Technology and the Surveillance State
- zakchester
- 20 hours ago
- 3 min read
Technology and the Surveillance State have an intrinsic connection. Historically, their surveillance of the populace is one of the main aspects of dictatorships and fascist governments. Had past powers had the access to the technology we currently possess, the results would have been manifold worse. In this blog post I will be discussing how technology, more specifically surveillance technology around the vectors of AI and smart city’s function and what exactly they could lead to. Smart city’s function as a city ruled by technology, but when this technology is not democratised, its functionality limited to the technocrats who built the system, the consequences could be massive for surveillance and freedoms afforded to the average citizen of these cities.
AI and Surveillance Technology
AI surveillance systems have been developing for years before the initial release of Chat-GPT. They allow identification of a person based on vectors such as facial features, movement patterns and body shape. Currently, this technology is being used in multiple sectors, from military to train stations checking to see if you’re bringing suitcases on escalators. It is important to understand how we’re being observed, when we don’t necessarily perceive it. Edward Snowden talked about the NSA spying on civilians, in my last post I talked about the ways in which social media mines data for profit. AI surveillance makes all of this and more multiple times more efficient. It is possible to have a detailed background check on a civilian just by virtue of them leaving their house. This is great for tracking criminals. However, it could be a slippery slope to totalitarianism. Fascist’s may not even need secret police and neighbours snitching on each other for governments to become aware of potential dissidents. All they need is a face and a name, and they can cross reference internet usage, phone directory history and pinpoint exactly what your behaviour patterns have been.
Below is an image of this facial recognition software in place, from as far back as 2019. It can scan billions of faces in an instant and cross reference them to a database. Essentially, as long as you are a registered, identifiable citizen of a state, you are being observed. This makes political opposition much more difficult in case of a tyrannical government.
Smart Cities
The idea of what a smart city is in its fully realised form is somewhat nebulous. With technology constantly evolving, it is difficult to predict what a fully ‘smart’ city would look like. A simple definition, although broad, could be “a settlement or place that is made more efficient through extensive use of digital technologies”. This definition provided by the University College of Estate Management leaves much up to the imagination. On the topic of surveillance, it could be catastrophic. If you would humour my speculation for a moment, imagine a self-sustaining city. It uses its own digital currency, its own automated services and every house has a myriad of convenient technologies to make life easier. I have already demonstrated the surface level of how effective surveillance technologies are in today's relatively open society. Imagine if a city could track every purchase made with this digital currency, every use of essential services is logged on databases, how long you look at an advertisement on a bus is recorded for efficiency, the technology in your home all created by the same manufacturer is keeping tabs on how much you use certain appliances. The use of AI in analysing these databases could potentially make creating comprehensive citizen profiles as easy as clicking a button. Yes, this is an Orwellian flight of fancy. However, by demonstrating the most extreme instance of a smart city, created and owned by one tech conglomerate, I wish to illustrate the depths of the potential smart city’s hold for surveillance and the creation of a totalitarian state. If even a fraction of this comes to fruition, it could spell disaster for freedoms enjoyed by the average citizen.
Convenience has long been the excuse for invading user privacy, from cookie policies to social media data mining. It might sound outlandish, but the technology to create these currently fictional, fully functional smart cities exists. It is possible. Whether it will happen or not, only time can tell.
Sources:
· https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/fb-5691261/HOW-DOES-FACIAL-RECOGNITION-TECHNOLOGY-WORK.html
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