Phil Zimmermann, the man who in the early 90s developed the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption product, believes that Moore’s Law and surveillance cameras make for a particularly dangerous cocktail, as reported by ZDNet.
Moore’s Law represents a “blind force” that is fuelling an undirected technology escalation, referring to what he sees as the threat to privacy from the increased use of surveillance cameras.
The human population does not double every 18 months but its ability to use computers to keep track of us does. You can’t encrypt your face.
Zimmerman sees surveillance as the biggest threat to civil liberties and nowhere, he believes, is this more egregious than in the UK.
You have millions of CCTV cameras here. Every citizen is monitored, and this creates pressure to adhere to conformist behaviour. The original purpose of cameras was to catch terrorists, but to my knowledge they haven’t caught many terrorists using cameras.
Another problem with using technology for surveillance according to Zimmermann is that while laws that are brought in during times of a perceived increase in threats to national security, they can be relatively easily repealed. I find it hard to believe that anything can be more inert and irrepealable than laws but his point about technology still holds:
The technology market doesn’t work that way. It has more inertia, and is more insidious. When you put computer technology behind surveillance apparatus, the problem gets worse.
