The Panopticon by Jason Ronin (surface ebook reader txt) 📖

privacy has become a thing of the past.

Now of course, there’s many who are ok with it being this way- with the whole world paying so much attention to the “stars” of reality TV parading around with sheer delight at the fact that they’re being watched, the rise of paparazzi observing anyone who could even lay claim to being famous everywhere they go, and of course the fear factor of what might happen if we weren’t being watched- would we ever be safe?!?!?. All our information is available at a few keystrokes and clicks to anyone who wants to find it on the net, but doing all our shopping online is just so damned convenient. (I’m guilty of it too, rest assured).

Benjamin Franklin once said “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” And I think it’s safe to reason that this quote has at no point in our history been more relevant than right now.

Are you wondering what it is I’m going on about? Has Mr. Jones just gone off the conspiratorial deep end? Maybe, but even so- here’s a little list of news from the world about just how we’re being kept tabs on today, for better or for worse…

In Britain, authorities have compiled the world’s largest DNA sample database.

‘The database is growing at a rate of 30,000 samples a month. One hundred thousand juveniles who have never been cautioned, charged or convicted of a crime now have their DNA stored forever on the national database, as well as around a million adults. Just as worrying is the fact that 77 percent of young black males population of England and Wales are now on the database. That tallies neatly with the statistic that black people are six times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by the police. Criminologist Ben Bowling:’

‘For some the answer to such obvious disproportionality and discrimination is to extend the database still further and make the collection of DNA samples compulsory for all citizens, residents and visitors to the UK. Judge Lord Justice Sedley recently called for such a ’solution:’

Justice Sedley: ‘Going backwards would be a disaster; going forwards has very serious but I think manageable implications; it means that everybody, guilty or innocent should expect their DNA to be on file for the absolutely rigorously restricted purpose of crime detection and prevention. If you’re going to have a database like this it has to be universal, otherwise you’ve got a category that slips through the net.’

A little more news about the wiretapping and the bill being passed around Congress right now-

“For the last six years, our largest telecommunications companies have been spying on their own American customers,” said Sen. Christopher Dodd, who led the effort to kill the bill. “Secretly and without a warrant, they delivered to the federal government the private, domestic communications records of millions of Americans — records this administration has compiled into a data base of enormous scale and scope.” He also added that he’s never seen a president with contempt for the rule of law equal to this.”

Supporters of the dodgy electronic surveillance program say it’s necessary for national security. Oh sure. We couldn’t possibly have security in the Fatherland/Homeland without giving up your rights. Consider that, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the software used by the FBI to spy on phone calls intercepted 27,728,675 calls (or “sessions”) in 2006. And how many FISA court orders did the FBI get in the same year? Just 2,176, which means that one court order can cover a lot of ground. Just think of what they’re doing without the court orders.

Online social network Facebook recently caught massive heat from its users for adding Beacon, an application that would broadcast purchases made from affiliated online retailers on the users profile and in bulletins to the user’s friends.

Maybe Facebook thought someone who posts pictures in his online photo album of himself playing naked beer pong didn’t have a problem with privacy and wouldn’t mind broadcasting anything he bought from site advertisers to everybody on his friends list.
If so, it misjudged its audience and missed the point that even though users are putting their entire lives up for public viewing, they still want to be the ones controlling what gets posted. The Beacon application took that control away from them.

Nice to see people will still fight for some amount of freedom to privacy. Sort of. Of course, there are other places where that fight is being taken a little more seriously. Again to the U.K. and the retaliations against what some are viewing as over-reaching violations of privacy in the way of traffic cameras.

“Motorists Against Detection, the vigilante anti-speed camera group have announced a summer of MADness which will see them target for destruction all speed cameras in the UK. It’s now going to be a period of zero tolerance against all speed cameras, said their campaigns director Capt. Gatso.

“He added: In many areas the cameras have not saved one life – the statistics for road deaths haven’t gone down. In some areas they have actually gone up – in Essex, for instance, which has a high density of cameras there are more people being killed. We are now planning to target any and all cameras until the Government sees sense and rethinks its road safety policy. Before we had speed cameras we had the safest roads in Europe – since their introduction this is no longer true.”

