Sunday Times 2
Big Brother is watching you, as electronic surveillance proliferates
At a command centre, trainees are taught how to track devices with phones, tablets and laptops. Pic courtesy UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – The British novelist George Orwell’s “1984” characterised a dystopian society where people were restricted from independent thought and were victims of constant surveillance.
Published in 1949, it was a prophecy of the future with the underlying theme: “Big Brother is Watching You”
Fast forward to 2021.
We are back in “1984” where all our movements are monitored — this time by surveillance cameras planted in New York City streets, expressways, public parks, subways, shopping malls, and parking lots — in violation of personal privacy and civil rights.
According to an article in the New York Times last month, the New York Police Department (NYPD) has continued its mass surveillance — which began following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 (9/11) on the World Trade Centre in New York City — uninterruptedly.
The Times said New Yorkers simply going about their daily lives routinely encounter post-9/11 digital surveillance tools like facial recognition software, licence plate readers or mobile X-ray vans that can see through car doors.
“Surveillance drones hover above mass demonstrations and protesters say they have been questioned by anti-terrorism officers after marches”.
But the United States is not alone. Perhaps it is now fast becoming a world-wide phenomena — as electronic surveillance spreads across Western Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
According to a new study by the African Digital Rights Network, released on October 21, mass surveillance is being carried out by governments in six countries in Africa — Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Sudan — with existing laws failing to protect the legal rights of citizens.
The study, described as the first systematic comparison of surveillance laws in Africa, comes at a time of rising concerns of digital “surveillance creep” as technologies become more sophisticated and more intrusive in our day-to-day lives.
“Many governments have expanded their powers for surveillance and access to personal data during Covid-19,” the study notes.
Dr Tony Roberts, Research Fellow at the UK-based Institute of Development Studies (IDS), and co-author of the report, says “States do need surveillance powers, to prevent terrorist atrocities, but to be consistent with human rights such powers must only be narrowly-targeted on the most serious crime, used when strictly necessary, and proportionate to need”.
He points out that citizens need to be more aware of their privacy rights and of the surveillance activities undertaken by their governments. Legislation can usefully define checks and balances to protect citizens’ rights and provide transparency.
“But civil society needs the capacity to monitor surveillance practice and hold government accountable to the law,” he noted.
Asked if state surveillance was also widespread in Western Europe, Dr Roberts told IPS: “Yes, state surveillance of citizens is on the rise in western Europe.”
He pointed out that digital technologies have made it much easier and cheaper for states to surveil citizens. It used to take a whole team of people to stake out a target, tap physical phone lines, record, transcribe and analyze the data for a single target.
“Now searches of internet and mobile communications are automated using artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms”.
He said the Cambridge Analytics scandal showed how social media surveillance is used by political parties in the UK and US.
“The Snowden revelations showed how governments in Western Europe and the US systematically conduct mass surveillance on citizens. The Pegasus spyware case showed how states are using malware to spy on the French President, opposition leaders, judges, and journalists,” he added.
The NYPD’s Intelligence Division, redesigned in 2002 to confront al-Qaeda operatives, now uses anti-terror tactics to fight gang violence and street crime in New York City.
According to the Times, the Police Department has poured resources into expanding its surveillance capabilities. The department’s budget for intelligence and counterterrorism has more than quadrupled, spending more than $3 billion since 2006, and more through funding streams that are difficult to quantify, including federal grants and the secretive Police Foundation, a nonprofit that funnels money and equipment to the department from benefactors and donors.
Current and former police officials say the tools have been effective in thwarting dozens of would-be attacks. And the department has an obligation, they say, to repurpose its counterterrorism tools for everyday crime fighting, the Times said.
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, was quoted as saying her organisation was already concerned with creeping police surveillance in the 1990s; not long before the attacks, the group had mapped out every camera it could find in the city. In hindsight, she said, the exercise would prove naïve.
“We made a map, and we had dots — we had pins at that time — where there were cameras. And when we did that, there were a couple of thousands,” Lieberman said. “We repeated the survey at some point after 9/11, and there were too many cameras to count.”
Dr Roberts told IPS increased surveillance is a violation of civil rights, specifically the right to privacy. “I used to live in London when it had the highest CCTV density in the world. Now Seoul, Paris and Boston hold that dubious record. And New York is catching up fast.”
He said evidence suggests that Black neighbourhoods are more heavily surveilled than White neighbourhoods. The problem becomes worse when facial recognition technology is combined with the CCTV camera and linked to identity databases to conduct pervasive invasive surveillance.
After 9/11, the Police also spied on Muslims, including social and religious gatherings and mosques.
Just after the 9/11 attacks in the US, two agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) visited my neighbours to check my credentials — possibly to find out whether, as a journalist, I was a “good Muslim or a bad Muslim” by American standards.
At the John F. Kennedy airport after the 9/11 attacks, at a time of widespread racial profiling, one of the security officers confiscated my razor, probably assuming it could be used as a dangerous weapon, when I embarked on a flight to Europe.
I looked at him and said with a mischievous smile: “You take my razor from me. And if I grow a beard, you call me an Islamic fundamentalist. Either way, I lose.”