AAAS S&T Policy Forum Explores Privacy in an Era of Powerful Surveillance Tools

This is the age of watching and being watched. Cameras and other sensors have become so small they can be embedded in door knobs and other places people don't notice, according to Daniel Sui, a specialist on surveillance technologies at Texas A&M University who spoke at the recent AAAS Science and Technology Policy Forum in Washington, D.C.

The list of technologies in the new "Viewer Society," as Sui calls it, is expansive. Satellite photos posted to Google Earth have sufficient resolution that one Dutch couple was photographed sunbathing on a rooftop, according to Sui. Aerial photos taken to help monitor coastal erosion in California also provided a glimpse of Barbra Streisand's back yard, prompting her to bring an unsuccessful suit alleging invasion of privacy.

Is secrecy dead in an age of pervasive surveillance technology? Does the definition of privacy need to be redefined? Can science and technology serve both privacy and security interests, allowing researchers to develop still more technologies and data-sifting methods to help prevent terrorism? Those questions and others were discussed during a 3 May topical session at the AAAS policy forum, which has become the major public meeting in the United States devoted to science and technology policy issues.

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