I often describe our society as “increasingly nonpermissive,” but what does this really mean? For former CIA officer Tony Mendez, the Soviet capitol city of Moscow was the quintessential nonpermissive environment — one in which CIA officers, or other embassy personnel, could assume with a high degree of certainty that they were under surveillance. Given the unrelenting scrutiny of the KGB, activities such as meeting with agents or picking up dead drops were essentially out of the question.
The CIA and the officers at Moscow Station were able to develop new tradecraft, including sophisticated disguises developed with the aid of Hollywood makeup artists, to allow them to evade their KGB opponents and begin operating again. Mendez details this, and many other relevant tidbits, in his book The Moscow Rules.
However, as we move into the 21st century, nonpermissive environments have taken on a new meaning. The average person on the street in the United States or Western Europe might not need to fear being tailed by agents of the state every time her or she leaves home (yet), but the digital Panopticon is upon us for data monetization purposes, as well as for reasons of “public safety.” Pervasive CCTV camera deployments, social networking, and advances in the fields of high-performance computing, “artificial intelligence,” and machine learning are pushing us toward a dangerous future very similar to what Philip K. Dick described in The Minority Report.
In fact, for places like China, where facial recognition is already widely deployed, be it at restaurant kiosks for payment and ordering suggestions, or via surveillance cameras on the street corners, the world of The Minority Report is already here.
So, how does the technology work? Where might we encounter it today or in the future? And how, if at all, can we defeat it and maintain our privacy? Let’s discuss.
Biometrics
Biometrics refers to a set of technologies, generally used as security controls, which are predicated on that fact that individuals have certain universally unique characteristics. The first thing that might come to mind is fingerprints. Chances are that your smartphone