Could you de-facto imprison someone with ubiquitous surveillance? Would it be a punishment?

In My Humble Opinion
1

“Ubiquitous surveillance”, in this context, refers to a technological network of cameras, internet taps, cellular signal position sensing, aerial drones, and other technologies to track someone’s every move.

Today, networks have holes, but perhaps in 20 years, this scenario will be practical. Suppose we have an individual, “John”, who the powers that be do not like very much. Perhaps John was even found innocent in a criminal trial, but popular opinion is that he is guilty. Or perhaps he is disliked for some other reasons.

“Johns” name is added as a person of interest to the surveillance network. Whenever John leaves his house, drone aircraft automatically track his movements. Everything he does online is monitored and scanned for unusual activity with a mix of software (artificial neural networks) and human operators. Every document John signs, etc.

Taps on his sewer line will detect the medications John is taking. If he neglects to take prescribed medication, or metabolites for drugs not prescribed to anyone in Johns house are detected, the police are notified.

Moreover, the moment John makes the slightest infraction, police immediately show up and punish John. He will be ticketed for going 1 mph over the speed limit, he will be ticketed for jaywalking, and so on.

Also, any attempt by John to evade surveillance (if he were to disappear from the network for a period of time) is treated as suspicious behavior and investigated.

It seems to me that at a certain point, John has no remaining freedom of action. Anything he does that violates the smallest rule gets him in trouble. In practice, John probably cannot afford to leave his house due to so many tickets. It seems marginally different from actual imprisonment.

Today, we cannot afford this kind of network, but it isn’t unfeasible. The technology is getting better and cheaper every year, and in a way, having a huge number of new police to watch everyone at once creates jobs for people who otherwise might not structurally be employable. It depends on the technology, but if you wanted to take it a step further and watch everyone at all times (and have another group of watchers watching the watchers, and so on and so forth) I think you’d have enough labor left to do all the other jobs of the economy. I think you could do it with no more than 10% of the population as the police.

Also, would it be legal? As I understand it, a judge just has to agree that watching 100% of Johns every move (and heck, searching his house periodically) is a good thing.

2

Private people try that. It’s called stalking in almost every single state of the union. If the person calling the shots or paying for it is paying for it to happen over a state line, its federal.

An interesting side question is, if someone dies in the commission of a felony and the person footing the bill lives in a felony-murder state, does the needle-in-the-arm apply?

3

You’ve hit the key reason this is not a worry.

The other key reason would be, if the cops are putting that much effort into it, calls to the local media to ask if this is a good use of tax dollars is going to make it unpalatable for the police to continue.

4

Do you mean in lieu of prison? Or done by others merely because it’s thought that he’s not innocent? If it’s something that gets handed down as a sentence, similar to house arrest and it’s made legal, then yeah, I’d think it would be a punishment, and justifiable in a lot of cases (rapists, child molesters).

If it’s just something that’s done to him without his consent, I can’t see how that’s legal at all. Though I guess he’d have to prove it was being done.

5

I wish I shared your optimism.

Surely anyone who’s watched the news over the last few years knows that questions of legality don’t bother the government much. Whether it’s torture or NSA spying or harassing journalists, the government simply does what it wants and doesn’t worry about what the Constitution says.

The idea that it couldn’t happen because it would be a waste of taxpayer dollars rings false for a similar reason.

I think our best hope is incompetence. Let’s hope that the software systems which spy on John, monitor his sewer lines, and track his driving habits are designed in the same way that healthcare.gov was designed and we won’t have anything to worry about.