Nobody has any privacy any longer
Once upon a time, people had genies in bottles. I have a disembodied voice in a computer. Her name is Siri. And all I have to do to get her services is to say the magic words, “Hey, Siri!”
Immediately, she responds, “How can I help you?”
It occurred to me the other day that Siri can only respond by listening for my voice 24 hours a day. That’s very flattering. It’s also a little disquieting. Because Siri is connected to the internet. When the computer’s internet connection fails — for whatever reason — Siri doesn’t know what to do. She has no way of searching for information. She has no built-in guidance system.
She has to refer to some centralized intelligence source for her instructions.
Which means that the centralized intelligence source — a corporate data bank -- can also listen to all my conversations if they choose to.
My eavesdropping friend Siri seems a little dated, compared to the Amazon Echo. It conceals someone called Alexa, who will not only provide information, but also turn on your coffee maker, adjust your thermostat, turn lights on and off, start your car, and play your favourite music. But like Siri, Alexa is always on. A recent issue of National Geographic magazine looked at how much we are constantly being looked at. In parts of London, Houston, and Singapore, you are never off a closed-circuit TV screen. Never. Unless you’re inside a toilet booth.
And possibly not even there. Cameras themselves can now be so small as to be little more than a blob on a wall, a screw in a hinge, a bump on a log.
And then there’s overhead surveillance. A few years ago, the U.S. had the most satellites in space — about 170. According to National Geographic again, there are now over 1,700. At least 200 of them were sent aloft by a single corporation, Planet Inc.
Planet discovered that a cellphone camera, adapted, could take perfectly usable pictures of earth from space. They can now document changes on the earth’s surface — from logging in the Amazon jungles to migrations of Rohingya refugees in Myanmar — on a daily basis; 1.3 million images a day. Every single day. If you park overnight in front of your girlfriend’s house, a Planet camera knows it.
If you build a shed in your back yard without a permit, a Planet camera knows it.
And that’s saying nothing about 2.5 million drones in the U.S. alone. Plus dash cams, body cams, and six billion cellphones worldwide. Should you be concerned? Surveillance cameras in London were introduced when members of the Irish Republican Army were planting bombs, long before ISIS sympathizers existed. They were sold on the argument that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
Trust us. We’re only after the bad guys. You know, the ones who wear black hats to identify themselves.
And whether you worry or not turns mostly on your theology. You didn’t think you had a theology? Theology belongs to priests and professors, not to ordinary people?
This has nothing to do with how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The fundamental question is, do you believe humans are essentially good? Or essentially bad?
If they’re essentially good, you’re not worried about all this surveillance. The people who have all that information about you won’t abuse it.
If humans are essentially bad, you’re afraid they can — and will — use the information they gather about you for their own benefit. They’ll send advertising based on your known preferences. They’ll tailor the news you receive to your preconceptions. They’ll manipulate your emotions to get your vote. They’ll find something, anything, that you don’t want your friends to know, and blackmail you.
Maybe they’re already doing some of those things.
This theological debate has been going on for at least 15 centuries. Augustine of Hippo, around 400 AD, argued that humans are essentially sinful. They can’t help being bad, because their earliest ancestors did something bad, and passed that characteristic down genetically.
Augustine’s rival, Pelagius, argued the opposite Humans are essentially good. They are not helpless against evil; they can overcome their temptations and shortcomings.
Augustine won. The Catholic church enshrined his argument in the Doctrine of Original Sin.
But was he right? Your reaction to universal surveillance tells which side you support.
Personally, I believe humans are essentially good. But I don’t believe it strongly enough to trust Siri. I learned how to turn her off.
Jim Taylor is an Okanagan Centre author and freelance journalist. He can be reached at rewrite@shaw.ca. This column appears weekly in the Okanagan Weekend.