IN George Orwell’s 1984, the protagonist Winston carefully keeps his back to the telescreen in his living room, to stay out of detection for fear of certain punishment, as he begins writing in his diary. Fear of the “Big Brother” watching is not anything new, but for this generation living in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the dystopian masterpiece may make one feel an eerie sense of familiarity and foreboding.
The rapid development of new technologies could enable, or already is enabling, a totalitarian-style surveillance and control to silently creep into our everyday life.
Recent developments in disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics, and quantum computing have symbolised the advent of what many have referred to as the 4IR. Presage of an ongoing global societal reorganisation, the 4IR and its actors are paving an uncertain path on the impact of technology and how it will affect our lives in the years to come.
On the one hand, 4IR will make our lives easier. New technological breakthroughs could be synonymous with better-designed strategies to tackle climate change or medical treatments for diseases like cancer.
On the other hand, 4IR sparks an ethical debate on the risk of how modern technologies by states, companies, and individuals impacts people’s privacy and freedom. Increasing use of surveillance technology, progress in big data analytics, machine-learning and deep-learning (in terms of image and voice recognition), have enhanced the capacities of states and corporations to profile individuals.
Through the Internet of Things (IoT) and the way people use online platforms such as cloud services and social networks, data are collected and turned into antecedents by states and companies. States through collecting data on their citizens can better localise and predict risks to social stability, such as terrorist threats, tax frauds, and more.
In June 2014, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced that it wanted to implement an experimental “Social Credit System” (SCS), ranking Chinese citizens based on their level of trustworthiness. To do so, the government, with the support of eight private companies, aimed at collecting data on its citizens’ daily activities.
As such, Chinese citizens are to receive a score between 350 (worst score) and 950 (best score) depending on their expenditures, the people they associate with, their political stance, or even whether they jaywalk in the streets. Based on these scores, people are rewarded or punished, as the scores will determine their chances to get into universities, get a job, or even apply for a loan.
Democratic countries like the United States and the United Kingdom have also made the most of surveillance technology, but have been less transparent about it, as suggested by the Snowden affair. In May 2013, the affair shed light on the secret Prism operation involving American and British intelligence.
Tapping into the database of Internet giants such as Microsoft, Facebook or Google, the US and the UK gathered the personal information of millions across the globe. This sounded an alarm which prompted people to think about the risk involved when states and companies collect data on the most private parts of their lives.
Meanwhile, in Japan, in preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, the Abe administration had approved in March 2017 a controversial legislation which makes it easier to arrest individuals on the basis of plotting and committing one of 277 crimes. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has defended the revised bill in the light of increasing terrorist threats.
However, those crimes include “conducting sit-ins to protest against the construction of apartment buildings” and “mushroom picking in conservation forests”, activities not exactly terrorist-related. In response, the Tokyo Bar Association has expressed opposition against the new legislation, pointing to potential government misuse.
The security versus privacy debate seems to continue endlessly. Some people may be more prepared than others to give up some degree of privacy in exchange for security. For example, countries that have had traumatic experiences with terrorism and public violence could be less concerned about their governments collecting intelligence for the promise of greater national security.
This is especially if, in their minds, they are not the targeted group marginalised by criminal profiling. In the wake of 9/11 terrorist attacks, the American public was generally supportive of the Patriot Act, which unprecedentedly expanded the US government’s surveillance powers to prevent another similar attack.
However, public support of the act dropped overwhelmingly after Edward Snowden exposed that the surveillance system’s collection of metadata was so intrusive that it encroached on the privacy rights of all US citizens, even the millions of “innocent” ordinary people.
Hence, the key here seems to be promoting greater public education and awareness, and maintaining a minimum standard of government transparency.
To ensure impartiality and transparency, as well as to navigate the moral risks of surveillance and data collection, one tends to fall back on the rule of law and the justice system to enhance the accountability of policymakers.
More importantly, people could also make use of new technologies to empower themselves and regain control of their personal data.
For instance, blockchain technology, in combination with cryptography, is a possible means of deterrence to safeguard privacy. It allows us to store data in an encrypted, transparent, and verifiable way, making sure that records of transactions between two parties are permanent and unmodifiable.
It looks like the technological revolution is here to stay, and instead of being trapped in an Orwellian nightmare, perhaps it is time for people to confront the reality as it is and make 4IR theirs.
Tan Ming Hui is an associate research fellow in the Office of the Executive Deputy Chairman, and Walid Lemrini is a student research assistant at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.