So what are they doing in response? Burning them. Lots of them.*

And the British aren’t the only ones dealing with such cameras. The U.S. gov’t has spent millions on the watchful eyes within the spending for Homeland Security and fighting terrorism. For example-

Liberty, Kan. (population 95), which accepted a federal grant to install a $5,000 G2 Sentinel camera in its park, and Scottsbluff, Neb. (population 14,000), where police used a $180,000 Homeland Security Department grant to purchase four closed-circuit digital cameras and two monitors, a system originally designed for Times Square in New York City.

Because the next target in a terrorist attack will surely be in a place like Liberty, Kansas, where all 95 of its residents must keep a forever vigilant watchful eye. The park there has long been viewed as a safe haven for Muslim extremists and Al-Qaeda operatives you know.

Even Hollywood has caught on to the fact that we’re pretty much always being watched, with the completely non-publicized release of the film “Look” this month.

(E) Very scene of the film is shot from the perspective of a surveillance camera, from the bubble lens above an ATM, to the elevated perspective of the security cameras that are ubiquitous and sometimes invisible, across the US.

An IBM report last year estimated there were 26 million surveillance cameras in the US, while the iSuppli research company forecasts that international sales of surveillance systems will more than double to 66 million units by 2011.

One of these cameras caught Look’s director, Adam Rifkin, singing along to a song in his car as he passed through an intersection, triggering a red light camera. The image Rifkin saw with the fine that arrived in the mail a week or so later was astonishingly sharp and unflattering.

“I felt violated,” he says, but also inspired. Rifkin began looking for surveillance cameras, and the laws that govern their use. The cameras were everywhere and saw everyone. By Rifkin’s assessment, the average American could expect to be filmed 200 times a day. The laws governing that coverage were surprisingly lax.

“In 37 states it’s legal for hidden cameras to be in dressing rooms and bathrooms,” Rifkin says. “I wanted to throw a bucket of cold water onto the public’s obliviousness about these cameras.”

Think about that the next time you feel like going for a pee in a public restroom.

So with all of this going on, and the elections right around the corner, what do some of the Candidates have to say about all of this govt’ watchdogging going on?

(Hillary) Clinton told The Des Moines Register in a statement that one of the country’s greatest strengths is its capacity to protect the safety of citizens and protect their civil liberties. “As president, I will do everything in my power to protect our country from future terrorist attacks,” she said. “But that does not mean that we must sacrifice the rule of law or our Constitution in the name of security.”

Barack Obama said the Bush administration has put forward a false choice between civil liberties and security. “When I am president, there will be no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens,” he said in a statement to the Register. “No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war.”

(Mitt) Romney said that “the best way to protect this country is to have effective intelligence and counter-terrorism work. And while we must be respectful of civil liberties and privacy concerns, we must never forget that the No. 1 right that the government must protect is the right to be alive.”

I guess to really wrap this insanity up right; I have to leave you with the words of a man far wiser than I, the legendary George Carlin:

“As far as I’m concerned, all of this … security—the cameras, the questions, the screenings, the searches—is just one more way of reducing your liberty and reminding you that they can fuck with you anytime they want- as long as you’re willing to put up with it. Which means, of course, anytime they want? Because that’s the way Americans are now. They’re always willing to trade away a little of their freedom in exchange for the feeling—the illusion—of security.”


Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free.
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.
John Lennon, Working Class Hero1


CHAPTER 2
ARE WE REALLY FREE


So who the hell are you, then? What lies behind those eyes? When you
look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see the real you, or what
you have been conditioned to believe is you? The two are so, so,
different. One is an infinite consciousness capable of being and creating
whatever it chooses, the other is an illusion imprisoned by its own
perceived and programmed limitations.
Which of these “yous” is controlling your life?


Most people would answer “yes! We live in a free country!” However, in order to answer to this apparently simple question we have to clarify a couple of concepts.

First, we have the concept of political freedom, which is a combination of the ability to exercise, in an unrestrained form, the following rights: Assembly, association, education, movement (or travel), press, religion (or belief), speech, and thought. Anyone who lives in an environment that provides the above mentioned rights can consider itself living in a free society. However, is that enough?

There is also the concept of philosophical freedom. I went to the Wikipedia