Something Thoughtful

  Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.    

                                     HOW FAR SHOULD SURVEILLANCE GO? 

In nearly all cities and in many towns, cameras are watching people and filming day and night. In most supermarkets and shops there are cameras watching and filming customers day and night. Owners of some pubs, houses and [the entry of] buildings [banks, department blocks etc] the cameras are filming. This is a great help to the police. In a democratic country, it is all to the good. Police [in New Zealand] do not track down drunks wobbling down the street… unless they start a fight or are part of a brawl. They do not track down people who jay-walk… unless they have created a real commotion such as holding up the traffic. They do not track down the great majority of pedestrians and drivers… although, very occasionally, police can make use of film to identify a person who has been charged with murder, rape or other crimes. Finding where and when the accused was at certain times could help prove the accused innocent or guilty. Supermarkets and shops etc. can more easily identify shop-lifters although, regrettably, many criminals who want to break in and steal now wear masks or use other techniques to disguise themselves… and they use violence.

 So the use of public cameras can be very legitimate and justifiable.

But can public cameras butt into people’s private lives and effectively destroy them?  Journalists – newspapers, television etc. – sometimes chase people down to get sensationalised images of innocent people. Then there are people who are not doing anything criminal, but are doing something very questionable. A few weeks back there were widely shown images, made by a “Kiss Cam” in an American stadium during a rock concert. A man and a woman were canoodling and petting. They were shocked to realise they were being filmed and seen by a huge audience, because they were having an illegitimate liaison. The man was cheating on his wife. Quite funny in one sense but destructive in another.

Now all these things are happening in open and democratic societies.  But what happens in totalitarian countries? In the People’s Republic of China, the Sky-net now consists of 700 million closed-circuit TV cameras which can span nearly every citizen in seconds. Faces are identified and even a citizen’s gait can be identified. If this were the system of an open society, it would be helpful in catching real criminals. But the main purpose of the Chinese People’s Republic is to control society, identify and destroy dissidents and ensure that the totalitarian system will not be challenged. This is surveillance without any real ethics. The mass population is forced to live as the Communist Party dictates. Yes, the Chinese Sky-net is sometimes used to catch real criminals, but the system is really along the lines of Big Brother is Watching You. Naïve visitors entering China often say that the people are happy and peaceful, but then they have to look that way don’t they?

FOOTNOTE: After writing and posting this commentary, I saw a documentary about Singapore and it followed the way in Singapore there are endless cameras surveilling people. Criminals are traced via cameras... but so are people who jay-walk or who drop some small trivial piece of rubbish, for which they will be fined. This is why Singapore is always very tidy, but it makes for an authoritarian state. Yes, there are different political parties, but the same party has ruled since the 1960's, when Singapore ceased to be part of the British Empire. And while those who dissent are allowed to protest, they are only allowed to do so in limited places in parks, with police surveilling them. Street processions are banned.