Culture
THe eND

Fluxion
OF PRiVACY

issue
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speak into your cell phone, use a computer connected to the
internet, or walk through an area monitored by video cameras
attached to a data network, and be prepared to interact with
a global electronic surveillance apparatus that knows whether
you’re happy, horny, depressed or enraged.
by Nick Street
Government agencies on the lookout space program. He readily concedes that
for terrorists and corporations bent on the notion of a powerful computer’s taking
shaping the appetites of our consumer note of the thoughts of people in an online
culture control the technology behind this chat room can be a little unsettling.
modern-day version of the Eye of Sauron. “This does sound like science fiction,”
Firewalls and other security measures on Powell said, likening the potential of some
privately controlled servers currently limit of the “truly aware” technologies devel-
the reach of this new form of surveillance, oped at USC to the devices that allowed
but with media systems like wireless the fictional Krell—the vanished master
networks and Internet service providers race in the 1956 sci-fi classic Forbidden
becoming increasingly integrated, few Planet—to interact telepathically with
corners of the average American’s daily their machines.
life will be hidden from the gaze of this Considering that many projects have
steadily expanding electronic awareness. received funding from a division of the
Even now, as media conglomerates same Department of Defense now at the
and information technology engineers center of the Internet surveillance con-
begin charting this process of integration, troversy, which set the tone for the Bush
“You have to assume there’s not a whole administration’s war on terror, it’s worth
lot that’s private,” said Adam Clayton noting that the Krell—whose machines
Powell III, vice provost for globalization at dutifully carried out the violent, uncon-
the University of Southern California and scious desires of their makers—were
the former director of USC’s Integrated ultimately destroyed by their own
Media Systems Center, which produced creation.
much of the know-how for these “truly
aware” technologies. Breaking Down the
“We’ve developed software that can Stovepipes
read a subject’s facial expression and Powell acknowledged that much of the
body position to understand his psy- work at USC’s Integrated Media Systems
chological state,” Powell said. “We also Center supported the Department of
discovered that the intervals between a Defense’s now officially de-funded Infor-
user’s keystrokes at a computer interface mation Awareness Office and its now-
can reveal anger or boredom and lots of infamous Total Information Awareness
other emotions.” Program (TIA), created in the aftermath
Powell is a long-limbed man with an of 9/11. Both were ostensibly shuttered
expressively elastic face and a quirky, by an act of Congress under a cloud
anachronistic sense of style reminiscent of controversy, but coaxing the genies
of his days at CBS, where he got his start of high technology back into their jar is
in the 1960s as a precocious electronic- never a simple proposition. The office was
media whiz helping Walter Cronkite make headed by retired Admiral John Poindex-
sense of the gadgetry behind the Gemini ter, a key figure from the Reagan-era’s
Photo of Banksy's “One Nation Under CCTV”
from Flickr user Naughton 321 used under a creative commons license.
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