21+C, Scanning the Future (UK), February, 1996: "Dataveillance." A global trend is emerging toward citizen surveillance. While authorities speak of the need for data regulation and people become digital shadows, watchdogs are doing some monitoring of their won. With interviews of Phil Agre, Roger Clarke and Simon Davies on invasive and privacy technology. These technologies face an uphill public relations battle. Digital cash has already been widely accused of providing money launderers, drug barons and other criminals with the perfect means of continuing their activities. It's the same argument that was used in the Clipper Chip debate, in which the US government proposed a central encryption software, and it will no doubt be directed towards pseudonymous techniques as they emerge. Simon Davies is familiar with this type of argument. He says there has been a change of political winds in recent years. Where once privacy was used to protect individual freedoms it is now officially deemed by governments and corporations to be an aid to criminals and a barrier to administrative efficiency. "In a generation, we now have privacy as almost like an ancient forgotten wisdom," he says. Then he adds: "The point that needs to be made very clear is that technology has been misused. It always did have the capacity, the capability to be a friend to people. Instead, it has become a potential tool of enslavement. And it has rendered society vulnerable on a scale that has never been seen before. It is technologists and politicians and financiers who have misused the technology and should be brought to account for it." UNV_eil