[Reader-list] Identification Experiments II

Mon Jun 4 19:34:51 IST 2001

Apropos of Jeebesh's last posting on the Prisoner Tracking Systems being 
developed at a prison near Hyderabad - read this short essay by Cynthia West, 
author of "Techno-Human Mesh" which has appeared in  Computer Professionals 
for Social Responsibility (CPSR) newsletter, Volume 18, Number 2
(http://www.cpsr.org/publications/newsletters/issues/2000/Spring2000/west.html
)

cheers (?)

Shuddha
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Safety, Security and Surveillance 
 by Cynthia K. West, Ph.D.

West at coastside.net
http://www.cynthiawest.com  

A fellow digerati [1] member tells me she and her husband have purchased the 
new Mercedes station wagon to accommodate their growing family. Of course, 
one of Mercedes' marketing pitches is the ability to transport one's family 
safely, securely and in style. Elsie chirps, "The Mercedes also comes with a 
GPS (global positioning system) which is great. If I need to know how to get 
somewhere, I just check the GPS. And if I'm still lost, I can call Mercedes 
from the installed mobile phone and they, knowing my position exactly, will 
talk me through the directions or stay on the phone until I get there." She 
continues, "Plus, a nice feature is that Dan can call Mercedes and locate me 
in case of emergency." I nod understanding, but not necessarily agreeing. 

This example displays just how common surveillance has become in the western 
world. In the case of surveillance cameras and GPS technology, we have turned 
public spaces into superpanopticons, or systems which are designed to shape 
and affect behavior as if one is under constant watch. The trade off for such 
public monitoring is supposed to be some sense of increased, or perhaps just 
maintained, safety and security. 

These technologies are not innocent. For instance, the GPS has a history 
embedded in the military-industrial complex. One of its original 
applications, with respect to interaction with human subjects, was to track 
military personnel in the field. Soldiers wear a belted unit that 
communicates with the satellites and the GPS, letting those outside the 
combat zone know of the soldiers' whereabouts. 

One step toward commercialization of the GPS was in the area of criminal 
justice, or tracking paroled prisoners. Such is the application marketed by 
ProTech Monitoring Inc. in Florida. [2] ProTech offers a receiving/tracking 
unit that a parolee (mostly sexual offenders) wear in a fanny pack along with 
a non-detachable ankle bracelet. The technology is in constant communication 
with the satellite and GPS. The GPS sends information bout his or her 
whereabouts to a monitoring center. The monitoring center, in turn, contacts 
the police, the parole officer and the victim of each parolee, should the 
parolee outstep his designated geographical boundaries. 

There is a slippery slope of such technologies toward general consumer usage. 
For example, ProTech encourages the victims to also wear a corresponding unit 
to assure her or his safety. The argument is as follows: the monitoring 
center can know where the two individuals are with respect to each other and 
notify the victim more rapidly. The specious marketing message begs the 
question: Just who is the criminal here? 

In Techno-Human Mesh, I argue that it is not long before the GPS is used to 
track general populations. Just as the book went to into production, CNN.com 
featured Florida-based Applied Digital Solutions, a company promoting the use 
of a miniature digital device to be implanted in people, just under the skin, 
which communicates with and is tracked by GPS technology. [3] Their first 
markets include children and high risk heart patients. One benefit touted in 
the marketing message is that if you are a heart attack candidate, the device 
will monitor certain biological functions and notify a monitoring center if 
it detects medical concerns. Similarly, parents concerned about locating 
missing children, need not worry if their children have an implant. Their 
product, amazingly enough, is called the "Digital Angel." 

Another example is Techno Bra (I am not kidding here) which proposes that 
women wear its digitally embedded support system. Techo-Bra features a 
digital device that can recognize the rapid jumps in the heart rate of its 
wearer, distinguishing between an exercising heart beat and a heart beat of a 
woman being sexually attacked. In the event of sexual assault, the bra uses 
the cellular phone network to notify the police. [4] The marketing message is 
that we will be safer if we purchase and utilize surveillance products. 

I submit that we are not addressing these problems at their roots. That is, 
instead of encouraging individuals to act within moral limits, we create 
societies in which the individual is further isolated. It is each 
individual's responsibility to care for him or herself, not to rely on a 
stranger for assistance, but rely on the power of monitoring technologies. By 
relying on technologies for our safety concerns, we give the technologies 
power and render ourselves less potent players. Also, in this system, it is a 
vicious circle, always hoping that the technologies stay ahead of the 
criminal elements. 

We must instead return to education and retain some process for educating 
members of society about agreed upon values. How does a community, which is 
often comprised of divergent interests, arrive at an agreement on common 
values? One successful example comes from Sanford McDonnell, chairman 
emeritus of McDonnell Douglas Corporation who, having developed a code of 
conduct and values for his employees, extended the idea to his community 
where he created and funded a school-business-community partnership called 
Personal Responsibility Education Process (PREP). The goal of this 
partnership was to determine common values and promote these values in 
schools. Parents and teachers of each school met to decide upon the specific 
values and character traits they wanted to develop in students. If not 
everyone agreed on a particular value, they conceded that the value would not 
be taught. Even though one school in this community was comprised of people 
from a variety of cultural backgrounds, they agreed on the core values of 
honesty, responsibility, respect, cooperation and service to others. [5] 

Technologies of the superpanoptic type, like surveillance technologies, 
should be examined with great care. Those deemed invasive or non-constructive 
should be resisted. Educating individuals about the types of societies and 
communities we want to built needs to be the foundation, instead of 
technology solutions. Similarly, if as computer professionals, we are busy 
building systems such as these, we need to ask ourselves about their value in 
the short and long term. Are these systems we are building contributing to 
the kinds of communities we want to leave the next generations? 

[1] I borrow John Brockman's term from his book of the same name, Digerati, 
to signify the group of individuals responsible for researching, developing, 
selling and marketing information technologies. 

[2] See [ http://www.protech.com ]. 

[3] Richard Stenger, "Tiny human-borne monitoring device sparks privacy 
fears," 20 December 1999, [ 
http://www.cnn.com/1999/TECH/ptech/12/20/implant.device/index.html ]. 

[4] Leander Kahney, "Techno Bra Calls the Cops," 1 July 1999,[ 
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,20517,00.html ]. 

[5] Gail Bernice Holland, A Call for Connection (Novato, CA: New World 
Library, 1998), 101. 

Based on forthcoming book to be published in 2000 by Quorum books, entitled 
Techno-Human Mesh: The Growing Power of Information Technologies © Cynthia K. 
West, 2000. 

-- 
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
SARAI:The New Media Initiative
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi 110 054
India
Phone : (00 91 11) 3960040