Surveillance

Both online and in the physical world, issues of covert and overt surveillance are emerging as a side effect of a society in a deep embrace with technologies and networks.

A web of lines connecting the world except 15 countries which are considered black holes in the world wide web.

International groups such as Reporters Without Borders have pushed to raise awareness of Internet monitoring and outright censorship in countries around the world.

Digital networks are enabling much more extensive monitoring of the actions, media consumption patterns and interests of groups and individuals, from law enforcement and government intelligence to private sector companies and organizations for whom motivations are not always clear. Particularly in a era of heightened security concerns due to terrorism, as well as increased power of citizens enabled by technologies such as mobile phones and the Internet, surveillance appears to be growing globally. This surveillance is happening at all levels, from on-device monitoring to Web sites to deeply embedded tracking within networks.

Signals:

Government crackdowns worldwide against communication tools and open Internet access have been on the rise in the past decade, increasingly sharply in recent years. China’s so-called “Great Firewall” which blocks access within the country to certain content, is probably the best known of these surveillance tools. In the US post-9/11, federal government and law enforcement bodies have controversially monitored communication networks, with legal battles mounting over the ability to tap networks without prior clearance. Iran famously blocked Twitter and monitored Web and mobile activities during conflict after its presidential elections.
Monitoring traffic in pornography has also increased globally, with cooperation among law-enforcement networks in major countries increasingly common in an attempt to stop trafficking in child pornography.
The global growth of companies such as Google and Facebook, and their access to enormous amounts of personal data, online behavioral records and ability to map social networks have put the role of private companies in surveillance in question. Some companies have also come in for criticism because of cooperation with governments, from Google’s initial cooperation with China over censorship to Nokia-Siemens’ role selling communication monitoring technologies to Iran, the US and other countries. Across the board, ISPs have also worked with, and in some cases fought, governments’ moves to monitor user behavior.

Implications:

Individual citizens and consumers are becoming more aware of where and how their actions and interests are monitored as surveillance issues have become more high profile.
Commercial companies’ roles in surveillance have become a point of contention and in some cases have directly harmed their interests commercially as users in free markets have protested their actions.
With Internet and mobile usage growing globally, governments will continue to be tempted to direct monitoring at these channels.

Countertrends:

Sousveillance, or the use of the same technologies and networks by citizens to monitor governments, has become the other edge of the two-edged surveillance sword. Individuals and groups have become much more powerful and adept at keeping governments in check, or providing powerful opposition.

Extrapolations:

With government control of many national networks use of monitoring technologies on networks and devices is likely to increase as a cost of having access to these networks.