Surveillance never sits still
To mark the seventh anniversary of my WFMU show Techtonic, I built this week’s episode around a simple reminder: Even more devices are spying on you. I say “reminder” because the concept of ambient, intrusive surveillance is nothing new – especially to anyone reading this newsletter.
But surveillance is still creeping into the formerly private spaces in our lives, and it’s worth taking notice before it’s widely normalized and accepted.
Case in point is something I spotted today at New York’s LaGuardia airport. Across from my gate area was a WHSmith store – the kind of candy-and-snacks newsstand that one can see in just about any airport. Except this one had a strange sign out front: “JUST WALK OUT shopping.” And there were little entrance and exit gates at the front of the store. The entrance gate instructed customers to scan a phone or a card.
The idea of the store, much like Amazon Go stores (which licensed the technology to WHSmith), is that customers can pick up whatever items they want and “just walk out” – which explains why there is no checkout counter in the store. But then the question arises: how does the store know which bag of chips you picked up?
The answer is located on the ceiling: over two dozen surveillance cameras dangling on stalks, watching every move of each customer in the store. They’re like jungle creepers hanging from tree branches in the depths of a rainforest, if that ecosystem had evolved to spy on humans.
I saw several travelers enter the store, get instructions from an attendant, and then walk out with their items. (Yes, this “AI-powered” system still needs human labor – including, it’s been reported, hundreds of subcontractors in India to watch the footage.) Still, the people I saw in the store didn’t seem to be creeped out by the creepers on the ceiling. I wonder how many more stores will install a surveillance grid soon.
Intrusive surveillance is common, and it’s growing. Just last month 404 Media shared a leaked slide deck from Atlanta-based Cox Media Group boasting about a feature called “Active Listening,” in which “smart devices capture real-time intent data by listening to our conversations.” In other words, Cox is bragging that it can source marketing data by listening to people's private conversations held in range of an iPhone or Android microphone.
Big Tech companies have claimed for years that they don’t spy through our microphones – since there are easier ways for them to conduct surveillance (like, for example, tracking your search queries and where you travel on the web - as well as your location, who you associate with, your travel habits, purchase patterns, and more). Why go to the trouble of transcribing your private conversations, the argument goes, if the existing data already gives them what they need?
That would be more persuasive to me if there weren’t these nagging indications that someone is listening. The Cox deck unearthed by 404 Media was resonant because so many people have had the experience of seeing an ad for some obscure item just after having a private conversation about it.
And then there’s the trajectory that Big Tech companies have been on for years – never sitting still with surveillance, always looking for new sources of data to steal. As far back as 2018 Amazon got a patent for an Alexa surveillance device to listen not merely for the consumers’ straightforward verbal command but for additional data that could lead to a purchase. Here’s an image from the patent application where the Alexa guesses that the consumer has a cold and tries to sell chicken soup:
Today, six years after that patent was granted, we can that this idea has progressed: from Wired, Amazon-Powered AI Cameras Used to Detect Emotions of Unwitting UK Train Passengers (June 17, 2024). Here’s the relevant quote (emphasis mine):
Thousands of people catching trains in the United Kingdom likely had their faces scanned by Amazon software as part of widespread artificial intelligence trials, new documents reveal. The image recognition system was used to predict travelers’ age, gender, and potential emotions — with the suggestion that the data could be used in advertising systems in the future.
No matter where you go – train, newsstand, or your kitchen counter – surveillance never sits still. We’re being habituated to it everywhere.
Yet another warning sign cropped up this week. “Ford seeks patent for tech that listens to driver conversations to serve ads,” reports The Record (Sep 9, 2024). Apparently the automaker wants to “tailor in-car advertising by listening to conversations among vehicle occupants.” Which is just what consumers have been wishing for: a car that spews advertising messages! Which come directly from the car spying on you!
I haven’t heard of The Record before, but the article does point to a document that appears to be the patent application from Ford for this spy tech. If this is legitimate, it’s just one more indication of the surveillance-soaked world we’re headed into. It also would be totally unsurprising news, given the trajectory that the tech industry – and, for that matter, the auto industry – have been on for years.
My best advice, if you feel engaged by this topic, is to get educated. (A good start might be Monday’s Techtonic episode: read the resources I posted on the playlist and listen to the show here.) The more we can recognize the ongoing assault on our privacy, the less we’ll want to accept it and normalize it for everyone else. Surveillance never sits still, so neither should we.
A further next step: if you’d like to join my community of people engaging with technology and how it affects us (and how to make it better), you should join Creative Good. The 25% discount ends soon, so I hope to see your signup today.