Big Brother Is Data Mining You

1984-movie

As we increasingly learn the extent to which the National Security Agency (a.k.a. No Such Agency) has been tracking our phone calls, George Orwell’s novel naturally comes to mind.

Of course, the technology that could be imagined in 1948 sounds primitive by current day standards. Nevertheless, I still feel queasy as I read this passage from the book, even though the telescreens that the government now mines for data are ones that we voluntarily use:

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individualwire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live–did live, from habit that became instinct–in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

John Cassidy of The New Yorker is one of those making the Orwell connection. In the world of 1984, he notes,

there was no point complaining about, or trying to foil, extensive state surveillance: it was perfectly legal, it relied on the latest technology, and it was part of daily life. Every home had a “telescreen” that recorded the activities of its inhabitants. Winston sat in an alcove, which he believed was hidden from the camera, and wrote subversive things in his journal. But that didn’t protect him from informers, who eventually turned in him and his lover, Julia.

To be fair to the Prism data mining program, it isn’t listening to what we say. The government still needs wiretap warrants for that. Without them, it would not know the content of Winston’s conversations, just as without a search warrant it would not know about his diary. What it can do now is find out who from abroad is calling Winston and who Winston is himself calling.

While we may not be distressed about the government knowing that a terrorist is phoning Winston, Slate’s legal expert Emily Bazelon worries about what’s next:

The existence of these newly reported databases should be worrisome because once the information is collected, it is so much easier for the government to misuse it. The more data mining, the more it becomes routine and the more tempting to come up with more uses for it.

And later:

I’m not usually moved by slippery slope arguments. But this one looks so very easy to slide down.

Cassidy has the same concerns, even while he acknowledges that the American government is not a Stalinist Big Brother. But recent history—I’m thinking of history since 9-11 although we can certainly go back—shows how fears can be stoked to countenance any number of governmental abuses. Why would we think things are any different now or will be in the future?

Here’s Orwell describing how fears can be stoked. In this case, the scapegoat target is “the traitor Goldstein,” who is shown on film in order to generate “the Hate”:

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish…

 The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out ‘Swine! Swine! Swine!’ and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein’s nose and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

I’m currently in Tennessee with my parents and have been watching anti-Muslim fervor stirred up in Murfreesboro, which is an hour’s drive away. Imagine a political demagogue stirring up such anger and then tapping into the data supplied by the NSA and the FBI.

Commenting on the primitive technology used in 1984, Cassidy writes,

It is precisely because technological progress has greatly increased the scope for official (and corporate) infringement on personal privacy that we need more restrictions on who can access personal data, and we need our political leaders to take a stand on this issue.

Thanks to Orwell’s novel, these political leaders also have access to a powerful novel that they can invoke.

Added note: Amy Davidson of The New Yorker brings up another classic dystopia when talking about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden:

And he is self-aware enough to talk, in the interview, about his own privilege, in two distinct senses of the word. One has to do with his privileges on the job. . .

The other is social: “You live a privileged life. You’re living in Hawaii, in paradise, you’re making a ton of money. What would it take to make you leave everything behind?” He talked about living “comfortably” but “unfreely.” (The dystopia he seems to be obsessing about is less 1984 than Brave New World.)

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