Absorb What's Useful

This is a topic that I have found interesting for many years and studied in various categories from racial profiling, criminal surveillance, to consumer marketing.  The article “Who Watches the Watcher?” by Eric Stoddart takes a theological approach on the subject that I have never read before.  I thought this was a excellent article since he wrote about the “suspicion and lack of trust” that humans have for each other that is normal when dealing with safety and preconditioned information about a culture or ethnic group.  In the book The Soft Cage by Christian Parenti he explains how surveillance in America started from slavery to Chinese railroad workers to cowboys creating the first credit report system and now a major weapon in the war on terror.  In Stoddart’s article he gives a few examples of how the Bible tells stories and fables to show the divine and higher power that God has over the world and people.  Christians believe that any untruthful speech will be punished or judge by the Creator and not forgotten.  Surveillance from a spiritual force is needed to become a believer in the Gospels of the Bible and fundamental beliefs in Christianity.  When I was reading this article I couldn’t stop but thinking about what Parenti wrote about George Washington writing in his diary about keeping a record of his slaves and even labeled “where and how” the slaves time was spent.  Productivity was central on Mt. Vernon and he often dispatched orders with a feedback evaluation on any work he felt was not up to his standards.  The slaves had to deal with the possibility of being punished if they did not do what the “master” commanded them to do.  This directly ties in with Stoddarts article and the usage of how the worlds of the Old and New Testament were based on people doing a good deed for the community and civic society rather than facing disciplinary consequences if they didn’t treat fellow citizens accordingly.  To steal from your brother was an act that God despised and refused to tolerate.  When the first Europeans came to America the conversion of Christianity to Natives and Africans became a common ideology amongst fellow immigrants to join together as a collective group.  For slaves, mobility was a crucial source of power that allowed Black people to form networks of interpersonal connections.  Once these identical groups were formed any resistance or “escape” plans could be carried out in a collective effort.  The more contacts a slave had the more resources they had at their disposal.  When food was stolen from the Mt. Vernon plantation because the slaves were hungry, George Washington ordered all slave-owned dogs to be hanged on the grounds that they aided the slaves in their night robberies.  This provoked fear and a sense of anxiety among generations against white authority.

In Biblical stories whenever someone committed a crime they not only had to face the community structure but most importantly the judgement of the Lord for lack of obedience to the Ten Commandments.  The laws were expected to be followed and God is the ruler who is not to be questioned or challenged.  When you put personal faith’s and beliefs in this context it appears to be a dictatorship  between humans and God.  Yet when you places humans with humans in the same context the trust issues becomes blurry.  Governments become challenged and the people suspect the reasons behind CCTV’s in their neighborhoods watching them overtly and covertly.  Why?  One reason is because no one knows or “trust” who is watching the monitors and what are their motives to actually “protect” other than themselves from harm.  When I moved from Washington DC to Seattle, WA I noticed not as many surveillance cameras on the highways or streets as in the nation’s capital.  When I lived in Washington DC for 4 years I may have received more highway traffic tickets than I have compared to the other 10 years of driving experience I had prior to that time period.  Was it because the crime rate was much higher in the District of Columbia?  Was it because I was easily within a 10 mile radius of the White House in any given point of the city?  I believe it was because the city housed so many “protective” government buildings and national monuments that would be a national security threat if something was to happen.  I also know that when fingerprinting was first implemented in the United States in the late 1930’s many were convinced by the FBI that it “would bring about the identity of, and enable us to follow the movement of radicals and Communist”.  Not surprisingly the first crime to convict someone with proof of fingerprinting was a black man for robbing and killing a white woman in 1910.

On top of the fact that the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, DC police, Capital Police, and embassy police were all so close throughout the city all year long.  Security was a must but when you went into certain neighborhoods that were 15 minutes away from Capital Hill, the crime never ceased even with full time surveillance.

The good point that Stoddart made in this article is that surveillance is not linear but a a system of various codes and networks.  People are watched not just when they go to the bank or grocery store but when they are at home or work in the confines of their so called “privacy” space.  Jobs monitor your emails, and meetings whenever they find the time, resource and reason to do so.  In 1836 the city of New Orleans created the first full time civilian patrol unarmed and no uniforms until New York City created the first armed patrolman in 1845.  Today we have security guards, police officers, federal agents and central intelligence agents that are equipped to infiltrate or monitor your daily life on many platforms whether online or taking your dog for a walk.  

The concern that many citizens have is who monitors the government when their have been cases that the abuse of power has been used for personal supremacy and special interest groups who have money to pay for the access many of us believe should be private.  In our Digital Democracy class the issue doesn’t stop with just identifying the problem but ways to regulate and create laws that curve the appetite of “nosey” officals and corporations.  Since our lives have been greatly influenced by the digital age we should take more precautions when it comes to making purchases, donations or giving out emails with full home addresses.

Conclusion

As more political involvement takes place on the internet their should be more secure ways to make sure that information is not shared and poorly managed so that hackers or “political terrorist” do not take the information use it to their advantage or extortion.  Web users trust that when they purchase a book from Amazon that Amazon doesn’t sell their private information or that a political candidate doesn’t use that information to send propaganda that becomes a form of brainwashing rather than honest policy making.

Sources:  Parenti, Christian. The Soft Cage.Basic Books. 2003

               Stoddart, Eric. Who Is Watching The Watcher?Towards An Ethic In The Digital Age. 2008