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How much do we really want
people to obey laws?
The question hasn't
mattered greatly in the past since there was often no way to enforce
laws beyond a certain point. You could enforce speeding laws in front of
a school with nearly perfect effectiveness, and you could occasionally
catch people speeding on rural roads. Yet compliance was largely
discretionary. The lack of inescapable surveillance meant that at three
a.m. on the Interstate, a driver could crank it up to eighty-five and be
left alone. Obedience was not exactly optional, but at times when
obedience didn't really matter you didn't really have to obey.
The rapid increase in
surveillance of everybody and everything is taking, or so it seems to
me, a new and unwholesome turn. We move toward a world in which many
laws can be enforced strictly and unfailingly, everywhere and at all
times. To continue the example of speeding, the technology exists now to
catch every hypervelocitous driver whatsoever on any road we choose. It
could be done in several ways. For example, there exist little
transponders called radio-frequency identification devices (RFIDs) that
transmit a serial number when they pass by a reader. They are about the
size of a grain of rice, cost a few cents, and don't need batteries.
Requiring them on cars (they're just like license plates, the argument
will run) would allow readers along roads to calculate the speed of
every car. Easy.
This isn't a column about
the technology itself, so for the moment let's stipulate that the
combination of data bases, cameras, networks, and so on can, or could if
put to the use, make it impossible to break large categories of laws
without being caught. I'm not making this up. I follow the technology
closely in my guise as a tech columnist for the Washington Times.
The level of surveillance I'm talking about is absolutely possible,
right now, and is being put in place in bits and pieces. What would be
the pros and cons?
Certain kinds of major
crime could be eliminated almost completely. Theft of automobiles would
become exceedingly difficult if readers on street corners, perhaps built
into stoplights, checked every passing car against a list of stolen
vehicles. The idea is appealing. Few of us favor having our cars
expropriated.
But it's the little laws
that are worrisome. Today we have cameras that photograph the license
plates of cars that run stoplights. Nobody seems to like them except the
governments that get the revenue from fines. The same technology could
catch people who roll stop signs. Speeding, walking on the grass,
urinating in a dark alley could all be automated out of existence. Do we
want to live in a world in which we really have to obey all the laws all
the time?
A problem with strict
enforcement of laws by unlimited surveillance is that it will inevitably
be misused. For example, the British have cameras that automatically
read the license plates of every car passing on a highway. (This is not
particularly high technology.) At first the purpose was said to be the
detection of serious crimes, such as car theft. Other possible uses were
soon put forward: Finding people who hadn't paid their insurance, or who
had outstanding tickets, or who owed wife-support. What starts with a
noble purpose soon becomes a means of nannying everyone.
Automated surveillance
goes beyond what most people think of as surveillance. Recently a fellow
in England came up with software called ChatNannies. Its intended
purpose is the apprehension of pedophiles, which few will dare oppose.
It is truly clever. It automatically logs on to large numbers of chat
rooms on the Internet and proceeds to "chat" like a real
child. ("Hey, you see Lord
of the Rings?") It knows kid culture and convincingly
simulates being a child. When someone begins to respond, it analyses the
responses trying to determine whether the chatter is a pedophile trying
to ensnare a kid.
Am I alone in thinking
that the idea is both eerie and disturbing? Children in thousands of
kid-chat rooms will have to wonder whether they are talking to another
kid or to the government. Inevitably the technology will be used for
other and less agreeable things. Mr. Bush and his War on Terrorism come
to mind. While fooling adults would be harder than fooling children, the
telegraphic nature of conversation in chat rooms makes it not all that
difficult.
You chat with what you
believe to be a person about the chemistry of nerve gas. (Why not? The
subject is interesting and the chemistry well known.) A remote computer
flags you as a possible terrorist. You don't know that it has happened,
any more than you know when the government is screening your email.
 The
scope for automated control of behavior is great. Toyota recently
unveiled a car that requires you to insert your driver's license to
start it. It then checks your driving record and if, for example, you
have a record for speeding, it limits the horsepower that the engine
will deliver. (Toyota says it has no plans to put this atrocity into
production. Then why build the demonstrator?)
Maybe it's just me, but
I'd rather live in a world with less enforcement of laws and more
freedom to choose. Years back, this worked. In a society in which
reasonable responsibility was culturally mandated, people took laws as
guidelines. There were far fewer laws in the first place. The United
States is now a country in which personal responsibility is attacked as
elitist and electronic control of behavior seems set to become a
substitute.
 The
Watchful State isn't really here in force yet, but it is aborning. All
the pieces exist. We may find that laws that made sense when they
weren't enforced very well become a smothering blanket when backed up by
mindless software with police powers. A nation with no slop in the legal
gears will be, I suspect, a nation of robots.
March 25, 2004
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