[silk] Virtual prisons: how e-maps are curtailing our freedom

[Udhay Shankar N]

I must admit I'm curious about what Eugen and Cory (among various others
on this list) will say in response.

Udhay

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727670.900-virtual-prisons-how-emaps-are-curtailing-our-freedom.html?full=true

 Virtual prisons: how e-maps are curtailing our freedom

    * 06 July 2010 by Mark Monmonier

ELECTRONIC maps are arguably the quintessential innovation of
20th-century cartography. Although a few academic cartographers accord
the map mystical powers, it is merely a tool, useful for good, evil or
both, which citizens can resist or constrain - up to a point. The
question is not whether e-maps will restrict where we go and what we do,
but to what extent.

What I call "restrictive cartography" is not in itself new. Property
maps are at least as old as Roman times, and boundary maps no younger
than kingdoms and nation states. What is new, however, is the
substantial increase in both the number and diversity of restrictive
maps. A comparison of mapping in 1900 and 2000 underscores my point.

Since 1900, we have used maps to exclude industry from residential
neighbourhoods, ban new construction on floodplains, help delineate
"historic" districts that constrain a homeowner's choice of paint colour
or replacement windows, put limits on where and with what weapons we can
hunt game, restrict travel by foreign diplomats and journalists, prevent
sex offenders from living near schools and playgrounds, and keep
aircraft a nautical mile away from a vice-president's weekend retreat.

The public tolerates these cartographic restrictions because many, if
not most, are not only benign but essential. Environmental protection,
for instance, relies on mapping as a regulatory instrument to safeguard
water resources and wildlife habitat. Maps delineating rights of way for
gas lines and other underground facilities guard against accidental
breaches by a digger arm, at least by conscientious contractors. "Call
before you dig" is a mantra of restrictive cartography. Property maps
show rights of way that might thwart a buyer's plan to enlarge a home or
re-configure an access road, and maps of quarantine areas aimed at
farmers stem the spread of fruit-fly infestations. Government officials
publish restrictive maps because they assume the boundaries will be heeded.

In 2010, however, restrictive cartography is on the verge of more
invasive applications as electronic technology replaces graphic lines
requiring conscious interpretation with invisible fences, erected by
proactive, self-enforcing geographical restrictions.

The most impressive examples, and the most frightening, reflect the
integration of geographical information systems (GIS), the Global
Positioning System (GPS), and wireless telecommunications. A tracking
device can instantly report its location to a GIS that determines
whether the person, car or ship under surveillance has entered a
prohibited area. Depending on circumstances and severity, a future
system might be able to debit an offender's bank account, transmit a
vocal warning or electronic pinch, notify the police or military,
disable an engine, or even release a soporific drug into the violator's
bloodstream.

Electronic tagging and tracking on an unprecedented level is virtually
certain - and could happen very soon. Motorists who appreciate the
convenience of paying road tolls and parking fees automatically are
unlikely to resist mandatory RFID tags - what's the use if electronic
scanners can collect the same information from licence plates or
bar-coded registration stickers? Electronic tracking makes it easy to
limit access to congested areas and keep heavy trucks off residential
streets, while adding a transponder that reports location enables
automatic enforcement of traffic regulations. Smart algorithms are
likely to be built into the software controlling the transponders, which
could detect erratic driving characteristic of drunkenness or
aggression, perhaps. Minimal resistance to cameras mounted above traffic
lights attests to creeping acquiescence.
An unprecedented level of electronic tagging and tracking is virtually
certain

Because the public is willing to trade control over their lives for
convenience, the cellphone already doubles as a tracking device, and
raises the possibility of "spatial micromanagement": of employees by
employers, of children by parents, of elderly parents by grown children,
and of suspected subversives by the authorities. Meanwhile, strategies
for encouraging cooperation include GPS wristwatches, security badges,
ankle bracelets and even subdermal chips.

Threats to privacy and personal freedom are well known and obvious. In
the spring 2003 issue of the IEEE Technology and Society Magazine,
geographers Jerome Dobson and Peter Fisher warned of "geoslavery" by
obsessive husbands or boyfriends, poised to punish perceived transgressions.

The fact that geospatial tracking might be equally efficient for
enforcing restraining orders on those who abuse their partners
underscores an inherent ambiguity that impels acceptance, especially in
the name of public safety or national defence. If the tracking of sex
offenders, stalkers and people with Alzheimer's is acceptable, why not
the tracking of thieves and drunk drivers?

Once in place, a national geospatial surveillance administration can
accommodate an ever-wider variety of electronic boundary lines, and
offer disgruntled taxpayers an alternative to costly incarceration. For
many crimes, an electronic map makes more sense than a prison, which may
well only reinforce antisocial behaviour and allow criminals to exchange
tricks of the trade.

Efficient, but hardly fail-safe. Electronic cartography is vulnerable to
incompetent technicians, malevolent hackers, cyber-terrorists and
lobbyists for "special interests". Like traditional maps, e-cartography
invites manipulation by government or corporations, often in the guise
of national defence or free-market capitalism.

While maps on the internet can advertise prohibitions and justify new
delineations, this apparent openness is easily compromised. Particularly
portentous is the way online mapping blurs details presumed useful to
saboteurs but which are in fact easily viewable, after a little
research, elsewhere on the internet.

Boundaries developed for one purpose are too easily adopted for another,
as when postal codes (designed merely to speed up mail delivery) are
used to set rates for car insurance.

More troubling are the incongruities that might arise from mixing maps
compiled from different sources. For example, it's risky to transfer
boundaries from a detailed property survey onto a generalised highway
map on which curves have been smoothed out or symbols shifted to avoid
clutter.

And consider the electronic maritime navigation system that combines
satellite positioning with a visual display derived from conventional,
less geographically precise maps: quite likely the maps scanned into the
system were made by hydrographers who had a less accurate sense of where
they were than the 21st-century mariner's GPS. Although a skipper might
snicker when a screen shows the ship on the beach when it's clearly
offshore, only a fool would surrender all control to an electronic
navigator.

But it would be a mistake to portray this new brand of restrictive
mapping as Orwellian: it is a natural part of social, political and
cartographic evolution. In the end, then, we must hope that fear of
litigation or other pragmatic issues may prove more influential than
concerns over privacy in limiting the growth of restrictive cartography
in an electronic age. We shall see.

Profile

Mark Monmonier is distinguished professor of geography at the Maxwell
School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, New York.
This essay is based on his new book No Dig, No Fly, No Go: How maps
restrict and control, which builds on his How to Lie with Maps, both
published by University of Chicago Press

-- 
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))

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