Nothing to Hide, Everything to Fear
Whenever you picture an evil, totalitarian society, what comes to mind? Is it a heavily armed police force and neighbors disappearing to labor camps? Or is it more subtle, with cameras and microphones everywhere and the fearful knowledge that you must fall in line or suffer the consequences? Frequently, the two go hand in hand. In our most extreme thoughts of crushingly oppresive societies, we see mass surveillance as a way for those in power– be they The Party, Norsefire, or Stalin’s inner circle– to exact their will and maintain control. Yet mass surveillance is increasingly a part of our day-to-day lives. Historically, surveillance has been carried out by shadowy organizations used by the government ostensibly for security but in actuality for control. The reality of the regimes of Stalin or the North Korean Kims has often been mirrored in fiction. Through this fiction, authors like George Orwell paint extreme scenarios to serve as warnings against the loss of freedom and privacy. Though we have never experienced a surveillance state of the rigor of Nineteen Eighty-Four, new technologies grant those in power new ways to exact their will. Therefore, it is imperative that we consider what we are sacrificing in the name of security. It will be far harder to reclaim our privacy once it is lost than it is to keep it in the first place.
There are two strikingly different but somehow intertwined forms that a government’s observation can take. The most conventional understanding of surveillance takes the form of “institutional surveillance.” As the name implies, institutional surveillance is carried out by some institution. Say, the NSA or the KGB. A common image associated with this is a massive room full of people looking at camera feeds or listening to microphones or phone lines. Both the observers and their A/V feeds are major flaws with this style of monitoring. Observers are only human, and may miss things, take bribes, or abuse their power. In an interview with The Guardian, famed whistleblower Edward Snowden claimed that these abuses of power were relatively common, and “seen as the fringe benefits of surveillance positions” (Snowden qtd., Schmidt). As technology has changed, we have begun to transition to a new form: “social surveillance.” With social surveillance, rather than using cameras and microphones, we the people observe ourselves. This has become easier and easier with the rise of the internet and the ubiquitous smartphone. Many young people are constantly posting things online, and an overreaching government could easily take that info to find out who they were with, what they were doing, when, and where. Furthermore, social surveillance creates an expectation of openness. It becomes the norm to sacrifice one’s privacy for social reasons.
Surveillance secures power. When a government pitches surveillance, if it is at least transparent enough to do that, it inevitably uses stopping crime as a justification. In this respect, surveillance has two benefits. First, it can stop crime proactively. By analyzing the movements and contacts of suspicious individuals, experts could theoretically track down and stop criminals before they act. The US Department of Justice’s webpage on the USA PATRIOT Act uses this as the act’s justification: “to prevent future terrorist attacks” and “to protect innocent Americans from the deadly plans of terrorists” (“What is the USA Patriot Web”). If surveillance is effective, then the monitoring of citizens’ activities could lead to reduced crime and therefore increased safety. Alternatively, surveillance could serve as a deterrant. If everything a citizen does is monitored, would they be likely to plan a crime? Even after that theoretical crime is carried out, surveillance can serve as a reactive crime-stopper. Information about the criminal’s movements and contacts could help law enforcement find them, arrest them, and prosecute them.
The classic argument goes, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” Clearly, no law-abiding citizen should have a problem with sacrificing their privacy for safety. Unfortunately, the issue of surveillance isn’t that simple. There are many private matters that are not crimes, but that we would like to keep private. In an article for the ACLU, Kade Crockford lists “sexual text messages”, “emails to lawyers”, “visits to abortion clinics, sexual health centers, gun stores”, and “metadata revaling your porn viewing habits” as examples of private, yet legal information. Should a government agency monitoring this information experience a data leak, the world at large could have access to everyone’s information. This could be lethal– a member of a gender or sexual minority could be outed in an unsafe area. Worse still, should a radical party take power, anyone considered “undesirable” could be at risk. Imagine if the Sons of Jacob had access to everyone’s internet history. Even in a perfect world with infallible NSA agents, surveillance affects citizens’ psychology. A 2016 study in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly found that the knowledge of surveillance can affect the way we communicate online, making it less likely for people to speak out against mainstream opinions (Stoycheff). It is because of these negative effects to our privacy and the way we communicate, as well as the prevalence of surveillance as a tool of power, that surveillance is depicted so frequently in fiction.
