* * Watching you

There’s a song lyric that goes like this, “Every breath you take, And every move you make… I’ll be watching you.” As of this morning, I have a new idea of what that means today and perhaps the future.

My wife and I are subscribers to a couple of internet-based hosting services. www.warmshowers.com is a network of travelers, mostly touring bicyclists. www.couchsurfing.com is a broader-based organization, helping members meet and share adventures with people around the world. I’m also a member of Rotary International’s Hosting and Travel Fellowship. So we’re often seeing strangers occupying our guest bedroom. We really enjoy most of these folks. And so far, we’ve never had any problems whatsoever. They’ve been respectful of us and have never abused our hospitality in any way.

Last night, Jim from Texas spent the night.

Most of the bicyclists are strictly recreational, most on long-term rides. Many of the others are touring for various reasons. Jim was on a business trip. And what an unusual business he’s in!

Jim works for a company that sends him around the country to take clandestine videos inside retail stores. As I understand it, retail chains hire his company to send him and people like him to be industrial spies, mostly on their own staff.

Many of us are aware that there are more cameras around than ever before. Historically only the domain of professionals, cameras made their way into hobby hands when I was growing up. As consumer electronics became increasingly inexpensive and widespread and with the revolution in digital photography, cameras became ubiquitous. Camcorders were a big deal when introduced in the 1980s and increasingly in the 1990s. But the advent of miniaturization and the proliferation of surveillance spawned by the age of terrorism put cameras seemingly everywhere.

I suspect for you young people, it’s hard to imagine how new and revolutionary this is. I was already an adult when a volcanic mountain in Washington State began to rumble. When St. Helens, American’s most appealing mountain, eventually blew itself to smithereens in May, 1980, there was not a single movie taken of it. The best-known photographic sequence was shot with a conventional, film-based camera and the images have been merged by computer to give the simulation of motion. If St. Helens got active again, there would be a thousand cameras watching.

The first big customer for clandestine video cameras was the U.S. Defense apparatus, with the FBI, CIA, and National Security Agency getting into the act. The technologies spread outwards to local security agencies and police forces to assist with crime prevention. Nowadays, video cameras are almost literally everywhere. You’re being watched when you bank. You’re being watched when you walk a city sidewalk. You’re being watched while you drive. You’re being watched while you eat dinner at a restaurant. And you’re being watched while you work.

Jim was candid and unapologetic as he showed his equipment. He was wearing what appeared to be an everyday shirt, button-down, with a dark black/brown/white pattern. He pointed at what looked like a minor imperfection in the material beside one of the front buttons. It was the lens of his camera. Around his chest he wore a strap that had on the side under an armpit a koozie-like holster where the controlling computer was carried. A wire connected the lens apparatus to the computer. That’s all it takes to film someone against their knowledge or consent.

He said, “Recently, I was in a store to film a particular salesman. I was acting like an everyday customer. It took, like, ten minutes for the guy to even acknowledge me, and then was indifferent to my apparent needs. Finally the guy looks at me and says, ‘You gonna buy anything, or what?’” When the video was seen by the store owner, the salesman lost his job. “I know for sure my work has resulted in the dismissal of at least three people.” Creepy.

It’s difficult for me to envision a cogent opinion about this practice. Certainly an employer should be able to monitor the effectiveness of his or her employees. But it seems clear that any notion of privacy that we once had as citizens of an ostensibly free country has been sacrificed.

Jane and I have normally been so trustful of our visitors that we’ve allowed them to come and go whether we were home or not. With Jim, I asked him to leave before I left for the office. He seemed sincere enough. But as he walked towards his rental car and drove away, I wondered to myself whether we’d welcome him back.