Surveillance Unlimited: How We've Become the Most Watched People on Earth by Keith Laidler.
UK £ 10.99
Icon Books
UK Publication May 2008
ISBN 978-184046877-9
We had hoped to publish this review several weeks ago, but there has been so much else to report on recently, that the inevitable delays happened.
This book covers topics which regular readers of Spy Blog over the years should be familiar with - mobile phone location system, dataveillance, electronic communications interception, communications data traffic analysis, RFID chips, web cookies, Automatic Number Plate Recognition, Identity Card databases, biometrics, CCTV surveillance and sousveillance, government data security and privacy incompetence, private sector aggregation of personal data for profit, etc etc..
We hope that some of our Spy Blog articles have helped the author to form his views and have acted as pointers for his research.
The author Keith Laidler seems to agree with our view that although there are aspects of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, there is also now an uncaring bureaucratic machine which snoops on innocent people, and which inevitably makes lots of mistakes, with horrendous consequences for some innocent individuals, along the lines of Franz Kafka's nightmares in The Trial.
William Heath, on the Ideal Government blog has called this fascination of the New Labour government in the UK (and other) politicians for technological magic fixes to social and political problems, supposedly for the greater good, "mechanised compassion"
The Keith Laidler also rightly points out the scare mongering which has been used to justify ever more surveillance and snooping, following the September 11th 2001 in the USA, and the July 2005 terrorist attacks in London.
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is also used as describe how our love of new high tech consumer lifestyle is making us ever more dependent on communications systems and on large scale databases, and ever more vulnerable to the abuse of powerful surveillance technologies..
As with any book or article or blog covering a wide range of technologies, some minor errors of detail have crept inn e.g. the Onstar GPS tracking system does not directly link back up to a satellite, and the range of a UHF high frequency RFID tag is more like 30 metres than 3 metres, but overall the level of technical accuracy is excellent.
The chapter which gave us most concern was were the pages devoted to the possible involvement of the BBC in some sort of cover up regarding their reporting of the the World Trade Center Building number 7 fire and collapse. However, these are not "9/11 no planer / truther" conspiracy theories, but intelligent questions, which the author may well have had answered by the recent TV documentary on the subject, which came out after the publication of the book, where the missing BBC footage had been found (misfiled rather than destroyed).
The book gives some examples of people fighting back against all of this unnecessary or potentially evil surveillance, but as with the writing of Spy Blog the book seeks to get people to ask the right questions, rather than to try to prescribe detailed political or technological solutions, to problems which have no easy answers.
Each of the chapters has references to sources, many of which are world wide web URLs, and this helps to make the book essential reading for any student or policy maker who is researching our Surveillance Society in 2008.
It takes its place on our bookshelves alongside the 1996 book Big Brother: Britain's web of surveillance and the new technological order (ISBN 0 330 34931 7) by Simon Davies, of Privacy International.
We heartily recommend Surveillance Unlimited: How We've Become the Most Watched People on Earth to Spy Blog readers.
Contents
Part 1; The Watchers
A Day in the Life of the Database Citizen 3
Someone to Watch Over Me 9
Big Brother Has Always Been Watching 17
Part 2: Tyranny's Shopping Basket
IDENTITY The New Identity Crisis 29
RFID: Big Brother in Small Packages 59
LOCATION I: The Watchers 79
LOCATION II: Towards a Marauder's Map 107
Communication 119
Lifestyle 137
Correlation: Getting IT together 153
Ensuring Acquiescence: The Carrot and The Stick 171
Part 3: Do We Need It - Do We Want It?
Protecting Autonomy 197
Cumulative Impact on Society 207
Watching the Watchers: What Can We Do to Resist 221
Epilogue 237
References 243
Index 253
Publisher's Press Release:
SURVEILLANCE UNLIMITED
How We've Become the Most Watched People on Earth
KEITH LAIDLER
PUBLICATION DATE: THURSDAY 15 MAY 2008
£10.99 ● Paperback Original ● ISBN 978-1840468-77-9
Surveillance. A fine neutral word that conveys the idea of objective consideration of the facts. But what is 'surveillance' but another name for spying? To watch individuals covertly, to film them, to listen in to their communication, to know where they are at any given moment - this is exactly what our government and large corporations are doing to every individual in Britain.
SURVEILLANCE UNLIMITED is a gripping examination of the erosion of personal privacy and a disturbing look at the relationship between technology and society in modern daily life.Nineteen eighty-four's all-seeing eye is now a reality. Britain is a surveillance society, but in ways that Orwell could never have imagined. Your car is satellite-tracked, your features auto-identified on video, your e-mails, faxes and phone calls monitored. You are secretly followed via transmitters implanted in your clothes, via your switched-off mobile and your credit card transactions. Your character, needs and interests are profiled by surveillance of every website you visit, every newsgroup you scan, every purchase you make. Big Brother is here, quietly adding to your files in the name of government efficiency and the fight against organised crime and terrorism.
And these are the legal intrusions into our life. Criminal activity is another matter altogether. Keith Laidler reveals the not unsurprising fact that government databases, such as DVLA and health records, are all regularly breached. He explains that once all state databases are linked, it will be that much easier to 'surf' records in a host of government departments, and to amass a multitude of facts on any individual, including vital, biometric identity data.As Keith Laidler argues in this important book, the potential for abuse is far-reaching and formidable. Surveillance can indeed fight crime. But, he asks, at what price? If we want zero crime, can we accept its price of zero freedom? Is the deployment of such technologies even legal? What will be their effects on the fabric of society? And what can we do to prevent the worst excesses? This book has the answers.
SURVEILLANCE UNLIMITED is a critical look at the technologies used in monitoring the population, their present effects and the future implications for our privacy, anonymity and freedom which will appeal to anyone interested in the murky world of 21st century spying and life in a surveillance society.
DR KEITH LAIDLER has a background in anthropology, and is also an acclaimed cameraman and producer of wildlife documentaries. He writes regularly for The Guardian, The Independent and New Scientist, and his many other books include The Talking Ape (Collins), The Divine Deception (Hodder Headline), and Female Caligula (Wiley). He divides his time between a farm in the Pennines and a home in Portugal.
The book is also available from online booksellers like Amazon UK
- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Icon Books Ltd (8 May 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1840468777
- ISBN-13: 978-1840468779
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 13.5 x 2.3 cm
Chicago will follow in your footsteps. Though the issues of personal privacy cannot be overlooked, I'm still amazed why we spend so much time fighting the growth of a technology that has the potential to change the basic ideas of broadcasting.
Your not going to stop the deployment. We must focus on the other potential uses. Only then can we hope to change the fundamental disorder of those in charge at present.
Like most government programs sooner or later it will fall into the hands of private sector. For once we must be prepared to reverse the limited mind set and take this to the next level.