Because of surveillance’s association with oppressive power and the claustrophobia it creates, it is extremely prevalent in dystopian fiction. Of course, the classic dystopian novel rife with Big Brother watching you is, well, the one with Big Brother– George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts an extreme end of institutional surveillance. In Oceania, the collosal organization of the Party uses cameras and microphones– embedded in telescreens– observed by the Ministry of Love to carry out its observation of citizens. This novel perfectly captures the psycholoy of living under a constant, extreme level of scrutiny. Taking more of a middle ground is the use of surveillance by Norsefire, the party in power in Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta. Moore’s world could conceivably take place in a not-so-distant future from the graphic novel’s publication in the late 1980s. There are conventional-looking closed circuit cameras in homes and on the streets. There are microphones implanted in radios. And there are the departments of the Eye and the Ear filled with employees who monitor these sources of information. Though not as extreme as the institution Orwell created in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the result is the same. Creativity and dissent are suppressed, and the party grabs hold of its power.
However, these old depictions become less and less applicable as the way we communicate shifts rapidly. A great deal of our communication now takes place over the internet, through text, instant messages, video chats, andinternet telephony. This is both a blessing and a curse. Properly encrypted, these communications should be far more secure from a snooping government. But improperly secured, an enormous amount of information is free for the taking. And even if our internet chats are secure, there’s nothing to say a government won’t try to pass laws to make them less so. True to form as a cutting-edge satire of modern technology, British television series Black Mirror tackles the challenge of forming a depiction appropriate to our new methods of communication. In the episode “The Entire History of You,” written by Jesse Armstrong, there is a subtler form of institutional surveillance complemented by much more prevalent social surveillance. The show provides clear commentary on the relationship that our use of social media has with the decline of our privacy.
Returning to V for Vendetta, let’s look in more detail at the systems of surveillance in the graphic novel. Much like the Miniluv in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Eye and the Ear of Norsefire serve as institutions to monitor the recording devices spread throughout the country. These devices are present both on the streets and in the residences of party members. Because of their prevalence, there is virtually nowhere average people can escape from their government’s vision. This removal of privacy allows Norsefire to suppress fully any sort of dissident activity, be that sabotage by the working class or consumption of illicit literature produced before the war. The observers employed at the Eye and the Ear are, however, fallible. They are ordinary people who by virtue of their connections have been granted unusual privilege, albeit privilege which stops as soon as it begins to threaten the party. There is a strong sense of voyeurism. Privacy is perverted beyond being taken away– it becomes a source of sexual pleasure. Before the leader of the Eye, Conrad Heyer, is attacked by his wife’s lover, he watches a sex tape. The hidden camera in his bedroom has recorded a tryst between Mrs. Heyer and the attacker. He grins at the screen as his wife laughs, describing him to her lover as “a blind voyeur” because his cameras have been taken down (Moore 253).
As Adam Susan would put it, the war put paid to privacy just as it did to freedom and luxury. In fact, it is clear that in V for Vendetta, Alan Moore is commenting on the intimate relationship between privacy and freedom. The elimination of privacy isn’t separate to the elimination of freedoms, instead it likely precedes it. As stated earlier, the perceived loss of privacy by intrusive governments reduces the desire of citizens to speak out counter to the mainstream narrative. The pervasive surveillance by the Eye and Ear makes challenging discourse impossible; there can be no revolutionary or counterculture movement if those movements are illegal and citizens are constantly being watched. Moore also argues that this loss of privacy leads to abuse. Norsefire ostensibly enforces sexual purity. It bans homosexuality and prostitution, and mandates strict adherence to a branch of Christianity. Yet though the party’s surveillance would give them the information to eliminate rapists in The Finger or pedophiles in the clergy, these privileged few are allowed to go free. Instead, it uses its powers of observation to go after the masses, like Evey. Beyond the blind eyes turned against the people in power, there are also more mundane abuses. With cameras in every bedroom, it’s not surprising that some members of the Eye enjoy spying on the sex lives of citizens. Finally, there is the matter of V’s revolution. Moore ties surveillance strongly to the control Norsefire has over its citizens, as revolution erupts just hours after V destroys the headquarters of the Eye and the Ear. When mass surveillance has such a central role in the power structure of a regime, the removal of this system will be followed quickly by the removal of the regime.
