Within the first few pages of The Hunger Games, we learn through Katniss that surveillance is a fact of life in Panem’s District 12. Even outside the district fence, in the forbidden wilds where Katniss and Gale hunt for their families, she has to pause and wonder if in the middle of nowhere she is being overheard. Surveillance is so pervasive that the innocent remarks of children can bring their families trouble.
So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts.
We know from this that Katniss is different; she tries to adapt rather than submitting to the pressure of surveillance. Peeta gives voice to this idea at the training center and in the Games, wanting to find a way, even in death, to prove that he is not submitting to the will of the rulers. Katniss’ solution to the problem created by the gamemakers’ manipulation of the rules is pure defiance; she instinctively manipulates the surveillance/submission political model of Panem and its need to demonstrate submission to the people it controls. Hoist on their own petard, the gamemakers have to allow her to win the contest of wills, leaving us with the knowledge that she is a marked girl whose safety and survival are more in question than ever.
The twin themes of surveillance and submission are important aspects of the trilogy and the environment within which Collins’ characters exist. Surveillance, backed by the constant threat of force from the Peacekeepers, is a primary means to pressure compliance. It is an open demand for submission. Surveillance is manifest as the constant monitoring of the citizenry and as the voyeuristic surveillance of the
Hunger Games arena. The entire citizenry, even the privileged denizens of the Capitol are in a state of submission, represented at the extreme by participation in the
Games, and by the consequences of the failure to submit:
avoxing, where even the ability to express through silence is taken.
The road to Panem is lined with security cameras, overhead drones and eavesdropping gear. It is likely already there in your community. Do you feel constrained yet? If not, dear reader, you should.
Traffic and security cameras are de rigeur in the twenty-first century. Americans are not the most watched population in the world: that distinction belongs to the United Kingdom, whose dive into the realm of omnipresent monitoring sounds more like urban legend than reality. But the numbers of cameras do not lie, and those numbers are on the increase, justified by the 2012 London Olympic Games.
But that is clearly not enough for the British government: in June the government announced a new program to “log details about every Web visit, email, phone call or text message in the U.K.”
The bill demands that providers collect IP addresses, details of customers' electronic hardware, and subscriber information, including names, addresses, and payment information . . . . the government also is seeking to keep logs of citizens' Internet history, giving officials access to the browsing habits of roughly 60 million people — including sensitive visits to medical, dating, or pornography websites.
If you look at
Bob Morgan’s piece on the new cameras in the UK, cited above, the first paragraph should bother you:
There are some in the UK who fear the increase in 'big brother' CCTV surveillance of UK citizens as they go about their lives. I think that the most obvious CCTV cameras - the ones in the street - do not represent any such threat because they are not being monitored much of the time and in fact don't do what most of us think they do - they do not help in reducing crime or making us safer.
Many of us have been skeptical all along of the supposed “benefits” of surveillance. But his assertion that obvious cameras do not represent a threat because “they are not being monitored much of the time” shows no understanding of the
concept and implications of data collection, aggregation and analysis. It is the sort of fatally flawed thinking that gives rise to Panem and President Snow.
In fact, automated collection, aggregation and analysis is on the rise, enabled by facial recognition technology, predictive modeling and other data analysis technologies.
Ross Andersen discussed this in a recent Atlantic article, yet evidenced similarly flawed thinking:
Before automated surveillance reaches a critical mass, we are going to have to think carefully about whether we think its security benefits are worth the human costs it imposes. The ethical issues go beyond just video; think about data surveillance, about algorithms that can mine your financial history or your internet searches for patterns that could suggest you're an aspiring terrorist. You'd want to be sure that a technology like that was accurate.
Is “accuracy” our primary concern, the only “human cost” we care about? Only if we plan to submit. The question of whether or not to use surveillance in the first place is reduced to a quaint philosophical dilemma.
Our problem in America is that most surveillance is the result of
private activity that the government can access on command. The government need not be the initial data collector so long as private companies do it for them. It means that the collection of data is outside whatever constraints have been placed on government. It only comes down to the simpler questions of present justification to access the data. We effectively leave it up to the private company to decide what data demand is proper and what is not. Then, as
Jack Balkin pointed out in his 2008 paper The Constitution in the National Surveillance State, the data is inevitably retained in a growing volume of warehoused information, creating a “memory” of the data the overcomes the natural “amnesia” of traditional record keeping. Some of the points Jack Balkin made four years ago are being addressed finally in the media; and recently by the
editors of the New York Times.
