The Panopticon Singularity

Author's note

: This essay was originally commissioned by Alex Steffen for the projected 111st issue of WholeEarth Review,which was to focus on the Singularity.Sadly, WER effectively ceased publication with issue 110, and (the shorter, WER-edited version of) this article is not among the content you can find on their website. I'm therefore releasing this draft.I originally wrote this in early 2002. I have not updated the content significantly -- I think it provides a usefulhistorical context -- but have checked and, where necessary, modified the URLs. Where I have made additionsto the text, they are noted.The 18th century utopian philosopher Jeremy Bentham's panopticon was a prison; a circle of cells withwindows facing inwards, towards a tower, wherein jailers could look out and inspect the prisoners at any time,unseen by their subjects.Though originally proposed as a humane experiment in penal reform in 1785, Bentham's idea has eerieresonances today. One of the risks of the technologies that may give rise to a singularity is that they may alsopermit the construction of a Panopticon society -- a police state characterised by omniscient surveillance andmechanical law enforcement.Note that I am

not

using the term "panopticon singularity" in the same sense as Vinge's Singularity (whichdescribes the emergence of strongly superhuman intelligence through either artificial intelligence breakthroughsor progress in augmenting human intelligence), but in a new sense: the emergence of a situation in whichhuman behaviour is deterministically governed by processes outside human control. (To give an example:currently it is illegal to smoke cannabis, but many people do so. After a panopticon singularity, it will not onlybe illegal but impossible.) The development of a panopticon singularity does not preclude the development of aVingean singularity; indeed, one may potentiate (or suppress) the other. I would also like to note that the ideahas been discussed in fictional form by Vinge. Moore's Law states that the price of integrated circuitry falls exponentially over time. The tools of surveillancetoday are based on integrated circuits: unlike the grim secret policemen of the 20th century's totalitarian regimesthey're getting cheaper, so that an intelligence agency with a fixed budget can hope to expand the breadth of itssurveillance rapidly. In the wake of the events of September 11th, 2001, the inevitable calls for something to bedone have segued into criticism of the west's intelligence apparatus: and like all bureaucratic agencies, theirresponse to a failure is to redouble their efforts in the same direction as before. (If at first you don't succeed, tryharder.)It is worth noting that while the effectiveness of human-based surveillance organizations is dependent on thenumber of people involved -- and indeed may grow more slowly than the work force, due to the overheads of coordinating and administering the organization -- systems of mechanised surveillance may well increase inefficiency as a power function of the number of deployed monitoring points. (For example: if you attempt tomonitor a single email server, you can only sample the traffic from those users whose correspondence flowsthrough it, but if you can monitor the mail servers of the largest ISPs you can monitor virtually everythingwithout needing to monitor all the email client systems. Almost all traffic flows between two mail servers, andmost traffic flows through just a few major ISPs at some point.) Moreover, it may be possible to expand anautomated surveillance network indefinitely by simply adding machines, whereas it is difficult to expand ahuman organization beyond a certain point without having knock-on effects on the macroeconomic scale (e.g.by sucking up a significant proportion of the labour force).

Here's a shopping-list of ten technologies for the police state of the next decade, and estimates of when they'llbe available. Of necessity, the emphasis is on the UK -- but it could happen where you live, too: and theprognosis for the next twenty years is much scarier.

Smart camerasAvailability:

today.The UK leads the world in closed circuit surveillance of public places, with over two [

2004: four

]million cameras watching sixty million people. Cameras are cheaper than cops, and act as a forcemultiplier, letting one officer watch dozens of locations. They can see in the dark, too. But today'scameras are limited. The panopticon state will want cheaper cameras: powered by solar panels andnetworked using high-bandwidth wireless technology so that they can be installed easily, small so thatthey're unobtrusive, and equipped with on-board image analysis software. A pilot study in the Londonborough of Lambeth is already using face recognition software running on computers monitoring thecamera network to alert officers when known troublemakers appear on the streets. Tomorrow's smartcameras will ignore boring scenes and focus on locations where suspicious activities are occuring.(Experience suggests that cameras don't reduce crime -- they just move it to places where there's nosurveillance, or displace it into types of crime that aren't readily visible. So the logical response of thecrime-fighting bureaucracy is to install more cameras ...)

