Scientific American, November, 1995 Rights of Privacy Technology has its eyes on you Privacy, as George Orwell pointed out, rests on some level on a bargain between people and their machines. Long before 1984, communications technology had the potential to become surveillance technology. Now it is. Not, as Orwell might have predicted, because Big Brother wants to keep his subjects in thrall but simply because most people want it to be. By giving up some protective anonymity, people get safety and service. A majority seem to think the bargain a very good one -- which is why everybody should look very carefully at the fine print. Somewhat ironically for the nation that gave birth to Orwell, Britain is leading the way in creating the kind of society that he taught the world to fear. More than 300 British city streets are wired for 24-hour surveillance by closed-circuit television cameras. From control rooms, police and private security officers scan everything that moves, or doesn't, and dispatch police officers to investigate anything suspicious. More cities are getting wired all the time, often by popular demand. Whatever qualms Britons have about privacy, they are more concerned about crime. The cameras do seem to reduce crime -- at least in the areas underneath the cameras. Academics point out that surveillance seems to have no impact whatsoever on the overall level of crime, which is rising, but people just don't seem to care about where the muggers go when they leave their neighborhood -- particularly when their neighborhood wasn't too good to begin with. Safety is not the only reason to embrace surveillance. At the Olivetti Research Laboratory in Cambridge, for instance, Andy Hopper and his staff have for years worn tiny badges that inform their computers where they are each minute. The point is convenience. Computers automatically bring to the screen the work of the person sitting in front of them. Calls are forwarded to the telephone nearest wherever they happen to be -- unless the computers detect three or more badge wearers gathered in the same office, in which case they are assumed to be in a meeting, and calls are forwarded to their voice mail. To make life more convenient still, Hopper is trying even cleverer technologies. Some chairs now contain compasses that monitor whether they are pointed at a screen, and, if not, the screen is dimmed to save power. Such devices, Hopper reckons, are crucial to making computers effortlessly easy to use. As he puts it, "You can't have personalization without identification." But the search for personalization in a high-tech world may create an uncomfortable situation in the global village. Villages are safe places but not very private ones. Mrs. Grundy, peering from behind her lace curtains, did stop housebreakers. but she also tried to halt many other things of which she disapproved. There are signs that Grundyism is returning to Britain. Many of the crimes recorded by surveillance cameras are worryingly petty. Arrests for urinating in public have soared. For better and for worse, cameras that can see in the dark now line romantic walks to the beaches in seaside towns. In Britain, as elsewhere, technology and politicians are about to deepen the privacy dilemma. Cameras are being linked to smarter computers that can identify people. Some drivers receive tickets without human intervention. Video cameras check their speed and read their license plates. Along with a ticket, the owner is sent a photograph of the car and driver at the time the speeding was clocked. A number of companies are touting technology that can recognize faces by matching video images to digitized photographs (from, say, drivers' licenses). The British government, like many others, is also discussing plans for a national identity card that would, by giving everyone a number, make it easier to keep track of personal data. The selling point is convenience. Much of the work of filling out forms in bureaucratic Britain is simply to give one branch of government information that another part already has -- or to correct information that bureaucrats have got wrong. Convenient though it may be in theory, the combination of national identity schemes and surveillance cameras promises to give governments many of the powers of an all-seeing God. And there are many reasons to worry that mere humans would not be as merciful or as competent. Two aspects of surveillance will prove crucial in determining the practical terms of the new privacy bargain now being struck: choice and reciprocity. Unlike the subject of video surveillance, the wearer of one of Olivetti's badges can remove the device and disappear from the system. His electronic identity is entirely a voluntary one: if he wishes to forward all the telephone calls the old-fashioned way, by hand, there is nothing to stop him. Surveillance becomes less intrusive if it is optional. But choice cannot be a cure for all the potential ills of surveillance. As electronic personalization makes electronic identification more important, that choice becomes harder to manage. One problem is forgery. If electronic identities can be taken on and off like sweaters, the risk that fraudsters will be able to put on somebody else's identity rises. Besides, as such identification becomes more important, the sheer effort required to live anonymously will render choice moot. Anonymity will simply become too much work. Real village traditions offer hope for the lazy and the identifiable. In village life, surveillance was reciprocal: if Mrs. Grundy knew a lot about you, you also knew a lot about her -- and you knew what she knew about you. Technology should further extend this reciprocity. The badges in the Olivetti lab provide a way of locating any badge wearer. But they also allow badge wearers to track anybody who is trying to locate them. There can indeed be no personalization without identification, but there is increasingly little excuse for identification without notification. The same computers and networks that send faces, names and numbers whizzing around the world could also be required to send notification back to each of those identified, each time they have been spotted. Even as the world becomes more personalized and less private, there is no reason for the electronic global vilage to become less personable than a thatched one, or less fair. Photo caption: Video cameras will scan the crowd at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. The security system can transmit images for identification. --John Browning ---------- The issue also has a brief report by Paul Wallich on "Meta-Virus: Breaking the hardware species barrier," which reviews recently-publicized security flaws in the Net, with quotes by William Cheswick of AT&T Bell Labs on the issue and Hot Java.