David Brin opens The Transparent Society by describing two cities of the near future. In City Number One:
Tiny cameras panning left and right, survey traffic and pedestrians, observing everything in open view…In this place, all the myriad cameras report their urban scenes straight to Police Central, where security officers use sophisticated image processors to scan for infractions against public order – or perhaps against an established way of thought. Citizens walk the streets aware that any word or deed may be noted by agents of some mysterious bureau.
Over in City Number Two, there are just as many cameras. However:
These devices do not report to the secret police. Rather, each and every citizen of this metropolis can use his or her wristwatch television to call up images from any camera in town.
Here a late-evening stroller checks to make sure no one lurks beyond the corner she is about to turn.
Over there a tardy young man dials to see if his dinner date still waits for him by a city fountain.
A block away, an anxious parent scans the area to find which way her child wandered off.
Over by the mall, a teenage shoplifter is taken into custody gingerly, with minute attention to ritual and rights, because the arresting officer knows that the entire process is being scrutinized by untold numbers who watch intently, lest her neutral professionalism lapse.
Brin closes the thought experiment by asking his readers, given a choice between living in one or the other city, is there any doubt which one we would choose?
I see strong evidence that we are heading for a hybrid of the two.
Both of Brin’s cities resemble practical implementations of the Panopticon. Since a citizen can never be certain that hus actions are not being monitored, hu must assume that they are. Going the way of City Number One, the UK currently sports a ratio of one CCTV camera to every fourteen people. The propagation of CCTV cameras in the United States is far less dense, but is growing in reaction to the July 7, 2005 London bombings.
City Number Two answers Juvenal’s question “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Who watches the watchmen? We all do. And camera phones and YouTube are making it possible.
Over the past few months we have seen powerful examples of the potential for Sousveillance. Camera phones captured three separate incidents of excessive force on the part of Los Angeles police. A camera phone made Michael Richards’ hate-filled tantrum available for all the world to see. George Allen’s career in politics is probably over because of a single word, and the video camera that recorded it.
In a short while, only the lowest-end mobile phones will come without the capability of recording video, and Jupiter Research estimates that there are 195 million American mobile phone users today.
That’s a lot of eyes and ears.
I am not wild about the prospect (I’d rather we all just let each other the hell alone), but if we’re going to live in a society where the government and the private sector insist on training cameras on us, I prefer for them to know that we’re Shooting Back.