Peer to peer surveillance networksAvailability:

1-5 years.Today's camera networks are hard-wired and static. But cameras and wireless technology are alreadyconverging in the shape of smartphones. Soon, surveillance cameras will take on much of themonitoring tasks that today require Police control centres: using gait analysis and face recognition topick up suspects, handing off surveillance between cameras as suspects move around, using othercameras as wireless routers to avoid network congestion and dead zones. The ability to tap into homewebcams, private security cameras, and Neighbourhood Watch schemes will extend coverage out of public spaces and into the private realm. Many British cities already require retail establishments toinstall CCTV: the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2001) gives the Police the right to demandaccess to electronic data -- including camera feeds. Ultimately the panopticon society needs cameras tobe as common as street lights.(Looking on the bright side: London Transport is experimenting with smart cameras that can identifypotential suicides on underground train platforms by their movement patterns, which differ from thoseof commuters. So p2p surveillance cameras will help the trains run on time ...)

Gait analysisAvailability:

now to 5 years.Ever since the first slow-motion film footage, it's been clear that people and animals move their limbs inunique ways -- ways that depend on the relative dimensions of the underlying bone structure. Computerrecognition of human faces has proven to be difficult and unreliable, and it's prone to disguise: it's muchharder to change the length of your legs or the way you walk.

Researchers at Imperial College, London, and elsewhere have been working on using gait analysis as atool for remote biometric identification of individuals,by deriving a unique gait signature from videofootage of their movement.(When gait analysis collides with ubiquitous peer-to-peer smart cameras, expect bank robbers to startwearing long skirts.)

Terahertz radarAvailability:

2-8 years.Very short wavelength radio waves can be tuned to penetrate some solid and semi-solid surfaces (suchas clothing or drywall), and return much higher resolution images than conventional radar. A lot of work is going into domesticating this frequency range, with funding by NIST focussing in particular ondeveloping lightweight short-range radar systems. Terahertz radar can pick up concealed hard objects --such as a gun or a knife worn under outer clothing -- at a range of several metres; when it arrives, it'llprovide the panopticon society's enforcers with something close to Superman's X-ray vision.(If they can see through walls, why bother with a search warrant?)

CelldarAvailability:

3-10 years.Cellphones emit microwave radiation at similar wavelengths to radar systems. Celldar is a passive radarsystem that listens to the signals reflected by cellphone emitters. When a solid object passes between atransmitter and a cellphone it reduces the signal strength at a receiver.Celldar was originally designed as a military system that would use reflected cellphone emissions tolocate aircraft passing above the protected area. However, by correlating signal strength across a widenumber of cellular transceivers (both base stations and phone handsets) in real time it should be possibleto build up a picture of what objects are in the vicinity. Subtract the known locations of buildings, andyou've got a system that can place any inhabited area under radar surveillance -- by telephone. (As Rodney King demonstrated, we can already be tracked by cellphone. Now the panopticon society canplace us under radar surveillance by phone. And as phones exchange data at ever higher bandwidth, thefrequencies will shorten towards the terahertz range. Nude phone calling will take on an entirelydifferent meaning ...)

Ubiquitous RFID 'dust'Availability:

1-5 years.Radio Frequency ID chips are used for tagging commercial produce. Unlike today's simple anti-shoplifting tags in books and CD's, the next generation will be cheap (costing one or two cents each),tiny (sand-grain sized), and smart enough to uniquely identify any individual manufactured product, byserial number as well as type and vendor. They can be embedded in plastic, wood, food, or fabric, andby remotely interrogating the RFID chips in your clothing or posessions the panopticon society'sagencies can tell a lot about you -- like, what you're reading, what you just ate, and maybe where you'vebeen if they get cheap enough to scatter like dust. More insidiously, because each copy of amanufactured item will be uniquely identifiable, they'll be able to tell not only what you're reading, butwhere you bought it. RFID chips are injectable, too, so you won't be able to misplace your identity byaccident.