1、Move Over, Big Brother1.Living without privacy, even in his bedroom, was no problem for Louis XIV. In fact, it was a way for the French king to demonstrate his absolute authority over even the most powerful members of the aristocracy. Each morning, they gathered to see the Sun King get up, pray, per
2、form his bodily functions, choose his wig and so on.2.Will this pastlife without privacybe our future? Many futurists, science fiction writers and privacy advocates believe so. Big Brother, they have long warned, is watching. Closed-circuit television cameras often track your moves; your mobile phon
3、e reveals your location; your transit pass and credit cards leave digital trails. Now there is the possibility that citizens are being watched.3.But in the past few years, something strange has happened. Thanks to the spread of mobile phones, digital cameras and the internet, surveillance technology
4、 has become far more widely available. Bruce Schneier, a security guru, argues that a combination of forcesthe miniaturisation of surveillance technologies, the falling price of digital storage and ever more sophisticated systems able to sort through large amounts of informationmeans that “surveilla
5、nce abilities that used to be limited to governments are now, or soon will be, in the hands of everyone.”4.Digital technologies, such as camera phones and the internet, are very different from their analogue counterparts. A digital image, unlike a conventional photograph, can be quickly and easily c
6、opied and distributed around the world. Another important difference is that digital devices are far more widespread. Most people take their camera phones with them everywhere.5.The speed and ubiquity of digital cameras lets them do things that film-based cameras could not. In October, for example,
7、the victim of a robbery in Nashville, Tennessee, used his camera-phone to take pictures of the thief and his getaway vehicle. The images were shown to the police, who broadcast descriptions of the man and his truck, leading to his arrest ten minutes later.6.The democratisation of surveillance is a m
8、ixed blessing, however. Camera phones have led to voyeurisms and new legislation to strengthen peoples rights to their own image. In September, Americas Congress passed the “Video Voyeurism Prevention Act”, which prohibits the photography of various parts of peoples unclothed bodies or undergarments
9、 without their consent. The legislation was prompted both by the spread of camera-phones and the growing incidence of hidden cameras in bedrooms, public showers, toilets and locker rooms. Similarly, Germanys parliament has passed a bill that outlaws unauthorized photos within buildings. In Saudi Ara
10、bia, the import and sale of camera-phones has been banned, and religious authorities have denounced them for “spreading obscenity”. South Koreas government has ordered manufacturers to design new phones so that they beep when taking a picture.7.There are also concerns about the use of digital camera
11、s and camera-phones for industrial espionage. Sprint, an American mobile operator, is now offering one of its best-selling phones without a camera in response to demands from its corporate customers, many of which have banned cameras in their workplaces. Some firms make visitors and staff leave came
12、ra-phones at the entrance of research and manufacturing facilitiesincluding Samsung, the South Korean company that pioneered the camera phone.8.Cheap surveillance technology facilitates other sorts of crime. Two employees at a petrol station in British Columbia, for example, installed a hidden camer
13、a in the ceiling above a card reader, and recorded the personal identification numbers of thousands of people. They also installed a device to “skim” account details from users as they swiped their plastic cards. The two men gathered the account details of over 6,000 people and forged 1,000 bank car
14、ds before being caught. 9.But the spread of surveillance technology also has its benefits. In particular, it can enhance transparency and accountability. More and more video cameras can be found in schools, for example. Web-based services such as ParentW and KinderC link to cameras in hundreds of Am
15、erican child-care centers, so that parents can see what their offspring (and those looking after them) are up to. Schools are also putting webcams in their classrooms. And tech firms such as Google have put webcams in their staff restaurants, so employees can delay going to lunch if they see a long
16、queue.10.Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto, calls the spread of citizen surveillance “sousveillance”because most cameras no longer watch from above, but from eye level. Instead of being on top of buildings and attached to room ceilings, cameras are now carried by ordinary people.
17、The video images of Rodney King being assaulted by police officers and the horrific pictures of prisoner abuse from the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq are the best known examples.11.Camera-phones could have a profound effect on the news media. Camera phones make everyone a potential news photographer. Unsu
18、rprisingly, old media is starting to embrace the trend. The San Diego Union-Tribune recently launched a website to gather camera-phone images of news events taken by their readers, and the BBC also encourages users of its website to send in pictures of news events.12.Companies and governments will h
19、ave to assume that there could be a camera or a microphone everywhere, all the time, argues Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future. Unsafe conditions in a factory or pollution at a chemical plant are harder to deny if they are not just described, but shown in photos and videos. Animal-rights act
20、ivists, for instance, operate online multimedia archives where people can store and view graphic images from chicken farms, slaughterhouses and fur factories. Such material can cause outrage among consumers, as was the case with videos of dolphins caught in tuna nets.13.Last year, a German member of
21、 parliament was caught photographing a confidential document of which only a few copies were handed out (and later collected) at a background meeting on health-care reform. Some Berlin politicians are said to let reporters eavesdrop on fellow parliamentarians by calling them right before an importan
22、t meetingand then failing to hang up, in effect turning their phones into bugs.14.In November 1996, Senegals interior minister was caught out when he admitted that there had been fraud in a local election, but failed to notice that a bystander was holding a mobile phone with an open line. The electi
23、on was annulled. In the same countrys presidential election in 2000, radio stations sent reporters to polling stations and equipped them with mobile phones. The reporters called in the results as they were announced in each district, and they were immediately broadcast on air. This reduced the scope
24、 for electoral fraud and led to a smooth transfer of power, as the outgoing president quickly conceded defeat.15.The social consequences of the spread of surveillance technology remain unclear. David Brin, author of The Transparent Society, suggests that it could turn out to be self-regulating: afte
25、r all, Peeping Toms are not very popular. In a restaurant it is generally more embarrassing to be caught staring than to be observed with crumbs in your beard. “A photographically armed society could turn out to be more polite,” he suggests, referring to an American aphorism that holds “an armed soc
26、iety is a polite society”. Alternatively, the omnipresence of cameras and other surveillance technologies might end up making individuals more conformist, says Mr Brin, as they suppress their individuality to avoid drawing too much attention to themselves.16.The surveillance society is on its way, just as privacy advocates have long warned. But it has not taken quite the form they imagined. Increasingly, it is not just Big Brother who is watching but lots of little brothers, too.
