Anyone here been strip-searched at the airport yet? Mark my words, folks: It's coming soon to a theater near you. Reminds me of when I was really little and I had a cousin who used to bust in without knocking when I was using the bathroom, setting me up for a lifetime of urinary paranoia. At the time, I couldn't have imagined a worse invasion of my privacy. That is, until now.
By now, you've probably heard the news: In response to the near-miss “underwear bomber” scare back on Christmas Day 2009, the body scanning technology that had heretofore been resisted as too invasive is now being installed in airports across the country. As a result, people's naked bodies will be scanned for the viewing pleasure of airport personnel, all in an effort to head off terrorist attempts.
Of course, we are assured that these airport images are only accessible to a single employee who has no personal contact with the passenger being scanned. Of course, we are assured that the images can't be saved, printed or transmitted, and are “instantly deleted”. Of course, we are assured that security personnel in the United States aren't allowed to have cameras or mobile phones or any other device that would enable them to download or otherwise copy the image (which also supposedly blurs out the individual's face and naughty bits). Blah blah blah. Of course! And I don't believe a word of it. Because it stands to reason that if terrorists are forever able to come up with new ways to beat the security system, then sooner or later airport personnel making minimum wage will come up with a way to beat the "safeguards" in that system.
One way or another, you can be certain that immaturity will ALWAYS find a way and that sooner or later there will be wholesale distribution of naked body images among airport employees for the purposes of derision or titillation (no pun intended) or profit. Remember where you heard it when the inevitable loophole rears its ugly head and we're all left scratching our collective heads and wondering what went wrong.
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm right there in lockstep with the majority of the flying public in my willingness to compromise my privacy ideals in order to feel a little safer. But this whole “react-after-the-fact” approach just smacks of too little too late, perhaps appeasing the masses but really just plugging yet another hole in security that will no doubt ultimately be replaced by something else.
And to make matters worse, there is skepticism about whether these scanners even work for their intended purpose. (Though it's hard to be certain, since no network news reporter worth his or her salt is willingly going to submit to the scan and have their naked images broadcast before the nation just to see if and how the thing works.)
Given all this, it's amazing to me that there has been surprisingly little uproar over this latest assault on the dignity of the flying public. Just a year or two ago, this drastic step would have been all but unthinkable. But it now seems that people will agree to just about anything in order to feel safe.
I find myself wondering how this happened and how we got to this place of virtual transparency in our lives and beings. The primary answer, of course, is and always will be 9/11. As with so many areas of our lives, 9/11 changed everything about how we think about individual privacy and its place in our hierarchy of erstwhile non-negotiables. At the nation's airports, at the very least, privacy's place in that hierarchy has become practically subterranean.
Now, I don't think that 9/11 was the first time that privacy took a back seat to safety concerns on a widespread basis; but I do believe that 9/11 and its aftermath of fear, mistrust and anxiety made such invasiveness a little harder for us all to resist.
But fear has become only one of many motivating factors. For some time now, the imperative of safety against terrorism has been inexorably morphing and expanding into everything from the dating world to plain old civilian eavesdropping, in some cases for no better motivation than to satisfy our thirst for convenience or our idle curiosity. And with each instance of the chipping away of the privacy wall around us, it becomes that much easier to submit to it in all areas of our lives.
FAME AND MISFORTUNE: OR, CAN I HAVE MY FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME BACK?
Jacqueline Kennedy once famously remarked that “[i]t's really frightening to lose your anonymity at 31”. Nowadays, I'm thinking that if you've reached the age of 31 and have any semblance of anonymity or personal space, then you are a rarity indeed.
It used to be that privacy was the one glaring advantage that “average” people had over the rich and famous. While celebrities and politicians served as the lightning rods of attention, drawing the stares of idle curiosity away from the rest of us, we “non-famous” were free to sin in private, going about our daily toils and troubles away from the prying eyes of complete strangers. It was almost as if the famous were the “sin-eaters” for all of us, having traded in the sanctity of self for celebrity and status.
But that's all changed, especially in the past ten years or so. Willingly or not, we've all become celebrities, casualties of the electronic culture wars. With the explosion on the scene of camera phones, intrusive reality shows featuring Mr. and Mrs. Nobody, and assorted ever-more-amazing technological advances that allow us to spy on one another to our heart's content, each of us plays a starring role in the secret lives of strangers. As a result, we are subjected to the same lack of psychological and personal “space” as traditional stars, but without any of the perks that go with fame.
