Under a watchful eye: Surveillance after Sept. 11

In Andrew Niccol's 1997 film "Gattaca," Ethan Hawke plays a man attempting to evade the scrutiny of authority in a world where one's every movement is tracked with DNA tests — where the government knows everything you have done and everything you are likely to do in the future.

Our world is not like that. At least, not yet.

Just less than two weeks ago, the Senate passed an anti-terrorism bill that gives broad new powers to law enforcement and intelligence agencies to tap phones, monitor Internet traffic and conduct other forms of surveillance — both abroad and at home.

Known as the U.S.A. Patriot Act, the law also enables the government to shift the primary mission of the FBI from solving crimes to gathering domestic intelligence.

On the same day, the Pentagon announced an urgent request for surveillance technology, including facial recognition systems, a portable polygraph machine for questioning airline passengers and voiceprint software for automatically recognizing people speaking Middle Eastern languages.

Some of the items on the Pentagon's wish list are to be designed specifically to target terrorists — computer programs that can predict terrorist behavior, sophisticated scanners for spotting people who have handled weapons of mass destruction and a computer system for tracking anyone who buys material that could be used in making bombs.

But given the FBI's new mandate to gather intelligence, there are concerns that this surveillance technology could be aimed at — and used against — innocent Americans.

And those who have studied surveillance and civil liberties are weighing in on the matter.

Computer science professor Ed Felten is writing a book about law and technology.

"There could be a loss of privacy on the part of regular citizens," Felten said. "By giving law enforcement more power to eavesdrop, you are increasing the problems that could occur if the system becomes corrupt. You're relying more on the discretion of the law enforcement community."

German professor Tom Levin teaches a seminar called "Rhetorics of Surveillance" that examines the theory and aesthetics of different forms of surveillance.

"Surveillance has been an incredibly important issue for decades," Levin said. "What is so worrisome today is the increasingly widespread willingness to simply sacrifice civil rights across the board in the name of an ostensible 'security.' "

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Levin said he worries about the long-term consequences of surveillance technology.

"It's not simply a matter of whether one wants to catch bad guys," he said. "It is rather whether we are willing to pay the price that is invariably involved in the use of such systems. People are making these sorts of decisions without being informed of the longer-term consequences."

The public must not take technology's infallibility for granted, Levin added. "The human capacity for recognition is fallible," he explained. "Machine recognition supposedly doesn't make mistakes — or does it?"

A self-described "media or cultural theorist," Levin curated an art exhibit about surveillance called "Ctrl Space" — that is, Control Space — which currently is on display in Karlsruhe, Germany. Noting that surveillance has been an important issue for ten years, Levin said he worries about tracking systems in which those in control of information are not held accountable.

"I'm not condemning the strategic use of surveillance technology," Levin said. "I am cautioning against the uncritical embrace of every possible sort of tracking and identification technology without thinking through the long-term consequences for privacy, for notions of public space and for anonymity."

"There's certainly going to be an expansion of surveillance, the question is whether that will necessarily interfere with legitimate privacy concerns," sociology professor Paul Starr noted. "I don't think it's altogether clear what the answer to that is."

Starr cited the historical precedents for U.S. wartime measures threatening civil liberties dating from 1798.

..."We can go back all the way to 1798 with the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were passed during the undeclared war between the United States and France under the John Adams administration," he said. "Measures that provided for the imprisonment for people who criticized the President of the United States or Congress . . . that allowed the government to take action against immigrants.

"We should always be concerned," he said. "Vigilance is the eternal price of liberty."

Starr added, however, that considerations during wartime are different than those during periods of peace.

..."We should maintain active scrutiny through the press and the Congress of how these powers are used, and that is the best way to try to prevent serious abuses of privacy, but this is a moment of wartime and there is clear public support for an expansion of governmental powers," he said.

...Levin presented the worst-case scenario.

..."I don't trust the people running these systems to always have our best interests in mind," Levin said. "What if, suddenly, the government is not so friendly? What if you have a pernicious government? The possibility of a very ugly misuse of data is a real one that we should not dismiss.

"America could become a very scary place."