THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM: POLITICS & TECHNOLOGY

...In an environment free of repressive political tendencies, we would hope to see them yield all sorts of humane, democratizing, life-giving applications...

...In this view, technologies that seem merely to permit manipulation and repression 201 ultimately demand these things...

...The total number of these inquiries is not known, but in one survey 22 banks reported responding to an average of 500 requests per year...

...3 The best known exponent of this position is Jacques Ellul...

...Subscribers could then indicate in advance what news, features, and ads they were prepared to read, and the material so selected could be displayed on their TV screens...

...Will the technologies further the persecution of political "unreliables" or serve some more humane ends...

...Where no action is taken at the time of entry, a record of the traveler's name, date and place of arrival is retained in the computer memory for six months...

...It is not in the technology per se but in the social and political system in which that technology is embedded.' True enough...

...Using these terminals, one would be able to make deposits to or debits from one's account without going near the bank...

...Mass production will probably bring big reductions in the costs of these technologies, while ordinary mail is becoming costlier and slower all the time...

...Sponsorship, then, is the key to the role of information technologies in shaping human freedom...

...204 One application of these techniques has now made it possible for federal officials to check anyone entering this country from abroad against elaborate computerized federal records...

...One of the main thrusts of repression in the Nixon era, after all, was the use of federal data files and investigatory capabilities to disrupt and harass those defined as political enemies...

...Yet strangely enough, he does not...

...When we "consume" a hefty New York Times or Washington Post, we in effect rummage through these bundles, discarding most of their contents and using only a few nuggets of information that particularly interest us...

...as a result, many banks are investing vast amounts in "electronic 202 funds transfer systems" for consumer payments...

...Often the applications in question are for purposes hardly anyone could dispute...

...But the technological side of Orwell's prophecies is much closer to fulfillment Since he wrote, new technologies—especially those involving electronics and computing—have made concretely possible many forms of intrusion and control that figure as science fiction fantasy in 1984.1 Often these new capabilities have been developed simply as solutions to routine bureaucratic problems...

...206...

...It is increasingly cheaper to commit information to electronic storage, to manipulate that information electronically, and to transmit information to people electronically than it is to move the people themselves, or to move data about on paper...

...Thus I believe that we have a great deal to worry about in the growth of the new information technologies, even when there is nothing overtly political about their initial form...

...Electronic mail would make such activities much cheaper—and probably also easier to conceal...

...There are now plans to computerize the daily reports written by every FBI investigator, including the reported associates of persons under investigation...

...The new social realities emerging from these capabilities promise to combine the personal attention to individual affairs that was previously exercised by the community or extended family with the scale of coverage possible before only in mass communications...

...Politically, the Western democracies have thus far fared better than Orwell feared they might...

...Thus one would pay one's bill at a restaurant by having the cashier tap instructions into a terminal debiting one's account for the amount of the meal, and crediting that of the restaurant...

...Thus the enormous attractions of substituting electronic processes for human labor and for the movement of things and people...

...But with the costs of newsprint and transport rising, publishers are feeling pressure to disaggregate these "bundles" and eliminate waste by sending readers only the informational elements they are most likely to read...

...Computerization, however, is now streamlining the collection, storage, and above all transmission and use of personal dossiers...

...Notes 1 See David Goodman, "Countdown to 1984," in the Futurist, December 1978...

...He acknowledges the totalitarian potential of the new technologies as follows: the new revolution in communications makes possible both an intense degree of centralization of power, if the society decides to use it in that way, and large decentralization because of the multiplicity, diversity, and cheapness of the modes of communication.' But he declines to question which of these possibilities are most likely to be served: Real as these issues are for liberty...

...7 See David Flaherty, Privacy in Colonial New England (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1972...

...Like in-person investigation of microfilmed checks, however, mail openings and mail covers are a labor-intensive business...

...Some cable TV providers have already instituted systems allowing for considerable flexibility in program selection by viewers...

...No position that ignores these questions deserves to be taken seriously...

...The writer who has come closest to confronting it is Daniel Bell—whose studies stress the centrality of information in shaping the world of the future...

...Mail MOVING letters and packages is a labor- and energy-intensive business, much like the processing of personal checks and other financial documents...

...But it seems peculiar to let matters go with this sort of intellectual shrug...

...Information systems—like any other technology— always serve some particular purpose...