For a more modern perspective, “The Entire History of You” creates a shockingly real world full of near-future technology. This episode takes place in a United Kingdom dominated by a technology known as the Willow Grain. The Grain, as it is called, is an implant that allows the recording of audio and video from the user’s ears and eyes. It has rapidly become a social norm. From soon after birth, the great majority of Britons are implanted with a Grain. They’re seen as a necessity, both for the security– say, to protect one’s child from a malicious babysitter– and for the memory. In a conversation with one of the few people who have “gone grainless,” one character mentions the Ebbhinghaus curve. This is “the rate at which you forget things if you’re off-grain,” (“The Entire History of You”). From this, it’s shown that using a Grain is now considered the default. People don’t think in terms of how much you remember when on-grain, they think in terms of how much you remember off-grain. The fact that the vast majority of British people use a Grain causes problems. The existence of devices containing point-of-view audio and video of people’s lives creates a black market for the sale of stolen Grains. Buyers, described by example as “some millionaire Chinese perv,” pay for Grains “gouged” violently out of victims’ heads (“The Entire History of You”).
The social norm of non-stop point-of-view recording also has more abstract societal consequences. By normalizing recordings of entire lives, security checkpoints at airports become drastically more invasive. Instead of simply walking through a body scanner and running bags through an X-ray machine, people also allow officers to quickly scan through the preceding week. In this context, the social surveillance carried out by the Willow Grain meets traditional institutional surveillance. There is also a mechanical component. In the scan of a child’s Grain, the computer system detects “a suspect image”. In this case, it’s a model boat. Such an occurence certainly brings back memories of being held up at an airport because of a tube of lotion or a set of nail clippers. This time, though, they’re not only policing what people bring to the airport, they’re policing what people do before flying. This raises worrying questions about crime. Should a prostitute or a casual drug user be barred from flying because security officers would see their illicit actions? When Liam, the episode’s protagonist, arrives home, he encounters a party being hosted by his wife, Ffion. Here, the show explains how such a violation of privacy has become routine and accepted. One of the key aspects of the social event is viewing people’s “redos,” a term for the recordings of their past. It’s similar to looking at photobooks of vacations, but far more intimate and candid. People aren’t posing or setting up for these recordings: their entire life is on display. There is also a conversation with one of the guests who was gouged and decided not to replace their Grain. Another guest views this as absurd bordering on offensive. She comments, “I believe [going grainless] is huge with hookers.” This is disturbingly similar to the kind of logic used to justify surveillance in the phrase, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”
The social commentary presented by Armstrong in “The Entire History of You” is more subtle than that of V for Vendetta. It is also more pressing. With Samsung’s recent patent of contact lenses containing cameras (Chowdhry), it’s conceivable that humanity could face the moral questions Armstrong puts forth within the next decade. Many people are already posting a constant stream of information online. Today, it’s primarily photos and text, but many people would surely choose to upload a video of their last five minutes at a concert or their entire view during a roller coaster. The number who would choose to do that would only increase as it becomes more common and socially acceptable. And once it’s socially acceptable to share that information, it’s not much of a stretch to suggest people would accept government access to it “in the name of safety.” Another interesting commentary made in “The Entire History of You” regards the power individual companies can have over our lives. In the episode, it is the default for people to use a Grain. It also seems to be the case that just one company, Victapulse, manufactures the device. That one company, should it choose to violate its users privacy, would have an unprecedented amount of power.
