Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Let’s look at our community for a moment. Let's observe what goes on.

On the street we might come to the same intersection. To connect we must first acknowledge each other’s presence. A glance, a relaxed and open stance, a smile. Then we can communicate with positive body language at a level deeper than we generally understand. We begin to comprehend what could unfold if we create the opportunity. We find confidence, and trust. We start connecting, we start to communicate.

A conversation on a regular street corner. Just the two of us conversing, and each of us creating, not only better comprehension of the other, but also a better connection. We become more conscious of the growing strength of our connection as our conversation continues. As confidence builds we may connect others, call them into our conversation and then more, and more come to be included. All connected. Interconnected. And we are in control of the degree of interconnectedness.

There is a further connection, though we are not so conscious of it and therefore have little control over it. From a secret control room secured in a non-descript city building, someone is watching via the cameras. Always watching. Looking over your shoulder. The camera captures everything.

Perhaps a computer is capturing you and your conversation, your interaction, your movement. Creating a file for scanning and matching against a database compiled throughout the course of our lives.

Do you know how much of your life is captured on camera? There are apparently more cameras per capita in the UK, the USA and here in Australia than in all other countries. There are millions of them and they capture your movements hundreds of times a day.

And it is not just on the street corners we find them. It is nearly everywhere now. The spread of these cameras could reasonably be considered cancerous in the way their creeping coverage gradually invades, almost imperceptibly conquering more and more of the commons. Too strong an analogy? Don't agree on how invasive they are?

OK, that's understandable. A more accurate view then is that, in sum total, these cameras and the system behind them constitute a tool for keeping control or ensuring order. It is a tool increasingly used - supposedly in the interests of our community - but in ways not well understood by the community on the whole. Do you understand how they control your behaviours? Do you know where you are captured on camera in any given place? Have you been consulted about where they are placed?

Yet there will likely be more, if some people get their way. Many more cameras capturing more of the commons in their sights. Scanning, always scanning.

How far will it go? How far could it go?

This place here, where what I write at one time is what you read at another, can also constitute that intersection I just spoke of. It is analogous. Webdiary is a virtual community. There is intersection in our paths. There is interaction amongst us. There is conversation within the Webdiary community that corresponds to the street corner chat I have described. This is our commons, a place for our virtual community.

And there are the corresponding watchers, lurking out of ‘sight’, watching, recording, compiling, codifying. They could even be condemning and craving to intercede, interdict and take control; after all it is creatures of suspicion they have become and creatures of power they want to become. Some indeed do break cover, unable to overcome compulsion. But let’s consider them later, and for now concentrate on the cameras. They are concentrated on you, are you conscious of them?

Cameras, communications technology and computing systems make it easy to capture and convey fragments of a life. And then to connect a dot here and another dot there. What dots in your life could be connected?

The system itself does not really have intelligence, not yet anyway. But it is creative, in a sense. It could assemble anything out of the random snippets of a life. It could connect the dots, and paint by numbers until what is painted is a disturbingly false profile of you. It is only constrained by the programs compiled to crunch the data (programs that may or may not be adequately quality checked and may or may not contain errors).

The crunching power is already incredible and increasing still. The upcoming super computers will be capable of tens of trillions of calculations per second. How will they calculate your intent?

Well that depends on the ‘wetware’ - the neural network - placed between a command and the computer. The mentality of the watchers. It is not so much the cameras themselves and the collected snapshots of daily life they capture that should be cause for concern. What we need to be concerned with, what we really need to ask, is how the watcher - the watchdog - will carry out the commands he or she is given, and beyond that we need to know the command itself and the intent of the commander - the keeper and master of the watchdogs.

This is especially important given what occurred at Stockwell in South London last week. Until it happened how many knew of their representatives decision to command a shoot-to-kill policy? The innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes only 27 years-old, visiting what was a great home of democracy and justice was not aware of this shoot-to-kill policy. Yet shot eight times in the head he was, when he should have known the peril he was in when they picked him out. Singled him out and shot him. If only we'd all been informed of the policy, the outcome may have been different. This man with a friendly face, guilty only of a normal and understandable reaction when chased by men unknown to him, might have been still alive today making his contribution to our world.

And what of the commands issued by our ‘elected’ leaders? Could it happen here? The Prime Minister, 'Honest' John Howard will not even tell us what the policy is. And this is despite the fact that you might die, simply because you do not know that the wrong move may be interpreted as a warrant for your execution. Our Prime Minister will only tell you the policy “is appropriate”.

Surely it is not appropriate to fail to inform the electors. It is not appropriate to keep secret a policy that may cause the death of people in a country with no death penalty.

This is all the more important now that at least two State Premiers are advocating random search powers. If I could be shot through the skull, my brain blasted to bloody bits without proper warning for simply failing to cooperate at a level arbitrarily determined by the person packing a pistol or machine gun, is it not my right to know this could be the consequence? Are we not entitled to know how the law will be administered and powers given under the law executed?

The people deserve increasing transparency if their own movements are to be made transparent to the watching State. And, the watched need to be able to watch the watchers. They need to oversight their surveillance.

What we need, if we want trust and not fear to dominate in our communities, is to learn and adopt sousveillance. This is a kind of watchful vigilance from underneath the stare of the cameras, able to balance all the surveillance and reclaim our communities. Imagine, as an example of a community’s application of sousveillance, a law that required cameras to be attached to a human operator. That would be a law that recognises humanity and our dignity. It's a lot easier to raise objections or concerns to another human than it is to have a heart-to-heart conversation with a lamp post upon which is mounted a surveillance camera.

Seeking a government of openness, transparency, consultation and accountability is like talking to a lamp post these days. What we are getting instead, as the fear is fanned further and more furiously, is the powerful building a better Benthamite Panopticon. They think it is for our protection and press ahead in pursuit of this perfect prison without seeing it for what it is. And all we really need, if we are to be safe from harm, is to re-build trust between each other.

When I look at our communities I see a little of this trust building occurring. Let's hope there will be more, before it is too late.

*

Free from Harm

by Massive Attack from the Album, Blue Lines released in 1990

Midnight rockers city slickers
Gunmen and maniacs
On a feature on the freakshow
And I can't do nothing 'bout that, no no
But if you hurt what's mine
I'll sure as hell retaliate

You can free the world you can free my mind
Just as long as my baby's safe from harm tonight

You can free the world you can free my mind
Just as long as my baby's safe from harm tonight

I was Lookin’ back to see if you were Lookin’ back at me
To see me Lookin’ back at you

Lucky deepest crazy chances seems to be moving fast
What happened to the niceties of my childhood days
Well I can't do nothing 'bout that, no no
But if you hurt what's mine
I'll sure as hell retaliate

I was Lookin’ back to see if you were
I was Lookin’ I was
I was Lookin’ back to see if you were Lookin’ back at me
To see me Lookin’ back at you

You can free the world you can free my mind
Just as long as my baby's safe from harm tonight

You can free the world you can free my mind
Just as long as my baby's safe from harm tonight

Tell us what it is that is dangerous
Friends and enemies are contagious
And they spread into your system like a virus
Yes the trouble is it kind of makes you anxious

I was Lookin’ back to see if you were Lookin’ back at me
To see me Lookin’ back at you

I was Lookin’ back to see if you were Lookin’ back at me
To see me Lookin’ back at you

But if you hurt what's mine
I'll sure as hell retaliate
You can free the world you can free my mind
Just as long as my baby's safe from harm tonight

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