...They are the same ones that have been shaping similar systems in the recent past...

...As a recipient of mass communications, one can at least ignore a propagandistic media event or thumb one's nose at the president's televised news conference...

...The question is, who is going to monitor the personal information generated by these systems...

...Today in the United States all personal checks are microfilmed and the copies retained for at least five years by the institution holding the account...

...Most of the arrests made through TECS are of persons listed in the National Crime Information Center—the FBI's computerized roster of persons wanted for arrest throughout the United States...

...If state and private organizations must deal with individuals, it might be argued, more and better information can only help them do their jobs better...

...111 The new electronic technologies promise a change as fundamental as the rise of mass communications—and with political implications no less fundamental...

...This is not a matter of speculation, but a straightforward reading of the recent historical record...

...The processing of paper-based instruments is relatively energy- and labor-intensive...

...As more and more families in America come to have home computers or computer terminals—perhaps using their television screens as display units—the nature of information exchange between ordinary private citizens and large organizations will alter profoundly...

...Under repressive political climates—which recur with regularity in American life—the uses of personal data themselves become repressive...

...national— is of interest to any of a variety of federal agencies...

...Not only the Internal Revenue Service but also a wide variety of federal, state, and local agencies enjoy ready access to these personal records, often without subpoena and indeed without the individual's knowledge...

...Electronic Dossiers THE GROWTH of systematic record-keeping on individuals has been a feature of "advanced" social systems for much longer than have the new electronic technologies...

...In 1978 this system—TECS or the Treasury Enforcement Communications System—checked more than 7 million entering persons and made more than 21,000 identifications of persons of interest, leading to more than 2,000 arrests...

...The same technologies that could sustain totalitarianism and facilitate intrusive surveillance could equally well support new democratic forms...

...But what is that significance...

...Electronic Payments PROBABLY EVERYONE has noticed that all but the smallest organizations now maintain financial accounts by computer...

...2 Anyone who imagines this position too simplistic to attract serious exponents should note some very similar arguments by Ithiel Pool for scholarly support for the CIA: "On the Necessity for Social Scientists Doing Research for Governments," in I. L. Horowitz, ed., The Rise and Fall of Project Camelot (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967...

...Instead of mass communications—uniform messages directed wholesale to very large populations—we are moving into an age of individualized exchanges between central institutions and large publics...

...Since the turn of this century, large organizations—both governmental and private—have increasingly developed written dossiers on members of the general public, and used the records as bases for organizational action against these individuals...

...Which possibilities will be realized can hardly be understood by considering technology alone...

...That record provides central powers with opportunities for deeper and more powerful penetration into individuals' private affairs...

...By making the collection of and access to private persons' account data cheaper and more efficient for themselves, financial institutions will also have made monitoring of individuals' lives easier for state agencies...

...Data banks on people now streamline the provision of credit or the collection of taxes...

...For that, we have a right to be grateful...

...As home terminals become common, the proper electronic "net" could make it possible to tap out a letter in one's own study and have it transmitted instantly to any address served by another terminal...

...But the application of these technologies will most likely be dominated by the same interests prevailing thus far...

...The political forces likely to shape these developments are not mysterious matters, beyond speculation...

...But these changes are minor compared to what could be accomplished if paper were dispensed with altogether, and informational "products" delivered directly to people's living room via computer...

...Those who take this rather pessimistic view disparage the idea that technologies can ever be "mere instruments" in human hands.' But this argument, suggestive in many contexts, seems to me at its weakest when applied to information technologies...

...But these new informational relations will bring demands for access and monitoring by agencies of the state...

...Indeed, not just messages but also organizational action—ranging from the provision of health insurance to political surveillance—can be allocated to individuals in light of the precise detail of what their individual "cases" warrant...

...Daniel Bell notwithstanding, there is 205 nothing obscure about how these interests are liable to shape the treatment of the new riches of personal data...

...Goodman claims that the majority of the technological innovations described in 1984 have already been developed...

...There would certainly be no technological barrier to direct state monitoring of the choices of each user, much as the use of a mail or payment network might be monitored...

...Some multinational corporations are already using systems of this kind, which can also transmit copies of documentary material...

...The names of these persons could then be checked against the computerized listing of wanted individuals— or monitored by FBI staff for any other purpose they deemed fit...

