UK 2017: under surveillance

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1741454.0.uk_2017_under_surveillance.php

UK 2017: under surveillance

By Neil Mackay

IT is a chilling, dystopian account of what Britain will look like 10 years
from now: a world in which Fortress Britain uses fleets of tiny spy-planes to
watch its citizens, of Minority Report-style pre-emptive justice, of an
underclass trapped in sink-estate ghettos under constant state surveillance,
of worker drones forced to take on the lifestyle and values of the
mega-corporation they work for, and of the super-rich hiding out in gated
communities constantly monitored by cameras and private security guards.

This Orwellian vision of the future was compiled on the orders of the UK's
information commissioner - the independent watchdog meant to guard against
government and private companies invading the privacy of British citizens and
exploiting the masses of information currently held on each and every one of
us - by the Surveillance Studies Network, a group of academics.

On Friday, this study, entitled A Report on the Surveillance Society, was
picked over by a select group of government mandarins, politicians, police
officers and academics in Edinburgh. It is unequivocal in its findings, with
its first sentence reading simply: "We live in a surveillance society." The
information commissioner, Richard Thomas, endorses the report. He says:
"Today, I fear that we are, in fact, waking up to a surveillance society that
is already all around us." advertisement

The academics who compiled the study based their vision of the future not on
wild hypotheses but on existing technology, statements made about the
intentions of government and private companies and studies by other think
tanks, regulators, professional bodies and academics.

The report authors say that they believe the key theme of the future will be
"pervasive surveillance" aimed at tracking and controlling people and
pre-empting behaviour. The authors also say that their glimpse of the future
is "fairly conservative. The future spelled out in the report is nowhere near
as dystopian and authoritarian as it could be."

Here's how 2017 might look...

BorderGuard The Jones family are returning to Britain from holiday in
America. "It's hard to know the difference between the two countries by what
the family experience at the border," say the Surveillance Report authors.
Britain, America, all EU countries and all members of the G10 have outsourced
their immigration and border control services to massive private companies.
In this vignette, the futurologists give the company the name BorderGuard.

Thanks to the never-ending war on terror, these governments have developed
"smart borders" using hidden surveillance technologies. Cameras and scanners
at passport control monitor faces, irises and fingerprints checking them off
against records of biometric passports, or the British ID card system.
BorderGuard has access to state and transnational databases and can also
data-mine information on individuals - such as consumer transactions - via a
paid-for service provided by specialist companies trading in information held
on every individual in the land.

For families like the Joneses, crossing borders is relatively swift and
painless. The wealth of information held on them means they can be quickly
identified and processed. But citizens of nations not signed up to the
BorderGuard scheme face hostile and lengthy investigations while crossing
frontiers.

Racial profiling is now the norm. Asian features inevitably mean being pulled
to one side - whether or not you carry a biometric passport or ID card.

Brandscapes Retail chains and mega-malls now use huge shared databases -
which began with data-mining reward card information - to create a
"brandscape" for every shopper.

Smart tags buried in a shopper's clothing "talk" to scanners in shops. The
system then connects to consumer databases, revealing where the clothing was
bought and by whom and what other purchases the person has made. The system
knows who you are, where you live, what you like and don't like. Intelligent
billboards at eye level then immediately flash up adverts dove-tailed to the
consumer profile of the individual.

The wealthiest consumer-citizen can even become a "cashless shopper". For
#200, a chip can be implanted in the human body which is loaded with a
person's bank and credit details. From then on, it's their arm that will be
scanned in a shop, not their credit card. "Cashless shoppers" also get
first-class service in mega-malls, with special lounges, spas and massage
facilities reserved only for them. Urban myths, however, are springing up
that muggers are targeting these elite consumers and cutting the chip from
their arms. There are also concerns about hackers being able to upload
viruses to the chip or empty the chipholder's account.

Tagged Kids Scandals about child abductions and murders during school hours
mean teachers prefer tagging a child to facing legal liability for their
injury in a court. Drug testing in schools has also become an accepted part
of life following pressure by the government to identify problem children
earlier and earlier in life. What children eat in schools is also monitored
by parents, as boys and girls are required to swipe their school card every
time they visit the canteen. The card contains information on school
attendance, academic achievement, drug-test results, internet access and
sporting activities. The card's records are used to assess whether the child
has passed or failed their citizenship programme.

Shops are also monitoring children in order to tap into the lucrative youth
market."Children," the report says, "are gradually becoming socialised into
accepting body surveillance, location tracking and the remote monitoring of
their dietary intake as normal."

Elites and Proles Most cities are divided between gated private communities,
patrolled by corporate security firms (which keep insurance costs to a
minimum) and high-crime former council estates. On most estates, private
companies are tasked to deal with social evils.