More importantly, we enable and submit to these activities in the name of some convenience or issue of safety, perhaps even smugly certain we have “nothing to hide,” utterly careless about the long term implications. This point was made abundantly clear in a
New York Times analysis of a round of reports from cell carriers detailing the demands for subscriber information by law enforcement over the preceding year.
The information represents the first time data have been collected nationally on the frequency of cell surveillance by law enforcement. The volume of the requests reported by the carriers — which most likely involve several million subscribers — surprised even some officials who have closely followed the growth of cell surveillance. ..... While the cell companies did not break down the types of law enforcement agencies collecting the data, they made clear that the widened cell surveillance cut across all levels of government — from run-of-the-mill street crimes handled by local police departments to financial crimes and intelligence investigations at the state and federal levels.
The numbers are staggering, with each major carrier handling hundreds of new requests every day. Lets be clear why law enforcement is determined to get this data: the GPS device on your phone will happily reveal your whereabouts at all times. [My phone claims that I can restrict access to the GPS; this article suggests to me that my reliance on those settings is likely misplaced. Removing the battery and letting people leave a message until I am good and ready to hook up is looking more and more like a good idea.]
Did you know, for example, that the police can obtain tower “dumps” showing everyone who connected to that tower within a given time frame, along with information about what they were doing? This could include anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of cell phones, any one of which are now a potential suspect simply be virtue of the phone connection. Let’s imagine your cell phone includes a navigation system. Now the data might include not only where you were but also where you are going; in starker terms, it could tell someone things about what you are thinking. Running apps that access financial data? More delicious data for the reaping. Is it rude to point out that users of “location awareness” applications are plugging themselves into the system in a way that maximizes the potential information about them available for the taking? I hope not, since that is the truth. Peter Maass and Megha Rajagopalan of ProPublica argue that we should at least be honest about what these devices are and call them trackers.
Surveillance technology and its possible abuses are a moving target, the latest obsession being drone aircraft. Having lived within the city limits of Baltimore two decades ago in a formstone rowhouse neighborhood that, while decent, was subject to the typical crime problems of the era, I have a personal memory of too many police helicopter visits to my neighborhood. But, I’ll say this, there was no mystery about the fact that they were there (unless you happened to be blessed with sufficient deafness not to have to put up with the noise). Nor was there any ambiguity about their purpose – an active pursuit of a suspect was in progress. They did not come to disturb our peace just to snoop.
Helicopters are used to snoop, of course, but they aren’t subtle. Drones, however, present a whole new calculous. You are very unlikely to ever know it was there. That is the whole point. That is why they are so popular in war zones. Silence, stealth, surveillance for its own sake. Yes, I’ve heard the excuses; and, frankly dear reader, I know when someone thinks I’m too stupid to see through the dissembling and obfuscation. The only reason your police department wants drones is to surveil you in hopes of catching you (as efficiently as possible) doing something; to cow you into living in fear. The only purpose of this kind of surveillance is to induce submission and servility.
In the history of the human race, examples of sacrificing the individual in the name of state security or private gain are easy to find. Far more elusive, are examples of restraint in the name of liberty. The road to Panem is built by those who submit to constant surveillance and monitoring of their lives. Surveillance serves only to enhance the power of the observers over the observed. We delude ourselves that the good intentions of the observers protect us; and that it is for our own good. Good intentions are the first victim of surveillance, as the illegal computer surveillance by the FDA of a few of its scientists readily demonstrates (one could argue that in this case good intentions were entirely lacking, but that is another topic altogether).
In Panem, what is good for the state is good for its citizens. That citizens are victims of a surveillance state, and are thereby forced to mold their lives to the whims of the state, is just how it is. But in a healthy community, there has to be a bargain and a balance. The bargain is one of mutual aid, comfort and defense; the balance is between the needs of the community and the inherent right of the individual to live, love and find meaning in existence. In Panem, balance does not exist because those who control the state define the terms of existence for everyone else, using tools like surveillance to compel submission. There is no meaning in servility, no life under threat and no love under surveillance; only Hunger Games and death.
*
This the third installment of an occasional series inspired by The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins’ devastatingly brilliant Young Adult trilogy about a fictional place not far in our future. Ms. Collins has reminded me, and I hope others, that difference between freedom and tyranny is more than just a matter of form. I hope in this series to try to detect the telltale signs showing where our path is taking us and talk about why we should be afraid if we cannot find the way or the will to change course. Here are the previous installments in this series:
All references are to the books not the movie which this writer has not yet seen.