And it's all too easy to become desensitized to it, until of course we're victimized by it, as happens all too often when we entrust our personal thoughts and personal information to technology that is supposed to enhance our lives but which all too often endangers our dignity instead.
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS FRENEMIES?
I'm sure by now we're all familiar with the well-documented dangers of the World Wide Web so I won't rehash them here. Still, whatever lessons we may have learned from privacy disasters like the AOL search data leak from 2006, it's apparent that those lessons remain secondary to the ongoing lure of the Internet itself. Because despite such wake-up calls, people still go online with impunity and make search queries by the millions (myself included). But as long as such data is stored intact by providers such as AOL, Microsoft or Google, it's vulnerable to disclosure, whether through subpoena, data breach, or just plain human error. You see, when it comes to your online activity, your private thoughts are never really your own.
But it doesn't necessarily take a massive data leak by a faceless corporation to expose you, body and soul. While we've long been conditioned to focus on “Big Brother” types of privacy violations, we might do better to worry about our neighbors and fellow citizens on the street. After all, it's worth noting that the aforementioned leaked search data was the same type of information that the Department of Justice had tried (unsuccessfully) to subpoena for anti-terrorism purposes shortly before the leak, but it was our fellow denizens in cyberspace who did the real dirty work by downloading the data for their own nefarious purposes. Suffice to say that without much effort (and even less compunction), people can find out just about anything about you, and they're doing so by the millions:
Background checking services that used to be reserved primarily for government offices and corporate environments are now offered to those looking for information about prospective dates, baby sitters and neighbors. A hearing device currently advertised on television allows you to eavesdrop on the private conversations of unsuspecting others. (And the accompanying visual of the hearing aid wearer grinning away as she listens in on the conversations of her neighbors from a distance is just plain creepy (not to mention pathetic).)
And these days, there's probably no greater threat to your physical privacy than the camera phone and digital camera. Flickr, an online photo-sharing site, contains thousands of photos of people who are obviously total strangers to the photographer and who just as obviously gave no permission for their images to be posted online. (That is, unless you're of the opinion that the chunky young woman with the low-riding jeans who was photographed from behind as she lifted herself out of her seat at a baseball stadium was A-OK with having her butt-crack exposed to millions of Internet voyeurs?)
Yet these photos, which often include derogatory and derisive comments, are available for unlimited viewing as well as download and broad distribution via a creative commons license. Think about that the next time you're out in public and otherwise minding your own business (or anyone else's). Oh, and for God's sake, pull your jeans up!
But even digital cameras can't compete with the mayhem to be wrought by a fool with a smart phone that has the latest bells and whistles. Google Goggles, for instance, allows smart-phone users to photograph an object and use that photo to conduct a real-time information search on Google. Sounds pretty cool and convenient, until you stop to realize that this application also has facial recognition capabilities. What this means is that the potential exists for photographing a stranger on the street and searching for information about them through the Internet with the push of a button (letting your fingers do the stalking, as it were).
For now, Google is blocking these facial recognition features until they can gauge consumer reaction to “possible” privacy concerns, but I'm a little unclear as to why Google finds it necessary to conduct a survey on the matter (though I suppose I should be grateful that it even occurs to them). It shouldn't matter how many of Google's clientele object to facial recognition features due to privacy concerns. All that should matter is that anybody objects, because it seems to me that millions of Google users can't diminish a single individual's right to be left alone. Call me a sentimental fool and a loose constructionist, but that's the way I see it.
And those who would disagree would do well to remember that electronic surveillance works both ways: Google's “G1” mobile phone is one such device that provides Google with access to the user's Web-search history. And all of this data, along with the user's email, contact lists, geographical location, instant messages, personal calendar and video downloading, belongs to Google for as long as their retention policy dictates. Meanwhile, other mobile phones enable third parties to track the phone user's movements through cell-phone towers and GPS (though the same thing could've been accomplished with a dog collar and a microchip).
Karma, thy name is Bitch ("Miss Jackson" if you're nasty).
IN CONCLUSION
When I think of all the technological advances of the past few years that have gone to market before thorough consideration for the consequences, I can't help but wonder where it ultimately will end, and at what point we will finally reach the angle of repose on this all-too-slippery slope.
I'm reminded of that scene from “Jurassic Park” where the dinosaurs have run amok (all too predictably) and the character played by Jeff Goldblum tells the Richard Attenborough character that “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.” They never do, Jeff. They never do.
Which is why the next time you find yourself in the airport security line, you'd better pray that you're wearing clean underwear.
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