That’s the overall plan of surveillance technology, Alan Moore, famed author of dystopian comic classics like Watchmen and V For Vendetta, told me in a 2004 interview. “V for Vendetta has had an annoying way of coming true ever since I wrote it in the early ’80s. Back then, I wanted something to communicate the idea of a police state quickly and efficiently, so I thought of the novel fascist idea of monitor cameras on every street corner.” Before long, Britain and America, Moore said, “had cameras on every street corner along the length and breadth of the country.”
That impulse toward “invisible omniscience” dates back to Jeremy Bentham’s infamous panopticon, a specially designed prison in which all prisoners were monitored simultaneously, without their knowledge. The result, Bentham explained, was not just invisible omniscience but also a “mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.”
We have since upgraded Bentham’s panopticon for everything from our rampantly escalating prison-industrial complex (which Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser once called “not only a set of interest groups and institutions,” but “also a state of mind”) to our so-called Reality Television. The latter is where we willingly turn the panopticon upon ourselves in surveillance spectacles like Survivor, Big Brother, Fear Factor, American Idol and worse. (Much worse).
“One of the reasons we singled out media in V for Vendetta was because it is one of the most useful tools of tyranny,” Moore said. “[It] might be a horrifying notion, but I’m sure there are people who think of television as perhaps one of their most intimate friends. And if the TV tells them that things in the world are a certain way, even if the evidence of their senses asserts it is not true, they’ll probably believe the television set in the end. It’s an alarming thought but we brought it upon ourselves.”
The result has been our consensually mediated hyperreality and its very real consequences, including two devastating wars that have decimated millions in total, the destruction of our national economy (if not the global one) and an escalating environmental nightmare at the hands of excessive consumption. What follows from a serious political and economic addiction to incentivized pain and suffering? Nothing but abuse. Speaking of abuse….
Tasers
Nonviolent weaponry? Tell that to Oscar Grant. Or those pregnant women who were tasered. Or that 6-year old. Or that disabled man. Or….
You get the picture. There is perhaps no other recent technological innovation in widely politicized social play today than the Taser, which has spread like wildfire to law-enforcement organizations worldwide in search of options beyond the usual batons and chokeholds. In the TaseTr, they have found the perfect device for immobilizing offenders: One jolt from its “electro-muscular disruption technology” and you’re pinewood, as they say in the business. And business is good, although the weaponry is more controversial than ever.
“I don’t see the issue as politicized in the classic sense of conservative versus liberal issues,” Taser International spokesman Steve Tuttle told AlterNet. “Instead, I see a tremendous amount of polarization on Taser technology. There is nothing worse than being irrelevant in this day and age, and the polarization is something that overall is good for debate when you have a revolutionary sea change in modern day policing. We’re changing the world,” Tuttle added, “and true revolutions don’t come without pain.”
Speaking of pain, Raytheon’s Pain Ray, more marketably known as the Active Denial System, operates on a similar premise. Instead of causing grievous bodily harm with bullets, batons or worse, it merely directs high-frequency microwave radiation at the nervous system, shocking the subject into compliance, so to speak. Like the Taser, the pain ray can penetrate thick clothing, although it cannot go through walls. Yet.
Tuttle’s position that Taser is changing the world is accurate, although time will ultimately tell in which ways and how much. Right now, 15,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide use Tasers, “even though no one thought these life-saving devices would be carried full time by street cops seven years ago,” he said. That’s a significant adoption rate, and one that is surely to rise, no matter how much bad press the Taser gets. And it gets a lot. Whether it is being misapplied to the wrong people or parts of the body, or being targeted by the United Nations and others as a tool of torture and political suppression, it has continued to find its name associated with one scandalous report after another in the years since its rapid adoption.
Taser International’s Tuttle thinks the problem comes down, predictably enough, to technology. And its brave new world of public relations. (Or propaganda, as the father of public relations, Edward Bernays, once called it.)
“The police are deploying a tool that is not only misunderstood, but also scares people by the very nature of using electricity,” Tuttle said. “The first top-of-mind thought is that someone is getting shocked, and stigma is hard to overcome and requires an inordinate amount of explaining to do to truly understand how the Taser actually works. Throw in safety concerns by critics with misguided agendas, and you have a very challenging environment to not only work within, but you’re constantly answering negatives.“
As with CT scans, cell phones and surveillance technology, more study is required on both sides of the divide. According to Amnesty International’s Web site, “No study has adequately examined the impact of Tasers on potentially at-risk individuals,” or “people who have medical conditions, take prescription medications, are mentally ill or are under the influence of narcotics.” Which is to say, a lot of people getting tasered.
Like the aforementioned gadgets, machines and innovations, it could be that the Taser, like so many technological wonders, could eventually cause more problems than it solves. Compared to a baton and a chokehold, to say the least, the Taser is user-friendly pain compliance defined. But Tuttle, like CTheory, is blaming its problems on humans, not technology.
“The ease of use has nothing to do with the controversies,” he said. “Use of force must still adhere to constitutional guidelines and civil rights issues. A violation is a violation regardless of the ease of use.”
This article appeared at ALTERNET
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.