PART II
The Government Is Watching YouEven the friendliest, most benign government in the world likes to keep an eye on its citizens—it’s a safe bet Canada has a few cameras posted around the country, just to make sure everyone’s got enough poutine and warm clothing and that the moose don’t get out of hand.
The excuse for this surveillance is always the same: The government watches you because it wants to keep you safe. If it knows where you are, what you’re doing, and whom you’re doing it with, it can protect you. If you’ve done nothing wrong, then you’ve got nothing to hide. Sacrifice a small amount of privacy, and we will keep you safe and warm, insulated from a dangerous world full of people who want to destroy our way of life—people we have, incidentally, under the exact same kind of surveillance.
Only a couple of decades ago the most popular method of spying on a population was to pay civilians to watch each other. That technique is still popular. When you see a sign offering a reward for information leading to an arrest, this is a solicitation to become a spy for the government. Do it enough, and they might even put missile launchers behind your car’s headlights.
Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and North Korea relied (or rely, in the case of the glorious Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) on vast human-intelligence organizations. Networks of hundreds or thousands or even hundreds of thousands (it has been estimated that one in four Soviet citizens worked for the KGB) of individuals spied on everyone they could. Recruiting spies and informers through blackmail, bribery, or threat, these nations relied on their own citizens to tattle on each other. They controlled access to information through the media, kept meticulous records, and used their networks of informants to destroy anyone who threatened the powers that be.
As technology has improved, the methods governments employ to watch people (and each other) have become more sophisticated, and less reliant on amateur snitches. Satellites hover above us with cameras powerful enough to detect whether we’ve cleaned our fingernails lately. Lasers listen in on our conversations. Sophisticated computers read our e-mail and listen to our phone calls. Tiny flakes of skin or strands of hair betray us through chemical tests that can unlock our genetics in a matter of minutes. Robots armed with missiles watch us from miles away, waiting for a target lock.
It all comes down to power. Powerful people live in terror of losing their status. Whether they’re dictators or senators, they will do anything they can to remain where they are, or to climb higher. The temptation to watch people—to know their moods, to hear what they say about you—is overwhelming, and increases in proportion to the power they gain. Governments watch their citizens because they are afraid of the power an angry constituency can wield, either through force of arms or the weight of popular dissent.
Ironically, these days it is the democratic nations of the West that spend the most time and money—and employ the most fantastic technology—watching their citizens. They use the same excuses as the dictatorships of the last century, employ many of the same tactics, and often achieve similar results. Thanks to modern technology, they’ve got teams of robots hiding quietly in corners, watching us twenty-four hours a day, and reporting everything they see.
The people of the United States and the United Kingdom rank alongside the citizens of Russia and China as the most closely surveilled folks in the world. Get used to the idea. If the government decides to put you under the microscope, there’s nothing you can do about it but smile and hope they don’t notice the bag of weed in your underwear drawer.