2010: The Future of Security
But surveillance does. "The costs to observe are virtually zero, so it’s not a question of will it exist, but what will we do with it?" Geer asks.
Enforcement of the government’s security policy will come from broad, ubiquitous surveillance, both visual monitoring and keystroke logging. The adaptation of cheap wireless gadgets like RFIDs will make the tracking of people and things simple, cheap and inevitable.
Some people, perhaps the majority, will accept this as the price that must be paid to avoid another digital Pearl Harbor. Others will rue what the lockdown has wrought: an utter lack of privacy, a digital iron curtain descending upon innovation, economic stagnation, social calcification. Big Brother will arrive fashionably late, but arrive he will. Security and privacy will become dominant themes in the elections of 2010 and 2012.
Geer is convinced we’re heading toward a broadly surveilled police state. "I’m sad about this," he says, "but I’m trying to be realistic."
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