the most surveilled nation in the world with the average Londoner being photographed 400+ times a day. In this age of high resolution colour images, face recognition software and integrated tracking systems its a scary thought.
This remarkable invasion of privacy has become the norm in our post 9-11 society where you can never really escape from the cameras except way out in the countryside. "So if you have nothing to hide whats the problem" you may say. Or 'It makes us safer and protects us from terrorism". Really? - that all kind of depends on the watchers being fair and never making mistakes doesn't it? and just whose definition of terrorism are we quoting here? My big concern is Who watches the watchers? ... this whole big brother thing is just far to open to abuse and misuse.

Having been in local and central government for the last few years, albeit in New Zealand not the UK, my biggest concern are the careless bureaucrats and the state machine which just churns on regardless and can easily destroy peoples lives through mistakes and false profiling for example.

The potential for abuse in this 'Panopticon' Grid we live in is not the only fear, IMHO the potential for cock-up and incompetance far outweighs the potentail for conspiracy or deliberate acts of abuse.

So you don't have to be paranoid to live here, but it helps! because they really are watching you... everywhere and all the time.

Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon is now a reality and we already live in a Police State that is in a permanent state of war, where we are the controlled proles kept quiet by the opium of consumerism and celebrity culture. Does that sound familiar?