Normalization—the main­stream­ing of peo­ple and ideas pre­vi­ous­ly ban­ished from pub­lic life for good reason—has become the oper­a­tive descrip­tion of a mas­sive soci­etal shift toward some­thing awful. Whether it’s puff pieces on neo-Nazis in major nation­al news­pa­pers or elect­ed lead­ers who are also doc­u­ment­ed sex­u­al preda­tors, a good deal of work goes into mak­ing the pre­vi­ous­ly unthink­able seem mun­dane or appeal­ing.

I try not to imag­ine too often where these things might lead, but one pre­vi­ous­ly unthink­able sce­nario, the open­ly pub­lic mass sur­veil­lance appa­ra­tus of George Orwell’s 1984 has pret­ty much arrived, and has been thor­ough­ly nor­mal­ized and become both mun­dane and appeal­ing. Net­worked cam­eras and micro­phones are installed through­out mil­lions of homes, and mil­lions of us car­ry them with us wher­ev­er we go. The twist is that we are the ones who installed them.

As com­ic Kei­th Low­ell Jensen remarked on Twit­ter a few years ago, “What Orwell failed to pre­dict is that we’d buy the cam­eras our­selves, and that our biggest fear would be that nobody was watch­ing.” By appeal­ing to our basic human need for con­nec­tion, to van­i­ty, the desire for recog­ni­tion, and the seem­ing­ly instinc­tu­al dri­ve for con­ve­nience, tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies have per­suad­ed mil­lions of peo­ple to active­ly sur­veille them­selves and each oth­er. They inces­sant­ly gath­er our data, as Tim Wu shows in The Atten­tion Mer­chants, and as a byprod­uct have pro­vid­ed access to our pri­vate spaces to gov­ern­ment agents and who-knows-who-else.

Com­put­ers, smart­phones, and “smart” devices can near­ly all be hacked or com­man­deered. For­mer direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence James Clap­per report­ed as much last year, telling the U.S. Sen­ate that intel­li­gence agen­cies might make extend­ed use of con­sumer devices for gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance. Web­cams and “oth­er inter­net-con­nect­ed cam­eras,” writes Eric Limer at Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics, “such as secu­ri­ty cams and high-tech baby mon­i­tors, are… noto­ri­ous­ly inse­cure.” James Comey and Mark Zucker­berg both cov­er the cam­eras on their com­put­ers with tape.

The prob­lem is far from lim­it­ed to cam­eras. “Any device that can respond to voice com­mands is, by its very nature, lis­ten­ing to you all the time.” Although we are assured that those devices only hear cer­tain trig­ger words “the micro­phone is def­i­nite­ly on regard­less” and “the extent to which this sort of audio is saved or shared is unclear.” (Record­ings on an Ama­zon Echo are pend­ing use as evi­dence in a mur­der tri­al in Arkansas.) Devices like head­phones have even been turned into micro­phones, Limer notes, which means that speak­ers could be as well, and “Lipread­ing soft­ware is only get­ting more and more impres­sive.”

I type these words on a Siri-enabled Mac, an iPad lies near­by and an iPhone in my pock­et… I won’t deny the appeal—or, for  many, the neces­si­ty of con­nec­tiv­i­ty. The always-on vari­ety, with mul­ti­ple devices respon­si­ble for con­trol­ling greater aspects of our lives may not be jus­ti­fi­able. Nonethe­less, 2017 could “final­ly be the year of the smart home.” Sales of the iPhone X may not meet Apple’s expec­ta­tions. But that could have more to do with price or poor reviews than with the creepy new facial recog­ni­tion technology—a fea­ture like­ly to remain part of lat­er designs, and one that makes users much less like­ly to cov­er or oth­er­wise dis­able their cam­eras.

The thing is, we most­ly know this, at least abstract­ly. Bland bul­let­ed how-to guides make the prob­lem seem so ordi­nary that it begins not to seem like a seri­ous prob­lem at all. As an indi­ca­tion of how mun­dane inse­cure net­worked tech­nol­o­gy has become in the con­sumer mar­ket, major pub­li­ca­tions rou­tine­ly run arti­cles offer­ing help­ful tips on how “stop your smart gad­gets from ‘spy­ing’ on you” and “how to keep your smart TV from spy­ing on you.” Your TV may be watch­ing you. Your smart­phone may be watch­ing you. Your refrig­er­a­tor may be watch­ing you. Your ther­mo­stat is most def­i­nite­ly watch­ing you.

Yes, the sit­u­a­tion isn’t strict­ly Orwellian: Oceana’s con­stant­ly sur­veilled cit­i­zens did not com­par­i­son shop, pur­chase, and cus­tomize their own devices vol­un­tar­i­ly. (It’s not strict­ly Fou­cauldian either, but has its close resem­blances.) Yet in prop­er Orwellian dou­ble­s­peak, “spy­ing” might have a very flex­i­ble def­i­n­i­tion depend­ing on who is on the oth­er end. We might stop “spy­ing” by enabling or dis­abling cer­tain fea­tures, but we might not stop “spy­ing,” if you know what I mean.

So who is watch­ing? CIA doc­u­ments released by a cer­tain unsa­vory orga­ni­za­tion show that the Agency might be, as the BBC seg­ment at the top reports. As might any num­ber of oth­er inter­est­ed par­ties from data-hoard­ing cor­po­rate bots to tech-savvy voyeurs look­ing to get off on your can­did moments. We might assume that some­one could have access at any time, even if we use the pri­va­cy con­trols. That so many peo­ple have become depen­dent on their devices, and will increas­ing­ly become so in the future, makes the ques­tion of what to do about it a trick­i­er propo­si­tion.

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less, Kafkaesque Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

The Exis­ten­tial­ism Files: How the FBI Tar­get­ed Camus, and Then Sartre After the JFK Assas­si­na­tion

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness