Surveillance Is A Threat To Power Itself
December 17, 2024•623 words
"Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state." ~ Edward Snowden
"Total surveillance is increasingly the general condition of society as a whole." ~ Michel Foucault
"Today we are at a crossroads. The technology is available for two great options: The massive surveillance state, or the renewed freedom of a deeply-involved citizenry thinking independently and holding the government to the highest standards." ~ Oliver DeMille
"To permit surveillance to take root on the Internet would mean subjecting virtually all forms of human interaction, planning, and even thought itself to comprehensive state examination." ~ Glenn Greenwald
Surveillance is a silent force that creeps into the heart of our democracy, eroding its foundations while promising us security and convenience.
Our devices, like smart home assistants such as Alexa and Google Home, quietly infiltrate our homes, collecting and storing vast amounts of our personal data.
Surveillance is a master of control, and when it controls our information, it controls us.
Edward Snowden’s revelations exposed the scale of this power, showing us how easily governments can justify mass surveillance.
As members of society, especially if we belong to marginalized groups or criticize the state or police organizations, we often bear the brunt of this scrutiny. Those in power seek to neutralize potential threats before they arise, and we become targets.
Surveillance capitalism profits from the most intimate details of our lives. Companies don’t harvest our personal data to protect us; they do it to predict and manipulate our behavior. This, too, is power, quieter, but no less effective.
Companies like Facebook and Google collect data on everything we do, from our browsing habits to our personal conversations, then sell this information to advertisers, police organizations, and other branches of government.
Philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s concept of a prison where inmates are always being watched but never know when they are observed finds new life in our modern surveillance state.
We behave differently when we believe we are being watched, even if no one is actually observing us. This, too, is a form of control—a control that requires no guards, no enforcers. It is the perfect power play.
When our governments normalize surveillance, they create a system that any future leader can weaponize. A democracy today can become an authoritarian state tomorrow, and the tools of power will already be in place: cameras on every street, listening devices in every home, and self-censoring citizens like us.
As AI devices become more human-like, we start asking if robots deserve rights of their own. But this is misdirection, a clever sleight of hand. While we focus on the rights of machines, our own rights are quietly eroded.
If we start granting rights to objects, we risk losing sight of the rights of the living. The more ethical dilemmas we debate around robots, the less attention we give to the very real privacy violations affecting us as human beings.
Surveillance is not just a threat to our privacy; it is a threat to power itself. Those who control it become untouchable. They watch us without being watched, know about us without being known, and act without consequence.
We become pawns, while those who wield the tools of surveillance become kings. Control is no longer enforced by brute force but by invisible chains. Once surveillance takes root, it is difficult for us to uproot. A society that normalizes it will one day wake up to find that our democracy has quietly transformed into authoritarian rule.