Who's Looking At You?
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 17 October 2017
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Once upon a time, total surveillance was the province of George Orwell and totalitarian states, but we now live in a world where oceans of data are gathered from us every day by the wondrous digital devices we have admitted to our homes and that we carry with us everywhere. At the same time, our governments want us to let them follow everything we do to root out evil before it can strike. If you have nothing to hide, do you really have nothing to fear? In Who's Looking At You , novelist and occasional futurist Nick Harkaway argues surveillance has reached a new pitch of penetration and sophistication and we need to talk about it before it's too late. This is our brave new world: data from pacemakers are used in criminal prosecutions as evidence, the former head of the CIA admits 'we kill people based on meta-data,' and scientists celebrate pulling a clear image of a face directly from a monkey's brain. Where does it end, and what does it mean? Surveillance used to end at our front door, now not even the brain is beyond the prying eyes of an information-hungry world. The application of big data brings many benefits and has the potential to make us wealthier, keep us healthier and ensure we are safer - but only if we the citizens are in control. The programme uses rich archive to illustrate how the 'watchers' have adapted to technology that has super-charged the opportunity to snoop. It examines the arguments of those who claim the right to keep their secrets while demanding that we the people give up more and more of ours. Transparency for the masses? Or simple necessity in a chaotic technological future? What happens to us, to our choices under the all-seeing eye? One thing is certain: if we don't make choices about surveillance, they will be made for us.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the Maze, listen first on BBC sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:40.0 | In my mind, the word surveillance conjures up images of spooks and spies, |
| 0:46.0 | highly trained people searching for their targets, |
| 0:50.0 | rifling through emails, listening into calls. |
| 0:53.2 | Each day, the level of psychological abuse increased |
| 1:00.8 | dehumanization, hassle. |
| 1:03.0 | I started inventing my own, what I call it, daily humiliations. |
| 1:10.0 | I'm Riana Dillon, and today's seriously interesting story takes us back to the beginning of the surveillance era and brings us right up to date. |
| 1:19.0 | Because our presenter believes big data and prying eyes have reached a new pitch of penetration, |
| 1:26.0 | maybe even into our private thoughts that we need to talk about, before it's too late. Nick Hark's asking, who's looking at you? |
| 1:36.0 | Ross Compton, the Middletown man charged with aggravated arson and insurance fraud, |
| 1:48.0 | for allegedly setting fire to his home in September, was arraigned in Butler County Common |
| 1:53.6 | Police Court today. Compton was arrested shortly after the fire by |
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