Offenders have the option of having a chip voluntarily implanted in their arm
so they can be monitored at home using scanners and sensors. Estates can be
subject to "area-wide curfews", following outbursts of antisocial behaviour,
which ban anyone under 18 from entering or leaving the estate from dusk until
dawn.

Community wardens armed with Tasers enforce the law. CCTV cameras can be
viewed by residents at home on their television's security channel.

In gated communities, meanwhile, no-one can get in or out unless their car's
number plate is authorised by the automatic number plate recognition (ANPR)
devices located on gates. There are now so many ANPR cameras across the land
that it's almost impossible to drive the length of a street without details
of your car being logged by the state.

The aesthetics of surveillance Security has been "aestheticised" -
incorporated into the design of architecture and infrastructure - so that it
is almost unnoticeable now. "It is ubiquitous but it has disappeared," the
report authors say. Anti-suicide-bomber bollards outside embassies and
government buildings are secreted in the ground, only being activated in an
emergency when passers-by breach the range of security sensors.

Anti-government protesters are monitored by small remote-control spy-planes,
which were introduced for the 2012 London Olympics but remained a permanent
fixture.

CCTV is now embedded at eye level in lamp-posts to enable the use of facial
recognition technology.

Protest and virtual surveillance Following protests, individual demonstrators
can be monitored by camera until private security contractors for the local
authority in which the demo took place get a chance to question them.
Helmet-mounted cameras scan the biometrics of anyone being questioned. All
guards and police are also now monitored by surveillance devices in their
handheld computers. Ironically, this has triggered civil liberties concerns
within the police union.

The report uses two "protesters", Ben and Aaron, as an example of how police
might treat dissenters. When they are taken into custody by private security
guards in Westminster, Ben undergoes the usual DNA swab, which is analysed
instantaneously, and hands over his ID card for scanning. ID cards are still
theoretically voluntary, but not having one makes life almost impossible.
Aaron is a refusenik and doesn't own a card. That means he can't apply for a
government job or claim benefits or student loans. He can't travel by plane
or even train. To make matters worse, Aaron is a young black man - meaning he
is deemed a "high category suspect" and is routinely stopped and brought in
to the nearest police station for questioning.

Once Ben is released, police monitoring systems piggy-back on his hand-held
device to track him as he travels across the city. He's also been put on a
communications watchlist which means all his internet and e-mail traffic is
saved by his ISP and passed to police. As most phone calls are online now,
police also get access to these communications as well.

Call centre drones Call centres monitor everything that staff do and
surveillance information is used to recruit staff. Potential employees are
subjected to biometric and psychometric testing, as well as lifestyle
surveys. "Their lives outside work," the authors say, "and their background,
are the subject of scrutiny. It is felt to be increasingly important that the
lifestyle profile of the employee match those of the customers to ensure
better customer service." Recruitment consultants now frequently discard any
CV which does not contain volunteered health information.

Once hired, staff are subjected to sporadic biometric testing which point to
potential health and psychological problems. Thanks to iris-scanning at a gym
connected to the company, employees can be pulled up at annual assessments
for not maintaining their health. Periodic psychometric testing also reveals
if staff attitudes have changed and become incompatible with company values.

Big Brother is looking after you Homes in the ever-growing number of
retirement villages are fitted with the "telecare" system, with motion
detectors in every room, baths with inbuilt heart monitors, toilets which
measure blood sugar levels and all rooms fitted with devices to detect fire,
flood and gas leaks. Panic buttons are also installed in every room. Fridges
have RFID scanners which tell the neighbourhood grocery store that pensioners
are running short on provisions. The goods are then delivered direct to the
doorstep.

Huge databases in hospitals are able to compare tests on patients throughout
the country. This allows doctors to red-flag risk factors earlier than ever
before, meaning that a patient's statistical risk of suffering, for example,
a heart attack, are predicted with much greater accuracy. The NHS will be
locked in a battle with insurance companies who want access to health
information for commercial purposes. The temptation for the NHS is the large
amounts of money on offer. The authors point out that Iceland sold its
national DNA database to private companies for research and profit in 2004.

The data shadow Those rich enough can sign up to "personal information
management services" (Pims) which monitor all the information that exists
about an individual - a person's so-called "data shadow". The Pims system
corrects incorrect information held by government or private companies.

Those who can't afford Pims have to live with the impact that incorrect data
can have on their lives, such as faulty credit ratings. "Some are condemned
to a purgatory of surveillance and an inability to access information," the
report authors say.

But for other people total surveillance has become an accepted way of life.
Some voluntarily carry out surveillance on their whole lives - so-called
"life-logging" where an individual uploads online details in realtime about
everything they do.