...At present, roughly two-thirds of all incoming travelers have their identities checked against this central file...

...Whatever interests had access to the "net" through which electronic mail was transmitted could readily monitor communications going to and from any particular address...

...It is true, I have argued, that nothing about these technologies in themselves marks them for repressive use...

...11 In an inflationary world, computing is one major organizational activity whose cost is dropping...

...Given this bent, and given his background as a political sociologist, one would expect Bell to have much to say about the interests most likely to be served in the development of these technologies...

...The recent record of the FBI and other federal "law-enforcement" agencies hardly warrants full confidence...

...8 See James Rule, Douglas McAdam, Linda Stearns, and David Uglow, The Politics of Privacy (New York: New American Library, 1980...

...The nature of this interest may run from that of an agency, which simply wants to be kept informed of someone's movements, to that of a local, state, or federal law-enforcement body seeking that person's arrest...

...For the most routine and indeed often praiseworthy ends, technologies are being developed that concentrate information on people's lives, and make it accessible to those who control the technologies...

...And if state authorities are willing to go to the trouble of harassing subscribers to periodicals of a particular slant—as they indeed have been in our recent history—will they resist the more tempting possibilities of such systems...

...New applications of computing, for example, perhaps in conjunction with closed-circuit television, could make possible exchanges of views and information on public issues through "town meetings" for which the participants need never leave home.' Other applications of home computing could enable people to inform themselves about the activities of their governments and other powerful institutions, at minimal cost...

...In the new computerized communications, the recipient will leave an electronic record of his interactions with the system...

...The computerized inquiry in effect determines whether the traveler— who may be foreign or a U.S...

...The sponsors of such innovations have shrewdly softpedaled their larger social significance, presenting them simply as new ways of doing things that have long been accepted...

...The quick checking of names against this list has made it possible to identify all sorts of persons who would otherwise pass through the net of law-enforcement attention too rapidly to be apprehended...

...Clearly this portrayal has nothing to recommend it, other than as a public-relations device...

...Another application of the technology will be the use of terminals in retail establishments for effecting payments for goods and services...

...In the past, the labor-intensive requirements of dealing with paper-based records have posed a check on their use—both for routine bureaucratic purposes and others...

...Large financial institutions now make payments and debits to and from one another's accounts through the electronic media—using paper, if at all, merely to confirm the electronic reality...

...Thus the impetus to electronic mail...

...Orwell's fears notwithstanding, the West has not given up democratic institutions...

...What he did not consider was the possibility that the development of the intrusive technologies would occur on its own, without the spur of totalitarian intent...

...This listing is accessible through the TECS files and is available to other law-enforcement personnel in America...

...The great majority of such investigations under present conditions arise from routine law-enforcement concerns, including tax evasion and other crimes...

...If these changes come about—they are already being experimented with on a large scale—electronic terminals linked to banks and other account-holding institutions could be placed everywhere...

...Perhaps the most glib and also the least convincing response to these questions is that the new information technologies can only help create a more efficient, more "rational" social world...

...Patterns of personal information consumption tell a great deal about people's political attitudes and interests...

...This fine discrimination in organizational action and communication stems from the ability to collect and store vast amounts of data on individuals, and to use such data quickly and efficiently in decision-making...

...During one two-year period in the 1960s, some 24,000 Americans were sub203 jected to such surveillance—a practice, incidentally, that is not illegal...

...Fingerprint and voiceprint identification have been developed as adjuncts to established crime-control programs...

...We would be better off not to write that check, even if this means renouncing some of the unquestionable benefits of the new technologies...

...News and Home Data Services AS TONY SMITH HAS SHOWN in his fascinating book Goodbye Gutenberg, modern newspapers have thrived by becoming large, heterogeneous "bundles" of information...

...Are these purposes liable to favor freedom and democracy or to hinder them...

...These demands will grow directly out of similar demands apparent in the working of information systems already in existence...

...This central question has not received the attention it should...

...And the control of information on individuals, in a political environment like our own, inevitably means influence over their lives...

...8 These record systems are more and more widely computerized...

...But the prospect of replacing conventional mail service with a computerized electronic net should raise deep political concerns...

...Thanks to the new information technologies, organizations can now send and receive specific, tailor-made communications to and from specific individuals on a very large scale...

...6 Ibid...

