Sowing the Seeds of Surveillance

What other uses will be found for "Anti-Terrorist" surveilance equipment? A thought-provoking article here. Full text at the url at the end of the page.

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Technology has an almost irresistible lure. When we build systems for surveillance, experience teaches that we will inevitably use them for purposes other than those for which they were originally designed.

Last weekend, the Stanford Technology Law Review held a symposium on the Fourth Amendment,1 at which participants asked whether traditional conceptions of constitutional privacy are adequate when modern technology tracks personal information in entirely new ways.

Whether it's punk kids loitering on the streets of London, or loyal secretaries that take extra-long lunch breaks, surveillance technologies meant to hunt terrorists or criminals could ferret out these minor transgressions as well. If we mandate that the internet be tappable, we will wiretap the internet, at a rate and for purposes beyond those required for counterterrorism. If we build video surveillance networks, we will track people on the streets, and hook that information up to facial-recognition databases and RFID-tag readers.

1. http://stlr.stanford.edu/symposium.html