Surveillance is a growth industry within the IT world and volumes have been written that discuss, ad nauseum, the intrusion of privacy vs. the right to protect and inquire and inform. Countless criminals and criminal acts (as well as other stupid stuff) have been recorded by monitoring cameras from bank robbers, who, buy the way, get caught at an astonishing rate of almost ninety-eight percent (c’mon people, choose a profession that has better odds for bringing home a paycheck), from toll both cheaters to red light runners and on and on and on. Presently, the catchee’s images are mostly stored on video tape, but the trend is to store more and more of this information in the digital format. Video tape is bulky, much harder to physically manage and is subject to physical damage and deterioration over time. Initially, it’s also cheaper.

Security monitoring is now ubiquitous. It is with us on a permanent basis and it is only likely to grow. A recent survey points out that the average urban dweller is videoed about twenty to twenty-five times during the average working day. Banks, convenience stores, parking structures, offices, hospitals… the list is nearly all encompassing. There are wildlife cameras and cameras that record the freeway wildlife, even cameras that record movie cameras so that the filmmakers can put together a ‘making of’ film while they are camera-ing. Zoo cameras that record the not-so-wildlife of the animals (not the visitors) and…and…and…you get the picture. As intended, the observers get the picture as well, and they want to store it for a while. Meanwhile, the data piles up. It doesn’t wind up in some musty old scrapbook put together on a rainy day by mom or dad, but on innumerable tape cassettes and disk drives where it waits to be reviewed so the whole world can see us at our most vulnerable times; standing in line, staring vacantly into space, running red lights, walking into convenience stores; the panoply of mundane human activities that sometimes turn suddenly violent, comic, tragic, pathetic and, for the most part, just plain borinnnnggggg.

The spook business covers the civilian and military fields, as well as covert operations. As to be expected, the civvies are under much tighter regulation than the GI’s because of the freedom we enjoy from such activity as provided by the legal structure of this country. A detective agency, for example, is under severe constraints that restrict what they can and what they can not record without getting into too sticky a wicket. Invasion of privacy stuff makes for great civil lawsuits. There continue to be many raging legal battles over what can be recorded, either visually or aurally or both, and to what degree the public and the private interest collide. Is it allowable to take unauthorized photographs of celebrities engaged in normal activities? Could a thief, claiming that it was his ‘job’ to steal, sue for invasion of privacy or invasive interference with his work if he is caught on a video camera while plying his trade? In any event, what this all boils down to is everybody is watching everybody else doing everything all of the time. That takes a lot of time, energy, money and technology.

Technology has always been the willing slave to the watchers. If there is a special situation that needs coverage, we can build just the right kind of gadget that will extract, present and store exactly what is needed. Scores of people in all of the major cities across the nation sit at display monitors and watch nothing but roadway intersections. When one becomes too congested or otherwise goes out of whack, the controllers can tinker with the timing of the lights and change the traffic flow (probably from a slow crawl to a dead stop). In many of the cities, the information is stored and can be analyzed later, by other computers, naturally. Most of us do not see these intersection cameras, just like we cannot see the security cameras that are hidden in fake ceiling mounted smoke alarms, fire sprinkler heads, rivets in sheet metal work, and even in the Teddy Bear eyes in the children’s bedroom. The creative locations in which cameras can be hidden are limitless. The data that can be stored from these cameras is also without limit. We are living in a world that is growing obese on data (among other things).

Back awhile, back when information was recorded on paper forms, specifically in 1951, Herman Knaust, with his purchase of an exhausted iron ore mine in northern New York State, laid the foundation for a company named The Iron Mountain Atomic Storage Corporation. Didn’t we have fanciful ideas about the nature of our businesses back then? The Atomic Storage Corporation!!! Just great! The underground storage center that he built was designed to protect American business’ records in the event of a nuclear exchange between them and us (that possibility still exists, I understand). At the very least, survivors (if any) will be able to see when I defaulted on my credit card payment. This could be very useful information as they are picking through the rubble, looking for canned goods or inflatable swimming pools. Some of that ancient data has been transferred to digital media.

So, it all boils down to ones and zeros, ONs and OFFs, bits of data stored on tape, disc, etc. and stored in secure and unsecured places. There is no agreed number for the used and available storage in the world today. Two things for sure, on a day-to-day basis, it is increasing dramatically and there is no end in sight. No one, (with the exception of governmental agencies with court orders) can access all of the data because is it so fractionalized. In all of this spread-out-ness, there is a built-in safety factor that is inherent with the sheer amount of data stored and this tenuously, and probably temporarily, protects us from the one super company that wants to gather all of those loose strings together. As of yet, there is no one massive data correlation center that gathers and examines all of the stored information, although that is the wish of many in several governmental agencies (not just the U.S.) and that day may be drawing nigh. The idea has been around for some time. George Orwell wrote about it in 1949 in “1984”.

Overall, what would it take to gather and correlate all of the covert and overt data into one mega database? The answer is, it takes the desire on someone’s or some agencies’ part to do so, plus the money to make it happen. Will it ever happen? My bet is on the ‘yes’ vote. Probably it will be a little time in coming and will arrive in a limited or modified way. The greater question is Why do it? The answer to that one is very similar to the answer to the question, Why climb the mountain? … because it’s there and because it can be done. However, be very wary because once you get to the top of the mountain, there will be a mini-omni-cam watching you and recording your every move.