Google Maps And The Transparent Society
Posted by harrisj Wed, 13 Apr 2005 18:46:00 GMT
Well, after the initial excitement over Google Maps had died down, the mounting concerns over user privacy were inevitable. Some of these have been quite clever, but I imagine there are other bloggers out there seriously concerned about the evil swarm of satellites spying on them. Have we reached an Orwellian future where our every motion is tracked?Relax. I think not. For starters, as people have noted, a satellite taking photos of your patch of sod every six months is hardly a threat to your autonomy. If anything, your privacy is probably more threatened by the myriad private cameras monitoring your city's streets, not to mention the large dossiers compiled by (and stolen from) credit reporting agencies and personal databases like LexisNexis or Choicepoint. At least with Google Maps, the people are still in control. Indeed, I think there is a profound difference between a society where a powerful few control the cameras (ie, Orwell's police state) and one where any of us can look through the viewfinder. As Jeffrey Veen notes
Ultimately Orwell was right: everything we do will be watched. But he was wrong about the government building it. We did it ourselves. Which means where Matt sees chemistry, I see environmental accountability. Where others see surveillance, I see corporate whistle-blowing. It reminds me of the Surfrider Foundation's project to get kayakers in the San Francisco Bay to cameraphone the bilge coming out out of container ships. What happens when thousands of grassroots activists can click-and-drag through the remote places in this country? Clearcut! Oil spill! You can't dump that there -- we're watching!
Indeed, this seems to be a clear benefit of opening satellite views to all. An ordinary person doesn't really do anything significant enough to be seen from outer space. But, lots of corporations and governments and other massive entities do. And where normally they could hide their various deeds in remote places fenced off from the outside world and spun away by crack PR efforts, they still can be seen by satellite. For example, be sure to check out the the look of clearcutting in British Columbia, described by Mezzoblue:
A picture is worth a thousand words and all that, so here’s a 4000 word essay on what the forestry industry is doing in British Columbia, as of whatever the date was when the satellite snapped these.I must interject here that I find it amazing that I can examine the effects of the forestry industry in Vancouver without leaving my desk in New York. Maybe there is something to old dot-com boom adage that the Internet obliterates geography! Getting back on topic though, this discussion of uses leads back to the most important question about any spying technology. Who is doing the spying is much more important than what they are spying on. That is the point made by David Brin in his essay (and subsequent book) The Transparent Society back in 1997. Assuming that we can keep cameras out of people's home (a bad thing all around), we have to pretty much accept the fact that the technologies of surveillance are proliferating in public spaces. So, he posits there is really a choice between two societies:
- The Orwellian nightmare state where the cameras are manned by a vigilant and arbitary police force
- The transparent society, where anybody can look through any camera
Why is the second choice better? Perhaps these environmentalist examples with Google Maps illustrate that nicely. It is just that much harder for secrets and corruption to flourish in such a system (hence the transparent in the name), and the technology helps to empower the citizen rather to suppress him. Now, I am no technological utopianist or wild-eyed cypherpunk, and I would prefer a society without widespread surveillance of course. But if it is coming (and it is), I think the more transparent we can make it, the better our future will be.
