From: phil osborn (philosborn@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 12 2000 - 00:19:21 MST
>From: GBurch1@aol.com>Subject: SOC: Ubiquitous Surveillance (Was: dreams of
>a better world)
>Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 19:01:32 EST
>
>In a message dated 3/7/00 11:31:15 PM Central Standard Time,
>spike66@ibm.net
>writes:
>
> > How do we act differently now, knowing that we could be
> > getting videotaped, any where, any time? Eventually you
> > know some yahoo is going to invent a mechanical robofly that
> > can carry a camera and microphone into your home, thru the
> > AC vent or something. Would that affect the way we act?
> > It is suddenly a privacy advantage to be a nerdy nobody.
>
On the one hand, I think
>a consensual society of free individuals governed by law would be
>unworkable
>in a world where one could not CHOOSE to conduct some of one's affairs
>without observation, or at least where observation was an infringement of
>etiquette, ethics and/or law. On the other, I was forced to consider just
>how much time and money gets spent in legal "swearing matches" about what
>was
>said by whom in a particular meeting or what happened when in some
>unexpected
>event like an accident giving rise to a tort claim.
>
>What if the default presumption was that all of one's business affairs
>would be recorded by all involved? What if the default presumption was
>that the operation of every piece of equipment in a construction project
>was being recorded? The vast majority of litigation boils down to "who
>said what" and "who hit who" type questions. If the presumption was that
>things would be
recorded unless the parties to a transaction agreed otherwise, people
wouldhave to offer a damned good reason to switch off their cameras.
>
I can't say I've come to any final conclusions, but I have come to a much
less firm opposition to consensual surveillance.
At my day job (preparing in-house all the ads, brochures, posters, T-shirts,
the company website and anything else that requires photography, computer
graphics, printing or writing), which I'm sure is repeated in various
permutations in millions of work places, power struggles are constant and
often unbelievably destructive to the welfare of the company.
Anyone who doesn't protect himself and be at least aggressive enough to
scare off the predators of the various warring camps is destroyed. The
employee burnout and turnover is unreal. The only way I can do my job
without having it totally perverted into nothingness is to battle dailly.
If what I did was an open book, I would be interrupted every few minutes by
some person who had authority demanding that I do something else instead of
what some other authority had told me to do, which would then ensure that I
would be chewed out by the other boss. Or, one of the bosses would catch me
experimenting with some COREL feature or looking up some JavaScript
construct, or just sitting momentarilly and thinking about how to best do my
job, any of which has been the cause of major dressing downs.
When the early '90's recession ended, and, with it, cheap, dispensible
skilled labor, it became more and more apparent that my work was, if not
indispensible to the survival of the company, at least a major factor in
their profitability. Nevertheless, this behavior continued on the managers
part, and numerous other people who made huge amounts of money for them
walked out at various times. Finally, I started walking out. And suddenly
they started treating me respectfully! So, I continued that behavior -
walking out for the day and leaving critical projects hanging - and their
behavior got even better!
Still, it is only by means of taking all sorts of measures to hide what I am
really doing that I can get the critical aspects of my job done at all.
Since the management is in a state of Hobbesian war, they never count the
cost of the labor in doing anything. I often make sure that jobs take ten
times as long as necessary just to buy time to do the essential stuff. This
may not last, however, as I am fairly certain that they have now installed a
keystroke monitor. I am looking for a good job as a security guard - dark,
silent, alone.
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