...This process has already begun, in the creation of special editions for special subsets of readership—suburban editions of newspapers, and "businessmen's" or other special editions of certain national magazines...

...Civil rights and liberties, though under constant pressure, continue to safeguard significant diversities of opinion...

...An interlocking net of computer lines could potentially link every terminal with every accountholding organization—including not only banks but also savings and loan companies, credit-card firms, and credit unions...

...4 Various sociologists, including Amitai Etzioni, Roxanne Hiltz, and Kenneth Laudon, have recently been exploring this possibility...

...Representative processes still funnel meaningful pressure from the grass roots to the power centers of these societies...

...Orwell foresaw—and made unforgettable— a world in which ruthless political interests mobilized intrusive technologies for totalitarian ends...

...The "log" of a person's financial transactions may be located by searching the computerized net and examined by simply printing out the record of a particular account...

...Indeed, the new technologies would threaten to erase the distinction between "mail covers" and actual opening of communications, since access to the "inside" of an electronic letter would presumably be no more difficult than access to the address...

...Going through microfilm records of all of a person's financial affairs can tie up an agent's time for days or weeks...

...As people's informational requirements are identified with more and more exactitude, the "waste" of untargeted journalism and broadcasting would decrease in favor of what some have called "narrowcasting...

...The possibilities of the new technologies are endless, and often antipathetic to one another in political implication...

...What social forces, what concrete interests are most likely to dominate the growth of these new electronic tools...

...If such records become computerized, however, this constraint will be much relaxed...

...Mailgram service, in which messages are electronically relayed to the recipient's nearest post office and delivered in the next day's regular mail, represents the beginning of this trend...

...But under oppressive political conditions, as during the Nixon years, such investigations can and do also serve as a vehicle for political harassment...

...further improvement should raise this level...

...But in the long run, dare we assume that these sophisticated capabilities will not be used for the harassment of political dissidents, for tracking political enemies, or identifying and discrediting opponents of the state...

...Some supermarkets have already initiated "electronic tellers," which effect deposits to and withdrawals from customers' accounts from a special cashier in the store...

...This is the response to federal requirements aimed at making persons' financial affairs accessible to investigative agencies...

...What attitude should we take to the headlong growth of technologies full of manipulative potential, yet not immediately mobilized for political purposes...

...Unions representing postal workers have already begun to register alarm at the massive displacement of labor that would result...

...Since Orwell, it has become impossible to speculate on the future of freedom without considering the role of freedom-destroying technologies...

...Perhaps the most provocative element of that vision is the prospect of using sophisticated technologies of intrusion and manipulation to consolidate totalitarian power...

...We see new evidence of imaginative uses of similar capacities all the time—for instance, in the cross-checking of welfare roles against computerized payrolls...

...Up-to-date, pertinent information can only save money and heighten bureaucratic efficiency, thereby making any human system more humane.' The faultiness of such a thoroughgoing technocratic line, in this extreme form, is transparent...

...Thus private individuals' tendency to rely on checks and other paper instruments for their transactions now represents a costly archaism...

...The accumulation of such records represents a blank check to the political intentions of those who can control the systems...

...But computerization does no more than intensify a central fact of life in the modern world—that one's record matters enormously in one's dealings with all sorts of powerful institutions...

...The main check on such investigations today is that they are extremely expensive...

...Such a position has at most the virtue of a certain primitive consistency...

...It is difficult to imagine any home information system as those envisaged above that could avoid creating a "log" of the informational choices of the users— if only as a by-product of the billing process...

...A key feature of the new, computerized systems is their ability to produce very rapid responses to requests for information and to make what would otherwise be enormously laborious cross-checks at minimal delay and cost...

...If precedent is any guide, state interests will not neglect these opportunities...

...they are not the true locus of the problem...

...This is what is happening...

...But who will be able to monitor the use of such services...

...Another approach is to consider the social intents served by the new technologies as somehow constrained by the logic of the technology itself...

...5 Daniel Bell, "Communications Technology—For Better or for Worse," Harvard Business Review, May– June 1979, p. 36...

...Ever since colonial times in America, authoritarian political climates have led to state monitoring of the mail's contents.' Even when mail is not actually opened, it has been subjected to "mail covers," in which the frequency and origins of correspondence to a particular person is systematically recorded...

...The new information technologies, especially those applied to information about people, are full of political and social significance...