Growth of an American Surveillance Society Book Review

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Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society

Issued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in January 2003, this report is a dim view of the pervasive influence technology has on the private lives of Americans. Written by Jay Stanley and Barry Steinhardt, the paper examines the various uses of technology by both private industry and the government to collect both visual and written data as well as monitor the movements and habits of private citizens without their consent or knowledge.

The report begins with a warning that our privacy and liberty are at risk. The recent advent of computers, cameras, sensors, wireless communication, GPS, biometrics, cell phone location abilities, and other technologies is "feeding a surveillance monster that is growing in our midst." Furthermore, new technologies such as face recognition programs, implantable GPS and RFID chips, data-mining, DNA chips and "brain wave fingerprinting" are debuting daily. This combined with recent legislation, such as the Patriot Act, which under the guise of national security lowers or eliminates the standards established to determine probable cause for government surveillance, and fails to provide for oversight of government entities that have the capability to perform surveillance activities (thus leaving them unaccountable to the public) promise to further diminish the quality of the privacy and liberty enjoyed in the past.

Video surveillance is rapidly spreading throughout public areas.

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When centralized this technology allows law enforcement to view images from cameras across a designated area, giving officers the capacity to zoom in on people from cameras a half mile away. Currently there is no evidence to support the assumption that this technology enhances security or reduces crime.

Data surveillance is the collection of information about an identifiable individual, often from multiple sources, that can be assembled into a portrait of that person's activities. The spread of computer chips in our daily lives means that more and more of our activities leave behind data trails. Soon it will be possible to combine information from different sources to recreate an individual's activities with such detail that it becomes no different from….....

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