Attitudes Toward Surveillance in American Society: Interpretations and Prescriptions

Current State of Surveillance

Nearly everything we do today is capable of being converted into a data point for some third-party to collect and sell to downstream consumers of metadata for various purposes. To these purchasers, humans can be reduced to the collection of data points created by their virtual actions. But it’s not just data produced from virtual action, our movement through the physical world is also tracked to a significant degree. In 2020, there were already approximately 70 million surveillance cameras in the US and from 2020 to 2021, it was estimated that an additional 15 million would be installed, with schools, malls, and offices being important for this growth.https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-billion-surveillance-cameras-forecast-to-be-watching-within-two-years-11575565402?mod=hp_listb_pos1. Perhaps even more insidious is the fact that even within our homes, in which Americans have a long-held constitutional right to privacy, we are not shielded from virtual or physical tracking, as our cherished smartphones and Wi-Fi give away our every move.https://www.fastcompany.com/90772483/yes-you-are-being-watched-even-if-no-one-is-looking-for-you

American’s Attitudes Towards the Current State of Surveillance

The United States is home to a diverse population, but people’s opinions regarding this omnipresent surveillance are remarkably consistent. To demonstrate this, let’s look at a Pew Research Center survey, in which “93% of adults say that being in control of who can get information about them is important” and that “90% says that controlling what information is collected about them is important.”https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/05/20/americans-attitudes-about-privacy-security-and-surveillance/ And a large majority of respondents expressed a lack of confidence in the ability of government agencies, landline telephone companies, credit card companies, search engine providers, and many other collectors of human data to keep their information private and secure._Id._ What is quite notable, however, is the fact that 91% of respondents, despite their strong views, “had not made any changes in their internet or cell phone use to avoid having their activities tracked or noticed” – we will return to this result._Id._

Why Surveillance Should Exist in Some Form

On the other end of this argument is the valid interest to have some baseline level of monitoring and data collection that would serve important public interests, but without reaching the level of an unwarranted privacy invasion. For example, people might want cameras in public places as a means of deterring crime. And others might want the data collection capabilities of their smartphones and smartwatches to track their locations if they are lost or missing, as well as measure their heart rates and other vital signs. To this effect, a survey conducted found that a small majority believed that security cameras reduce crimehttps://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/june_2019/americans_feel_safer_with_public_cameras_but_some_say_they_re_too_nosy – this indicates that this is not a fringe belief, whether it is accurate or not. Too little information gathering means we risk being uninformed and unprepared in important situations, and too much information gathering means we risk having our private activities and proclivities exposed in public spheres and repudiating any privacy that our Constitution protects.

Demographic Changes Mean Urgent Action is Needed

One of the alarming findings of these surveys is that younger generations, primarily Gen Z, are more accepting of the perpetual state of surveillance. “Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to 1984-style in-home government surveillance cameras. 3 in 10 (29 percent) Americans under 30 favor ‘the government installing surveillance cameras in every household’ in order to ‘reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.’ Support declines with age, dropping to 20 percent among 30-44 year olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45.”https://www.cato.org/blog/nearly-third-gen-z-favors-home-government-surveillance-cameras-1 One likely and logical reason for this is the fact that younger generations have grown up with ubiquitous surveillance as the default way of life and, perhaps as a result, have been conditioned to accept it. If this is the case, it seems that the fight against constant and ever-increasing surveillance must be accelerated while generations who have not lived with this as the norm are alive and capable of fighting for an alternative.

What Should Be Done

There must be a seismic recalibration in the way that information about people is currently gathered and how that information is treated afterwards. It seems that one of the most important modifications to the current system would be to bifurcate the practice of data collection into two categories, collection that is either (i) essential for the public health and safety or (ii) for any other purpose. Data collection and tracking for business purposes rather than collection for non-pretextual health and safety purposes should be regulated under completely different rubrics.

The first category would serve the purpose of preventing and responding to crime, natural disasters, and any other reason that would be primarily for the health and safety of the public. The ability of the government to collect data for public health and safety must be hawkishly monitored and limited to avoid infringement of people’s constitutional right to privacy. For example, we can draw from ACLU v. Clapper (2015), in which the court wrote that “such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans. Perhaps such a contraction is required by national security needs in the face of the dangers of contemporary domestic and international terrorism. But we would expect such a momentous decision to be preceded by substantial debate, and expressed in unmistakable language.”https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/05/20/americans-attitudes-about-privacy-security-and-surveillance/ quoting pg. 74 of ACLU v. Clapper (2015)

This possibility of data collection, however, should not exist for private companies. As Shoshana Zuboff laid out in her article, lawmakers should “interrupt and outlaw surveillance capitalism’s data supplies and revenue flows. This means, at the front end, outlawing the secret theft of private experience. At the back end, we can disrupt revenues by outlawing markets that trade in human futures . . .”https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/02/facebook-google-data-change-our-behaviour-democracy