Scopophobia

 Scopophobia

noun; /ˌskɒpə(ʊ)ˈfəʊbɪə/: fear of being watched

Imagine a world where someone is always watching over you no matter where you are, what you are doing, what position you occupy in the societal hierarchy. Do you realize how unsettling it would be; every action you take would be impacted by this unnerving feeling of being watched. But what exactly does make this notion of being under someone’s surveillance so deeply unsettling?

One of the reasons must be the thought of losing your individual sovereignty, perhaps due to the insecurity of not having total control over all the things in your personal ambit and the ambiguous intent of the watcher. This is the same reason people don’t stay in houses that have a reputation of being haunted by spirits, however sceptical one is about their existence. It’s not easy to shake off the feeling of being watched. Sometimes the specifics of the watcher doesn’t even matter because the feeling in itself is difficult to come to grips with.

We have seen this feeling manifest itself now more than ever when people have such extensive online presence wherein every digital footprint is being monitored and documented into massive databases.  We have often seen CEOs of companies who provide platforms for online social interactions and other enterprises even remotely related to this topic testifying in front of courts of its privacy policies and terms regarding user data protection, in case the users find it inappropriate.

It has also had its fair share on political fronts; the infamous Watergate scandal of 1971 involving the then president of the united states Richard Nixon who bugged the offices of the democratic party before elections and purposely misused the information for his own campaigns, which ended up in the termination of terms various members of his party and resignation of Nixon himself.

Moreover, it is observed that one of the most important features of a dictatorship is maintaining control over the state in a fascist way, which includes stifling the right to privacy. States like the Republic of China and North Korea have repeatedly employed ways of monitoring their citizen’s social and digital actions. The Republic of China in 2017 made a new policy regarding data localization and storage, this policy allowed the Communist Party of China to survey, store and assimilate the personal data of citizens as they see fit. On contrary to the practice of termination of user data after account termination. This new policy allowed the storing and assessment of this data for an indefinite time after the removal of the user’s account, which meant the CCP could forever keep tabs on inactive users and the users who have left the platform. Later in 2018, a new addition to this policy was made which mandated the centralization of user data of foreign companies; which meant every foreign enterprise providing service in china needed to surrender their data to the Chinese authorities.   

George Orwell in his book 1984 (published in 1948) describes a character called Big Brother. Big Brother has been symbolized as the totalitarian state that looks upon us. He is portrayed as a dictator monitoring sensitive personal information of the citizens of Oceania, he also part of the Ingsoc party. He is described to have been put on a large screen in the victory square. The fear of an invasion of privacy bothers people because you don’t know what the intent of the watcher is, particularly when it’s a despot watching, since the reason is far from benign. It’s not creepy when a CCTV camera is surveilling you since the intent is known, it’s a measure taken to protect the store from burglary. The theme of the book was later used in various ways, for one the famous reality tv show ‘the Big Brother’; in which contestants live in a house together, where a Big Brother referencing the one Orwell created watches over them, the same way the Big Brother does over Oceania(in India a similar kind of show operates under the title Big Boss).

It’s also used as an analogy to explain the atheist argument of free will, it goes along the similar lines of impeding one’s sovereignty of thought and action. If God is omnipotent and can see through one’s thoughts how does he not invade one’s ability to make decisions without somehow altering them? Advocates of atheism like Christopher Hitchens often times have cited Orwell’s Big brother to explain why God having the ultimate power of seeing through your thoughts doesn’t particularly sit well with the idea of free will.

People have been ruffled by the idea of a Big Brother, at times when governments made special policies taking control over personal chatrooms, or when huge databases of private enterprises were hacked into sending their users into frenzy and panic. But it’s not just the authoritarian regimes in the world that have been engaged in surveilling people, in fact, it is security agencies like NSA, CIA, FBI who have employed digital tools and methods to monitor people across the world.  One such big chaos sprung when ex-CIA official Edward Snowden mutinied against his organization and publicly disclosed the CIA’s rather controversial activities of surveilling people through their personal devices like webcams and phones. In the light of new technology wherein you can remotely access cameras and other devices the thought of one such Big Brother seems even more unnerving. This instant as we exploit these devices, we can be looked at by people we don’t even know exist. Another rather inconspicuous surveillance program was the ‘ECHELON’ which was a collaborative surveillance program developed by the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These countries formed a network called the Five Eyes.

Unlike the other organizations typically involved in these scandals like governments and intelligence agencies, social media companies are too found guilty of surveilling people. Facebook was involved in one such scandal where it used the users’ data to optimize its ad recommendation algorithm.  

As apprehensive as these issues might seem, measures of attaining a perfectly surveillance-proof device and E-space platform are being made. New ways of encrypting data are being employed. But nonetheless, it still isn’t foolproof. The most powerful experience is the one where you are assured of the fact that your anonymity and your privacy is completely in your hands. So lately we have seen people using browsers like TOR or Excavator and search engines like Duckduckgo which ensure your complete autonomy. TOR or the onion browser is a special type of browser developed by the FBI, which was initially only used by the FBI for communication, later was opened for regular people. Since its release, millions of people who fear being surveilled by government agencies have sought to use it. Which has also attracted a lot of illicit activity like crime and services ordinarily barred by law, smuggling of contraband and networking for these people, it has helped people living in places wherein the governments censor speech and deprives their citizens of the right to privacy.  What TOR does is firstly it lets you access any unindexed webpage, and it encrypts your IP address and then further tunnels it through various different layers of encryption, which makes it impossible to decrypt which mean your entire activity is more or less impenetrable to look at. Now with the internet mass surveillance has become easier and more difficult at the same time, since with more efficient ways of surveilling having emerged new ways of securing oneself have been developed too, so people are more vigilant about their online presence. People have actually started reading privacy policies of various companies, now the companies falter before putting out a contentious privacy policy fearing public outrage and protest. It’s safe to assume we are heading towards a safer internet place; the surveillance game is changing for the better. That being said many states still surveil people and emancipating people from such ‘Big Brothers’ is going to be challenging.      

Remember, no matter what the political landscape of a your region might be, Big Brother maybe (is) watching.  

 

 Authored by - Mihir Palekar