Today, not only public space but also our private spaces are constantly being surveilled and controlled, and data is collected, significantly impacting our lives.
Continuous ubiquitous surveillance of our movements in public space and our activities means we ‘never walk alone.’
Private and sensitive information is constantly harvested and stored remotely and available to others at the click of a computer mouse. For instance, China now has over 600 million surveillance cameras installed in its cities. This unwelcome intrusion into our privacy is a concern, spreading widely throughout society.
Privacy has become a luxury.
The aggressive use of such surveillance technologies enters every aspect of our lives and controls and observes our every step, disguised as benign. Face-recognition software, the ubiquitous use of surveillance
cameras, software tracking all movement, and harvesting
preferences in social media and searches, all are valuable data resources to the government, organizations, and ‘big tech.’ The latest addition to the list is smartphone apps monitoring your health levels and heartbeat or nano-robots inserted in your bloodstream and tracking all your vital functions. How long until they will monitor your thoughts?
The ubiquitous ever-watching eye is a collective unconscious image that has become the symbol of excessive control, monitoring, and surveillance.
—Yes, we live in Orwellian times! Cida de Aragon