September 10, 1999

Privacy is becoming nonexistent

If you're reading today's Reporter in the corner of a cafe, do you feel safe in your private suburban life? Should you? I've already written about the cataloguing of personal data on computer files; it's very likely that each of our medical, financial and legal records are readily available on the World Wide Web. That's not the topic of this column.

I'm referring to the surveillance of civilians going about their everyday activities, including particularly vulnerable acts such as using fitting rooms and restrooms. Celebrities no longer comprise the only demographic group that has to worry about nude shots surfacing.

Of course, then there are those idiots who violate their own privacy by setting up cameras in their homes with live online feed. They bring to mind a current ad for a TV program in which one of its characters exclaims to another, "I almost didn't recognize you with your clothes on." Indeed.

Certainly, though, there have always been Peeping Toms who take advantage of security jobs. The difference is that the technology of cameras now exceeds the most elaborate fantasies of the James Bond films of my youth, if only just barely Dick Tracy's wristwatch.

A voyeur or someone just documenting a public scene can now wear ordinary eyeglasses fitted with a video camera, strap on a micro-computer and antenna, and broadcast to anyone online, anywhere at anytime. Check out MSNBC's web site for live images from University of Toronto students participating in a project with the MIT professor who developed the wearable Webcam.

But lately I've become increasingly aware that my 15 minutes of public fame on TV is probably going to be wasted on closed-circuit monitors or dated and filed videotapes. Have you noticed the rapid proliferation of video monitors and security cams right here in sleepy Solano County?

The other day I was annoyed - nay, disturbed - by my TV image at the bank, the grocery store, the dry cleaners, and the gas station. And those little rooftop cameras are multiplying like bugs on Capitol Hill. Maybe it's not Big Brother, but someone is watching you and me in every move we make. At least now the wearable Webcam could let us broadcast what we see when we look back.

© 1999 Cynthia Hahn