Debate: Smile, you're being watched!
In 2011, the former president of the CNIL, Alex Türk, announced the end of the concept of privacy by 2020. Have we reached that point with the "StopCovid" app?
Florence Rodhain, University of Montpellier
The debate and vote scheduled for today in the National Assembly have sparked outrage among some 500 IT security experts and civil liberties activists, who warn of the potential abuses of such technology.
But beyond the use of such tools, it is the acceptability of widespread control of the population that is at issue. Will history remember Covid-19 as the moment when citizens massively gave up their civil rights for health reasons?
Two levers seem to be used in tandem to exert pressure on the population: fear (Big Brother) and entertainment (Big Mother), since, in psychoanalytic theory, the father or big brother is the one who enforces the law, while the mother is the one who cares for the family in the broadest sense of the term (providing food), but also the one who distracts them.
Towards widespread surveillance
Data surveillance is already, in a way, widespread. Who can still believe that our conversations remain private, regardless of the medium used and the protections invoked?
The lockdown saw a massive download of video conferencing apps such as Zoom and Houseparty. Downloaded millions of times, Zoom is now one of the most downloaded apps in the world. On March 22, 2020 alone, Zoom was downloaded more than 600,000 times. As of March 25, 2020, in France and dozens of other countries, Zoom was the most downloaded free app on smartphones. While Zoom had 10 million users in 2019, it had 200 million in March 2020.
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Zoom is used by many French universities as a platform for online courses and meetings. However, on March 26, 2020, it was revealed that Zoom had sent data about its users to Facebook without their consent, even if they were not Facebook users. Furthermore, neither Zoom nor Houseparty encrypt conversations. In its privacy policy, Houseparty states that it is:
"free to use the content of all communications made through its services, including any ideas, inventions, concepts, or techniques" even for "developing, designing, or selling goods and services."
Suzanne Vergnolle, a doctoral student in law specializing in personal data protection, explains:
"If you are a business, for example, and you plan to exchange confidential information, be aware that Houseparty and Zoom can access your conversations."
Furthermore, it should be noted that these technologies are also used by law enforcement agencies, which recently approved the use of police drones to monitor lockdown compliance. French cities are currently testing facial recognition for security purposes, with Nice leading the way in this area.
Apply "sousveillance"
How can populations be compelled to accept such measures, or at least not to contest them? The aim here is to elicit freely given consent.
Rather than surveillance, we are now talking about the principle of "sousveillance," where individuals are no longer even monitored, but rather discreetly, immaterially, and omnipresently tracked by their digital footprints. In 1984, published in 1949, Orwell does not explain how Big Brother seized power, nor does he shed light on the process by which this society emerged, but he describes it in detail; and in many respects, we have already surpassed certain characteristics of surveillance in this society.
Ben Sutherland/Wikimedia, CC BY-NC-ND
Thus, Orwell did not predict portable telescreens or freely consented submission, but he did warn about the idea of video surveillance (exercising in his book through telescreens, similar to our contemporary connected screens). Nor did he predict that individuals would willingly submit to widespread surveillance via a small portable device that they would also have to pay for.
Big Mother: entertaining to enslave
What Orwell did not predict was the playful aspect attributed to this famous instrument of population control. If digital tools are so widely accepted, it is precisely because of their playful aspect, which distracts and, in this way, lulls their owners into complacency.
This is where we need to bring in another equally famous dystopia: Brave New World by Huxley, and the famous soma, which suppresses any desire to resist. In this novel, citizens were strongly encouraged to use soma, which was officially presented to them as a simple medicine, when in fact it was a synthetic artificial drug that, in high doses, could plunge them into a heavenly sleep.
Today's digital tools seem to combine the soma of Brave New World with the telescreen of 1984.
Currently, teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 spend 6 hours and 40 minutes per day in front of screens for entertainment purposes, excluding educational or serious use. This represents 100 days in a year, or the equivalent of 2.5 school years.
More than 4 out of 10 students feel unable to go without their phone for even a single day.
Digital objects have become an extension of ourselves, a prosthesis. In order to continue using their practical and, above all, entertaining features, individuals are willing to sacrifice a little freedom, as if, when weighing up the benefits and risks, the benefits of using digital tools outweigh the risks of intrusion into privacy.
Pexels, CC BY
Furthermore, digital tools are a real source of distraction, distancing students from knowledge and causing academic difficulties in the classroom. A groundbreaking study we conducted over five years among post-baccalaureate students in France shows that students, with iPads distributed free of charge by higher education institutions, spend an average of 61 minutes of a 90-minute class being distracted (Facebook, video games, entertaining videos, etc.). Only 20% of their use of these tools is related to the class.
Each like received immediately releases a dose of dopamine, which can be clearly seen when observing users under an MRI scanner; this corresponds well with Huxley's famous soma...
Big Brother: Scare to subdue
The term "war" is being invoked by national powers in the fight against COVID-19. Is this a coincidence? War seems to justify behaviors that would be prohibited in peacetime.
Every period of "war" would be a time of risk for individual freedoms: it would be a time of decisions made without consultation, a time of exceptions. But when it comes to digital surveillance, the exception quickly becomes the rule. This has been evident since September 11, 2001.
The most recent example in France is the state of emergency, an exceptional measure normally of short duration dating back to 1955, which was introduced during François Hollande's presidency on the evening of the attacks of November 13, 2015, and has been regularly extended until President Macron passed this emergency law into organic law. This new law contains several new provisions on electronic surveillance, for example, suspects may be required to provide all their usernames, passwords, etc.
On November1, 2017, France officially ended two years of a state of emergency (a historic record), only to find itself under the thumb of anti-terrorism legislation. This legislation has been denounced as "liberticidal" by its opponents and criticized by UN experts.
However, the fear register has received public approval: 57% of French people supported the bill, even though 62% of them believed that the law would "tend to undermine their freedoms."
Already, in the 2011 White Paper on Public Safety, the Department of the Interior highlights the likely resistance of the population to new technologies, which may be considered intrusive. Thus, on page 180, we read:
"[...] the use of nanotechnology combined with geolocation, in particular, is likely to raise concerns about the protection of individual freedoms."
The publication thus recalls that:
"[...] the importance of the perception of 'threat' (whether for terrorist or commercial purposes) can contribute to a more favorable perception of society with regard to the use of new technologies [...]".
Voluntary servitude
Fear of terrorism, fear of disease: this feeling is perpetuated by uncertainty and a constant stream of carefully selected information, even disseminated in popular entertainment. Proof of this can be seen in the success of old Z-grade zombie series and other survivalist productions.
Entertainment, like fear, enables a form of voluntary servitude that also draws on the pleasure of exhibitionist narcissism permitted by social media.
Benjamin Franklin is credited with the following quote: "If you are willing to sacrifice a little freedom to feel secure, you deserve neither."
To which we could add: "If you're willing to sacrifice a little freedom for a little entertainment, you deserve neither."
Florence Rodhain, Senior Lecturer in Information Systems, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.