I See You. I Hear You.
On arriving home from the office one afternoon recently, I was met at my gate by a police officer and noticed quite a large posse in the background. He said he saw the security cameras installed around my home and explained that the previous night a crime had taken place and he wanted me to peruse the video footage from the cameras for a particular time and make a copy for them. As a good citizen and following the Golden Rule of ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’, I was happy to assist. However, while reviewing the footage and seeing the back and forth of vehicles and pedestrians at all hours of the night and early morning, I wondered if these persons considered the total lack of privacy which exists in today’s modern world. I’m not sure how many of you have paid attention recently to the rapid expansion of installed surveillance cameras around the island. I’m not referring to the private security cameras many of us have at home. I’m taking about those mounted on major roads, intersections, and round-abouts. What are Barbadian’s rights regarding this recorded footage?
In recent times, driven by security breaches and disclosures of mass surveillance by governments and the private sector, service providers and legislators have put in place limited measures to make sure that individuals have some measure of control over their personal data stored and used by organisations. I believe that in most cases we’re too far gone, and the more ubiquitous something becomes, the more likely we are to accept it without question. The rapid increase (over 400% in the last 6 months by my count) in surveillance cameras on our roads over the last few months has not even garnered a passing comment on call-in programs or in the press. But non-opposition is not consent.
Unfortunately, we now live in a space where we have forfeited our rights to personal privacy. As I explained in a previous article, many of the free services we use in this information age really aren’t so free. We are trading information about ourselves in exchange for the service. ‘Sign-up’ isn’t always very explicit. Have you ever wondered how Google Maps or Waze is able to determine traffic conditions? They’re tracking the location, direction, and speed of most folks with a smart phone. I’ve heard folks give the argument that since it’s everyone’s data, or video footage, that’s being collected and, if they’re not doing anything wrong or illegal, they really are just a needle in a haystack. Not true. Using artificial intelligence there is no such thing as a needle in a haystack. Regarding the ‘nothing to hide’ argument, as Edward Snowden, the whistle blower that revealed mass worldwide surveillance by US intelligence agencies said, “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say”. Given the mass surveillance now occurring on our streets, a few important questions need to be answered.
- Who is capturing and storing this footage?
- Is the footage being stored in Barbados or elsewhere?
- Who has access to the footage and under what circumstances?
- Are there protocols, processes, or checks and balances in place to ensure proper access and reasonableness for access?
While in recent times governments have tried to reign in the horse that got away by passing legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in California- the US does not have privacy laws at the federal level per se, this may all be too little too late. The Barbados Data Protection Act 2019 passed on July 24th last year has many similar features to GDPR but lacks one critical aspect that I’ll discuss in the coming weeks.
Suffice to say every time you turn on your mobile phone, tablet, laptop, pick up the landline, or even take a walk down the street you should be concerned about who is tracking, listening, watching, and profiling you.
