Dialogue: The powers-that-be have their eyes trained on us

Big Brother may be here to stay but we must not accept the abuse of surveillance and information storage, writes IAN LAWTON*.

The year 1984 may have seemed a long way off when George Orwell put words to the paranoia of modern society - "There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.

"It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. You had to live with the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised."

Big Brother was an ever-present cause for anxiety. The investigation into privacy and confidentiality by the Herald shows that these fears are more real than paranoid, but the ability of advancing technology to break and enter our private lives so effortlessly makes the concerns of 1984 seem old hat.

This is a real problem, one in which the ability to snoop seems to be a couple of steps ahead of the know-how to block snooping. Orwell showed this was not new. The movement to industrialisation brought a new ability to watch workers.

Factories with time clocks, and standard rates of pay, enforced a certain social control and system of invigilation. Specialisation ensured owners could keep tabs on the knowledge level of workers. Big Brother kept watch and workers felt watched.

A 20th-century social analyst, Michel Foucault, was fascinated with, among other things, sex and systems of discipline (and he apparently enjoyed combining the two). One of his concerns was the relationship between knowledge and power.

Rather than seeing the control of knowledge as a conspiracy of the elite, he saw it as an unconscious power tool serving to govern people through the production of knowledge. It was observation, storage and the illusion of a Big Brother system which interested Foucault.

He wrote a significant study of punishment systems from the 1750s to the 1830s, a period when torture of criminals was replaced by controlling them by prison rules and structures.

It was seen as more humane. Based on a military model, the system involved enforcing uniformity by being able to constantly observe the behaviour of prisoners.

The great symbol of this new system of punishment was the panopticon, a central tower in a circular prison where guards could see into all cells. Of course, the presence of the tower, even with no guards visible, deterred deviance.

It was a central location to gather information on people. It was a symbol of total surveillance. It served to observe people and behaviour and to cause anxiety, as prisoners knew they could be watched at any time. It was the prison's Big Brother, and had the knowledge and means to punish and regulate.

Foucault feared the spread of this discipline system into a general state-police network, where societies were observed and disciplined for nonconformity. So it was no surprise that factories, schools and hospitals resembled prisons and vice versa.

The key point is that surveillance and judgment of behaviour are interconnected. Knowledge becomes a power tool in the interests of uniformity. So the careful scrutiny of people and their acts is not new. It serves to gather information yet, as Orwell says, it is also able to conceal or even lose information when that is necessary. It has become increasingly sophisticated.

Total surveillance has led to red-light and speed cameras, video-security systems, the allocation of numbers by Government departments, some of which link to bank accounts, sharing addresses for advertising purposes and recording phone conversations with various organisations.

Each one serves its purpose, yet the system falls down through lack of confidentiality and the totality causes more than a little paranoia. It feels eerie.

Electronic communication, internet retailing and online business transactions add a luxury to contemporary life, yet open the danger of electronic hunting and gathering of information. It is only after the latest hacking device has been detected that an anti-hacking defence is put in place.

The point is that if there is even a chance of being observed, paranoia is bound to follow. Paranoia may be irrational, yet as the Nirvana song of a decade ago said, "Just because I'm paranoid, don't mean they're not after me." Our vanity will ensure that we maintain the fear, if nothing else will.

Single-theory systems which seek to explain and possibly explode the sole power base of knowledge are misleading. Similarly, conspiracy theories, as evidenced in the bumper stickers stating "It IS as bad as you think," and "They ARE out to get you" may be comforting because they look to blame others, but are little founded in reality. Rather, surveillance has developed as an artform out of the complex interdependence of social relationships.

In other words, society needs to be viewable for security purposes as much as Governments need to observe in the interests of social order. The creepy omnipresence of the panopticon is here to stay. We might as well accept its advance.

We don't need to accept the abuse of surveillance and information storage. Confidentiality is an essential basis on which society rests. Along with the right to freedom of expression comes the right to protect original ideas and even the right to keep an idea private.

Maybe the greatest fear is the ability of technology and manipulators to enter headspace and invade the brain's explorations of ideas. The possibility for brainwashing is unnerving. Orwell's Big Brother still bestrides the world. Watch your step. You can be sure someone else is.

* The Rev Ian Lawton is vicar of St Matthew-in-the-City, Auckland.

Herald Online feature: Privacy

Privacy Commissioner (NZ)

Electronic Privacy Information Centre (USA)

ACLU Echelon Watch (USA)

Cyber Rights and Liberties(UK)