I’ve realized that by the time someone comes up with a big brother type of government there wont be any resistance to it at all because by that time being monitored and watched 24/7 will be perfectly normal and well have done it to our selves and offspring
I’ve watched commercials for things designed as "security " devices like cameras and monitors that you can watch from your phone and the like which places like time warner do a very good job at marketing to ocd/paranoid types…
One “cute” commercial for it was the lady checked it to see if her dog was ok and seen her 7 or so year old was getting into the cookie jar and she beeped in and told him nu-huh and he dropped the cookie looking around as she smiled
Now they have something called “hum” and the big commercial there showing right now is the mom basically helicopters the kid who just got her drivers licence but having the usb drive like device tattle on every little thing she did wrong … like drive too fast or skip school and go to the beach (well ok that one I’m on the fence on yeah ya shouldn’t but everyone does at least once … )
And don’t even get me started on the fake door bell camera thing where the lady basically lies to the reasonably polite salesman
If you would of even thought of things like this even 10 years ago or earlier people would of been up in arms but now its just a shrug
Years ago I seen a huge thing on the elf on a shelf toy and some was up in arms because it was "training " your kids on getting used to being watched 24/7 and I thought they were nuts but now I’m not entirely sure there wrong …
You are correct. Big brother is coming…but it’s going to take a while.
We already have the ability to easily install “big brother” apps on every cell phone, but so far it hasn’t become widespread.
My guess is that the biggest push will be from cars: when driverless cars become common, they will require big brother -style surveillance. When you call home from work and tell your car to leave the house and come pick you up, you’ll have to have a GPS map showing where the car is at every moment
The car will keep a history of everywhere it’s been.
That’s going to make it difficult to cheat on your spouse.
But automatic cars will be so popular for their convenience, that people will still want them…and , in the process, get used to the idea of being tracked every minute of the day.
A hundred years from now, it will be illegal to go out in public and not have a smartphone with GPS tracker in your pocket.
OP: Big Brother is not a homeowner monitoring inside their own house or checking who is ringing the doorbell (in what universe do I owe it to anyone ringing my doorbell to know where I am and what I’m doing? I will certainly lie if I feel like it, either to avoid being hassled by salespeople or to avoid having thieves break in).
One thing you failed completely to mention are CCTV cameras surveilling public spaces. Mostly these are also installed by private property owners trying to protect their property, but sometimes the recordings are used in criminal investigations. This is not Big Brother either.
Big Brother is when all of these things are installed and enforced by the government. Yes, as chappacula suggested, modern technology is a very likely venue for the application of significant government surveillance, but there are a lot of barriers in the way of that.
Frankly, the things you are complaining about are laughable.
“You are being watched. The government has a secret system, a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror but it sees everything.”
The NSA would go nuts trying to stretch its personnel to monitor all federal, state and city cameras focused on public property. It doesn’t have a prayer of spying on all the home security and baby/pet cams out there.
I’m all for home surveillance. If They’re watching you, watch 'em right back.
well my point mainly was that one day no one will care if the government is watching because “mom used her phone to watch (train) me in the house and the car ect 24/7 and it kept me honest and safe why wouldn’t the authorities want the same with their cameras”
because they’ve been watched since birth and don’t know the difference…
I think most people can tell the difference between a personal surveillance system instituted by their parents to watch them when they were children and a big brother surveillance state system to watch them while they’re adults.
What the whole ‘big brother’ fear mangers/decriers seem to have failed to predict is that we’d all buy and point the cameras ourselves! Post our photos ourselves. And that our real complaint would amount to, not enough people ‘liked’ our post!
No exactly what we were warned about, is it? Much more insidious!
I agree, more or less, with the OP. But some of the “less” is important.
I don’t think it all is a government ‘plan’ to get us used to surveillance. But that would become the result of all the individual steps.
Facebook was not cooked up by the NSA, or the Illuminati, as a step in total surveillance, neither were remotely-accessible home security systems. But “they” may be happy with the widespread acceptance of them. Why bother to force Big Brother “telescreens” into every home, when people will willingly install them themselves? Why bother to force people to give up privacy, when they’ll willing give it up without being asked?
The government will NEVER make it a law that everyone has to carry a GPS-enabled phone at all times. Such a law would never fly. But enough people will do it without being forced that the effect is nearly the same.
I’m part of the problem. Sure, I put a piece of tape over my computer camera, but I know for a fact that the NSA monitors internet traffic, and phone call traffic, yet I still use both and haven’t written a sternly-worded letter to my congressman. I am a sheep. Baah!
For fans of Niven’s Known Space universe, read “Juggler of Worlds”, which is basically some of Niven’s own stories told from the perspective of ARM agent Sigmund Ausfaller. The infection of society by ARM big brother spying is so pervasive, and so believable, that I had to stop reading because it resonated with my natural paranoia so much it scared me. I can see the extension of our world, and the passive acceptance of total surveillance, becoming that world. However, I’m not sure the Earth of Known Space can function WITHOUT BB-ish total surveillance. There’s just too much going on, too many chances for large-scale damage without it. I don’t know what the answer is.
People joke, but seeing you NOT doing stuff is also important. Because with Total Surveillance (tm, all rights reserved (and we’ll know if you abuse those rights!)) they’ll see everybody. Sure, “the system” only cares about the bad guys. But are you sure about individual watchers? Maybe somewhere out there there is an NSA guy who gets off on guys like you. Rule 34 and all that. Are you comfortable with that? Maybe some people, even maybe you, are. I’m not.
Orwell’s Big Brother was a combination of surveillance and and oppressive state. Of these the oppressive state is the far more important. North Korea doesn’t have the CCTV camera’s at every intersection, but they don’t need them to keep their people under their thumb. All they need is a culture of fear and enough people willing to rat out on their neighbors that anyone who expresses a unauthorized idea is likely to disappear.
If we reach the point where our government is misusing its surveillance capabilities to maintain a dictatorship, then any laws we made restricting this surveillance are irrelevant as they can just be ignored by the powers that be.
You haven’t even scratched the surface of the possibilities yet. Here’s Charles Stross on the life-log phenomenon, coming to a civilisation near you, soon.
Big Brother will be everybody. We’ll be watching each other, and the cops, and the politicians, and the criminals, 24/7, and recording it for later use; people just won’t be able to get away with the sort of shit they do now. This will be mostly a good thing.
Of course the real problem is that even if you really had millions of spies nobody can “watch” all those cameras.
The real solution, as David Brin pointed out back in the 90s is that since there’s no way to shut off the surveillance, is to make sure the cameras go both ways. Does Big Brother get to watch yus? Then we get to watch Big Brother watching us.
Ideally, NOBODY would be watching them. They’d just go into a drive somewhere, and they would only be looked at with compelling reason, and a (public, not FISA or some secret Homeland Security court)) court order. They should be protected from random snoops and hackers, as well as from the government.
If such a system existed, it would probably be a good thing. I just don’t trust people.
