Entire issue - Instituttet for Fremtidsforskning

Orwell Was an Optimist - By Klaus Æ. Mogensen
Every time we withdraw cash in an ATM or use a
card to pay in a shop, the banks register where we
are and how much money we use. If we use our
customer card in our local supermarket, the supermarket
chain keeps an account of our day-to-day
purchases in order to create a profile of our consumption
- a process called data mining
u In Great Britain, you can buy a popular t-shirt with the
text “Orwell was an optimist”. This is not a word usually
associated with the famous British writer. His works
tend to be gloomy, and his science fiction novel Nineteen
Eighty-Four (1949) contains one of literature’s most fearsome
descriptions of a despotic society. The t-shirt’s message
still reverberates today because surveillance of our
everyday lives has progressed far beyond what Orwell
could foresee in his wildest imagination. Our every action
is mapped in detail by the state and by large corporations,
but because we aren’t always aware that this surveillance
is taking place, we generally don’t worry much
about it. Perhaps we should worry, for surveillance is
only going to increase in the future.
The most familiar type of surveillance is through
surveillance cameras, also known as cctv (closed-circuit
television) 1 . These surveillance cameras are particularly
common in Great Britain, where there are an estimated
five million of them – one for every 12 citizens 2 . The
best are good enough to recognize people up to 75
meters away. The authorities aren’t alone in conducting
surveillance; many of the cameras are set up by private
companies in shops and parking garages, outside banks
and goldsmiths, or in residential areas. Most recordings
are kept for a month or longer – sometimes far longer.
In Orwell’s novel, surveillance was limited by how many
people you could instruct to watch others (and who
should watch the watchmen), but we are moving beyond
that limitation. Today, computers can analyze video
images and recognize not just individual people, but also
suspicious behavioural patterns. A person can be followed
from camera to camera in order to map the individual’s
movement in detail.
The defence offered for the many surveillance cameras
is that they help to solve crime. However, according
to a study conducted by the British police in 2008, only
about three percent of all crimes are solved with the help
of cctv 3 – hardly enough to justify the billions it cost to
set up and operate the surveillance cameras. So why is
it done Is it because of a collective delusion about the
cameras’ efficacy Or is it something more sinister
Surveillance cameras are the most visible form of
surveillance and the one that we – partly because of
Orwell – are most aware of. However, in our daily lives,
we are watched in many other ways, some of which take
much closer peeks at our private lives than the cameras
do. The problem is that we aren’t aware of this surveillance
because it is invisible. One example is when we
use our credit or debit cards. Every time we withdraw
cash in an ATM or use a card to pay in a shop, the banks
register where we are and how much money we use. If
we use our customer card in our local supermarket, the
supermarket chain keeps an account of our day-to-day
purchases in order to create a profile of our consumption
– a process called data mining 4 – and this information is
used to make us consume more. The British supermarket
chain Budgens secretly takes photos of everybody
buying alcohol or cigarettes in order to compare them
with a national database of minors that previously have
attempted to buy such products 5 .
Do you carry a mobile phone on you If so, your
telephone company knows at all times where you are
– even when you aren’t using your phone. Telephone
companies must keep records of phone calls for at
least three years, and your text messages are typically
saved for 30 days – even if you delete them on your
phone. There are examples of divorce cases in which the
spouse’s text messages are used as evidence of infidelity 6 .
The next step in fighting internet piracy may very well
be to force telecommunications companies to analyze
all data packages sent over the internet to check if they
contain pirated material 7 . Once such a system is in place,
it can easily be expanded to look also for political material
or other unwanted activity. However, you shouldn’t
feel too safe now, either. When you go on the internet,
there is a considerable risk of your computer becoming
infected with ‘spybots’, a type of computer virus that
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