{"id":3320,"date":"2011-06-20T14:20:48","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T18:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=3320"},"modified":"2011-06-20T14:49:44","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T18:49:44","slug":"surveillance-from-the-clouds-to-the-fog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2011\/06\/20\/surveillance-from-the-clouds-to-the-fog\/","title":{"rendered":"Surveillance: From the Cloud(s) to the Fog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last winter, Cyborgology contributor David Banks<\/a> described the Pentagon’s Gorgon Stare<\/a> system\u2014a nine-camera flying drone that can stay airborne for weeks at a time\u2014as a “panopticon in the clouds<\/a>.”\u00a0 Like Jeremy Bentham’s infamous prison design (later adopted as a metaphor for all of contemporary society by Michel Foucault), the deployment of surveillance drones serves, in part, to limit the actions of militants by creating a perception that the US government was perpetually watching.\u00a0 Banks argues that, ultimately, these sci-fi-esque surveillance regimes were made possible by recent refinements in automated data management that originally had mundane applications, such as helping spectators follow activity on the sports pitch or producing individualized film recommendations.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Compiled by PJ Rey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is, thus, a double-sense in which the panopticon<\/a> has entered the cloud(s).\u00a0 Surveillance devices are not only omnipresent\u2014flying through the air\u2014but these devices are also linked remotely to command and control centers\u2014large, centralized databases that store and process the information produced in surveillance operations.\u00a0 Thus, unlike the historic spy operations conducted by manned U2 spy plans, drones never have to physically return home for data processing; instead, this information is transmitted in real-time.<\/p>\n

Recent reports<\/a> indicate a new development in government surveillance capacities: The Pentagon is working to create swarms of “microdrones,” which are expected to be operational, by 2030, at sizes smaller than dragonflies.\u00a0 Government surveillance is dropping out of the clouds and into the fog<\/strong>\u2014the “utility fog<\/a>” that is.\u00a0 Fans of cyberpunk and other science fiction genres are already likely familiar with this term, which is used to describe the concept of nano-bots that function in swarms to accomplish various tasks.\u00a0\u00a0 Neil Stephenson imagined in The Diamond Age<\/em><\/a>, for example, these bots would eventually inhabit the air we breath, interacting with our bodies and, even, warring for control of them.\u00a0 Importantly, nano-bots or “foglets<\/a>” are (almost) invisible, so that, unlike the panopticon, we are left clueless as to where the gaze is coming from.\u00a0 We could be under observation anywhere at anytime.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Credit: Doug Mills\/The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In contrast with the now familiar image of drone \u201cpilots\u201d controlling several operations from a single, centralized command and control center, the volumes information produced by entire swarms of nanodrones will inevitably overwhelm the capacity of the human brain to interpret such data in real-time.\u00a0 It becomes no longer practical to direct the activity of a single surveillance unit.\u00a0 Instead, through ad hoc networking and the utilization of its collective computational power<\/strong>, a swarm will continuously update and redeploy its units to best meet its objectives.\u00a0 Humans are, thus, removed from micro-level operations altogether, relying on machines to best organize themselves during a mission.\u00a0 Human commanders simply transmit objectives to the swarms and wait for an outcome.\u00a0 Thus, nano-fogs are distinct from panoptic drones because their command and control systems are separated, with the control aspect becoming decentralized.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Excerpted from NYTimes: "The Changing Shapes of Air Power"<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We should expect to see similar changes on civilian terrain as well.\u00a0 Many of us already use smartphones and other mobile devices to access personal documents that we store (via Dropbox, Google Docs, and other such services) on servers that may well be halfway around the world.\u00a0 We also use these device to communicate with one another through centralized servers (via Facebook, Twitter, and other social-networking platforms).\u00a0 These devices, however, seldom communicate directly with one another, but this may soon be changing.\u00a0 The iPhone 5<\/a>, for example, is expected to integrate near field communication<\/a> technology that will allow it to securely communicate with nearby devices, even enabling payments to be made by “bumping” one device to another.\u00a0 Each bump creates another connection in a new fog that is beginning to envelop our augmented society (in which the cloud is already old news).\u00a0 And, as this trend progresses, we may find that the old panopticon metaphor\u2014power manifest as control from above\u2014begins to appear somewhat anachronistic<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last winter, Cyborgology contributor David Banks described the Pentagon’s Gorgon Stare system\u2014a nine-camera flying drone that can stay airborne for weeks at a time\u2014as a “panopticon in the clouds.”\u00a0 Like Jeremy Bentham’s infamous prison design (later adopted as a metaphor for all of contemporary society by Michel Foucault), the deployment of surveillance drones serves, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":563,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[10798,9954,10796,10794,10799,10806,1268,10800,10793,585,10803,2931,2142,1356,10808,10802,10797,1902,10804,3525,2143,10807],"class_list":["post-3320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","tag-cloud-computing","tag-cyberpunk","tag-david-banks","tag-drones","tag-dropbox","tag-foglets","tag-gilles-deleuze","tag-google-docs","tag-gorgon-stare","tag-iphone","tag-iphone-5","tag-jeremy-bentham","tag-michel-foucault","tag-nano","tag-nanobots","tag-near-field-communication","tag-neil-stephenson","tag-panopticon","tag-society-of-control","tag-spying","tag-surveillance","tag-transmetropolitan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/563"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3320"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3345,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3320\/revisions\/3345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}