Surveillance States of America

A frequent topic of news articles here in America and elsewhere in the West is about China being a “surveillance state.” Sample headlines include:

•          “’The Entire System is Designed to Suppress Us’: What the Chinese Surveillance State Means for the Rest of the World” – Time, Nov. 21, 2019
•          “Big Brother is watching: inside China, the ultimate surveillance state” – The Times of London, May 26, 2019
•           “Inside China’s surveillance state” – Financial Times, July 2018
•          “Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras” – The New York Times, July 8, 2018

China’s authorities keep tabs on citizens’ whereabouts and activities at all times. National police use facial-recognition glasses, hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras in public places, a database of citizens’ voices, artificial intelligence and big data analytics monitor its population.

While we aren’t there yet in the U.S., our privacy is quickly evaporating, thanks to our acceptance of technology-based conveniences and a lack of restrictions on how information that is collected about us is shared. Consider:

• Our phone tracks our location at all times, logs our calls, knows with whom we text, and what we browse.
• Credit- and debit-card issuers track what we buy, from whom, and where we are when we make purchases.
• An estimated 50 million surveillance cameras in cities watch our movements around the clock.
• Our home security system’s cameras can spy not just on our pets and babysitter, but on us, while our Ring outside cameras watches who comes to the door, and who walks or drives by.
• Our smart speakers keep tabs on what we ask of them and are able to monitor what we say, even when they are "off."
• And our car, increasingly, is providing to the manufacturer information, video and in some cases even audio from outside our car and within, and is sharing that information with insurers, local police, retailers, and others.

The Washington Post’s Geoffrey A. Fowler in a Feb. 27 perspective piece describes what he learned when his parked Tesla model 3 was involved in a hit-and-run crash. The car’s outside cameras, used for autopilot functions, operate even when the car is parked, and store the video. The car’s inside camera, used to detect when the driver is drowsy, can record what happens in the cabin. And the car’s microphone, used to give voice commands to the infotainment system, can pick up conversations and send them to Tesla.

It’s not just Tesla, either. General Motors vehicles are scooping up similar data, and it, BMW and Volvo use face-monitoring cameras, although none of them have been forthcoming about exactly what they do with such material.

There are few regulations about who can access this private information, and just as important, about our rights to control access or even to be informed about what is being collected and for what purposes.

Granted, China’s efforts are larger in scale, more centrally coordinated by the government, and, it seems, more enhanced by technology than surveillance here in the U.S. But make no mistake: Intimate details about everything we do –- even in our home or car -– increasingly are an open book, available to just about anyone.