Stephen B. Wicker, electronic surveillance and privacy expert, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University and author of “Cellular Convergence and the Death of Privacy,” discusses how technology, social trends and government policy have opened the floodgates for surveillance and eroded privacy worldwide.
Wicker says:“Cellular has become the primary mode of personal communication on the planet. There are more than 6 billion phones in use, with communication services ranging from voice to text to the app marketplace. The consolidation of so many modes of communication onto a single platform – cellular convergence – has made cellular telephones the single most important tool for personal expression on the planet.
“The NSA’s overzealous collection of American cellular data is thus all the more insidious. Surveillance chills speech. The omnipresent potential for surveillance forces voice and other forms of expression into innocuous pathways, taking what should be a powerful tool for personal development and dumbing it down into yet another tool for marketing. The argument that only ‘metadata’ is being collected is a nonstarter – such data often reveals more about a user’s beliefs, preference, and actions than the content of a call.
“The communication technology genie is out of the bottle for good. The United States government is unwittingly creating a demand for electronic communication that is immune to surveillance, a technology that is well within reach. Unlicensed spectrum and open-source development offer enticing possibilities – possibilities that this nation’s technical community is very good at exploiting.”
NOTE: Wicker will be meeting with journalists in Washington, D.C. Nov. 7 to discuss electronic surveillance and privacy. Media interested in attending this event should contact Joe Schwartz at the Cornell Media Relations Office: [email protected] or (607) 254-6235.
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