Despite the warning put out by Black Mirror in 2011, our society has continued steadily on toward the world of the Willow Grain. If the Victapulse of 2026 has too much power, what about 2016’s Facebook? Today, the company owns not just its title social network but also Instagram, a photo sharing service, and WhatsApp, an instant messenger (“The Facebook Companies”). Just like the power that grants the makers of the Willow Grain, so too does it give Facebook an enormous amount of leverage should it ever choose to act on it. While we’re not yet recording every second of our entire lives, we’re already posting an absolutely absurd amount of content. Every minute, people post nearly 350,000 Tweets, upload 300 hours of YouTube videos, and send almost 50,000 message on Facebook (“How Much Data”). Despite the vast amount of content available, or perhaps because of it, people consume casually. We don’t take the content as seriously or personally as we do a carefully crafted scrapbook or album of vacation photos. This serves to acclimatize us to a loss of privacy. Friends, family, and possibly strangers already have access to our information, so it’s not a significant leap to give the government access as well.
That acclimatization becomes dangerous when instead of accessing our data in just a few occasional and significant cases, governments push for large-scale “dragnet” surveillance. Unfortunately, this is already happening. This violation of privacy in America first came to light in the Klein Declaration released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In 2006, an employee of AT&T declared under penalty of perjury that his company was operating a network splitter which diverted domestic internet communications into a room controlled by the NSA (“Public Unredacted Klein Declaration”). This case was later brought to court by the EFF, but was dismissed as constitutional. On appeal, the decision was affirmed, and “the Supreme Court declined to hear the case” (“Hepting v. AT&T”). In 2013, the surveillance disclosures brought the issue back to light, and confirmed widespread government abuse of power suspected in the Klein Declaration and Hepting case. In its page summarizing NSA spying, the EFF explains that “the media reports confirm that the government is collecting and analyzing the content of communications of foreigners talking to persons inside the United States, as well as collecting much more, without a probable cause warrant” (“NSA Spying”). These past abuses create a solid foundation for new ones. Regardless of efficacy, once an agency is granted power, it is difficult to take it away.
Outdated laws have become increasingly apparent as encryption makes headlines again and again. While internet surveillance has been a hot topic since 2013’s Snowden leaks, encryption has only entered the public eye in the last few months. In mid-February 2016, a court order was delivered to Apple demanding that the company help the FBI decrypt an iPhone owned by the shooter in the 2015 attack in San Bernardino, California (Zetter). According to Apple, this would set a dangerous precedent. By using the 1789 All Writs Act to force Apple to create a backdoor, Apple’s CEO claims, “the government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge” (Cook). What’s worse, the demands by the FBI are backed up by legislators who do not understand encryption. Konstantin Kakaes suggests that many politicians represent science as being capable of doing too much. They view “technology as capable of magic,” not considering the irregular path development can take (Kakaes). This is what leaves us with politicians arguing that the tech industry could create encryption backdoors only accessible to the government, when in reality this is impossible.In a world of fast, and getting faster, technological development, it is essential that our society is represented by lawmakers who understand what they are arguing. They must have a strong background in the sciences themselves or they must defer to the judgment of those who do.
It is urgent that we fight back against the expansion of internet surveillance, for the erosion of our privacy can only lead to the erosion of our freedoms. Literature gives us a powerful tool to understand what we stand to lose in the name of fighting terrorism. Before we vote to pass another USA PATRIOT act, allow yet another expansion of the NSA, or defer to the judgment of another secret court, we should look back to the advice of our writers. The worlds of Orwell, Moore, and Armstrong all warn us of the path we’re heading down. We live in a time of unprecedented change. Never before in human history have so many people had access to so much knowledge. Never before have we been so free to express ourselves in such diverse groups of people. Never before have we had so much to gain yet so much to lose. We must not squander this. In the words of Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Thank you.
Works Cited
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Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. 13. print ed. New York, NY: DC Comics, 1990. Web.
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Schmidt, Michael S. “Racy Photos Were Often Shared at N.S.A., Snowden Says.” The New York Times. July 20 2014. Web.
Stoycheff, Elizabeth. “Under Surveillance: Examing Facebook’s Spiral of Silence Effects in the Wake of NSA Internet Monitoring.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (2016). Web.
“The Entire History of You.” Black Mirror. Channel 4. December 18 2011. Television.
“What is the USA Patriot Web.” Department of Justice Website. Web.
Zetter, Kim. “Magistrate Orders Apple to Help FBI Hack San Bernardino Shooter’s Phone.” Wired. February 16 2016. Web.