Troubling Technology

September 1, 2002

by John F. Schmidt

Every morning tens of thousands of commuters get on the Florida State Turnpike without stopping at the tollbooth to get a ticket, and later exit without even slowing down for the one-armed bandit. Are they arrested? No, they paid with an electronic detection system that automatically billed them.

Increasingly across the country, toll roads are adding the convenience of electronic passes to speed up traffic and avoid the hassles associated with paying the toll with cash. It works like a charm. Florida’s SunPass makes turnpike use much more convenient, and allows users to skirt the long lines and breeze through with no delays. I use it and I like it.

In the San Francisco Bay area, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission is going a step further. They began installing about 150 roadside transponders late last year. The network, once complete, will cover 500 miles of freeway. The project has nothing to do with tolls. Bay area government engineers will collect data on traffic delays and driving times, and use the data to track traffic movement throughout the region. This will be the most precise and timely information ever gathered on a large road network. There is no question that it will enable efficiencies in traffic flow routing that only have been dreamed about in the past.

The new system can influence traffic flow because it can advise drivers to take alternate routes to avoid congestion. Currently drivers can use a toll-free number to find out what is happening ahead. In the future, automatic diversion systems can be installed that will optimize the efficient use of highways. The benefits of such a system seem to overwhelmingly support its use and expansion. Many have enthusiastically endorsed this new use of technology.

But another group of voices has raised an alarm over this new system. Each automobile using the electronic pass concept will be equipped with a little black box that tells where that car is on the highway. The billing computer recognizes the car’s I.D. number and knows where to send the toll charges. But now the monitors will also know who you are and where you are on the highway – in real time. That is much more than they could do before.

For all the wonderful advantages of such a system, civil libertarians are gravely concerned about the potential for abuse. Surveillance of innocent motorists is extremely easy – in fact, it is an integral part of the way the system works. The old saying that “you can run, but you can’t hide” will become literally true on our highways.

Whatever the use – legitimate or not – such a technology threatens to undermine the basic presumption of our way of life. Citizens are to be free, not vassals of the government. We are innocent until proven guilty, and we are not subject to random searches without a warrant. Being under constant surveillance wherever one goes, and having one’s entire history of whereabouts, expenditures, likes, dislikes, political views, and more stored in some computer is incompatible with personal liberty. George Orwell’s prescient book about a future society in which every citizen was subject to 24-hour surveillance did not come to pass in “1984,” but we seem to be on a fast track to that world today.

Advocates of the traffic monitoring system have countered these criticisms with a promised software design that will permit the auto and driver to remain anonymous to the system that is tracking traffic flow. Some privacy experts have accepted the assurances that the information will not be used for surveillance. It is a plain fact however, that once the basic identification information is in the system, the safety locks are ludicrously easy to remove. It would take a matter of minutes and a few keystrokes. So the assurances that the data will not eventually be used to spy on people – no matter how noble the intentions are at the beginning – are worth no more than the cost of the air to utter them.

To be sure, the traffic engineers are not monsters bent on creating a police state. But put enough of these surveillance systems into place and let the wrong person seize control of our government, and literally overnight America will become the most tightly controlled police state in history. Unfortunately, we are creating and installing the infrastructure for such a state at a breakneck pace with hardly a murmur of protest at the enormous potential for abuse. This could literally be a one-way detour to despotism.

Many of us are only dimly aware of the extent to which surveillance systems are in place already. Consider the fact that most major cities are installing cameras at important traffic intersections. These high-resolution cameras capture and store images of all traffic – including tag numbers and auto descriptions. Airport security video monitors already exist, and the new models have face-recognition systems to identify terrorists – or you. Most major cities have already installed them to observe not just traffic but pedestrians. And who has not watched police crime videos of convenience store burglaries filmed while the robbery was in action. We are unaware of most of the times we are being watched and recorded.

Even our homes are not safe. Internet-compatible appliances allow you to monitor and control your whole suite of household appliances (TV, alarm/security system, lights, door locks, etc.) from anywhere on the globe through the Internet. Do you really believe that such devices are secure from the same people that got the top cryptographic companies to put a “back door” into other nation’s security software so the N.S.A. could snoop on supposedly secure traffic between friendly countries?

National Security Issues aside, I cite this example just to prove that when the technology exists to snoop, someone will find an excuse compelling enough to justify doing it. And our government has demonstrated that it makes sure it can snoop on whomever it wants to.

There is even the new “Digital Angel ©” tracking system that features wearable monitors to track your whereabouts (and other personal information.) Technology is under development to eventually create tiny sub-dermal transponders – yes, under your skin – to locate you anywhere on the globe using GPS technology.

Why would anyone submit to such a thing? That is an easy question to answer. Would you be for it if someone kidnapped your six year old from her bedroom, and you called the cops and located her safe in just minutes? Or suppose your elderly mother wandered away from the house late at night. How much is peace of mind worth?

A compelling argument can be made that such devices ought to be implanted in everyone at birth. After all, most people don’t protest things they grow up with. Such a plan would get everyone on an even footing in a generation or two. The government already requires every person in the U.S. to receive a Social Security number at birth, and that was never the plan from the beginning. Sub-dermal implants of such information – and more – could be frighteningly easy to implement. Eventually, buying and selling would become impossible without your Digital Angel © implant.

Call it “encroachment of technology”; call it the “Mark of the Beast”; call it whatever you want, but the problem is with us, and it is growing every day. The real struggle is to define the limits and uses of such technologies, for there are clear advantages to some limited uses as well as dangerous pitfalls to its misuse. Inherent in this dawning technology is the power to know -and control - every aspect of a person’s life.

The path out of this dilemma is to recognize that civil freedom for an individual presupposes an absence of accountability to the government. That concept is rooted in the conviction that we are created by God and granted freedom by Him. No one has the right to take it from us, nor do we have the authority to give it up. That is the basis of government by the consent of the governed.

Perhaps that word “consent” is the key to this whole matter. If we recognize that it may be in our enlightened self-interest to allow surveillance systems to exist and collect data when it serves our purposes, but at the same time allow any one to opt out of the surveillance at any time, then we may have found the balance between technology and freedom.

I can choose not to use the SunPass system. I can refuse an implanted chip. I may remove a wristwatch-style location monitor. But we must all draw the line when we are required to take an indelible mark or un-removable chip.

The necessity of the times may require us to temporarily curtail some aspects of public liberty in the interests of protecting our overall security. However it is absolutely needful to uphold the basic principle of personal liberty as we find it explained in our Declaration of Independence. If we give up our liberty in the pursuit of safety, then we will end up with neither. “Nor”, as one of our founders wryly observed, “will we deserve them.”

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John F. Schmidt has written numerous articles over the last decade. Politically, he is an Alan Keyes-type Republican. Along with his wife, he has organized voter drives in Pennsylvania, and been active politically since the 1990 elections. His livelihood, until recently, was spent in automation engineering for a large global equipment manufacturing company, specializing in coal mining. WANB in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania hosted Schmidt's weekly talk radio program "Issues and Answers." His writing is intended to relate the headlines of today to the foundation of eternal truth - the Scriptures. He currently resides in Palm Beach County, Florida. Visit his website at: Inalienable-Rights.org

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