The Dark Knight and Surveillance

Today for some quick entertainment, I decided to watch some portions of Christopher Nolan's instant classic, The Dark Knight. You may have seen in the past about how many of the themes and characters from Batman can have philosophical applications. But have you considered their relevance to surveillance? If you recall, Bruce Wayne uses the cell phone sonar technology developed by Lucius Fox to help him locate the Joker. However, Fox states that as long as this technology is used, he won't be a part of it; that it is "beautiful...unethical....dangerous. This is wrong." Does it change if it's not Batman, but your local police department doing the same thing? According to the Cato blog, various police departments have been using cell phones to track people for years, without warrants. Does this concern you?

Personally, my car has been searched twice by police with drug-sniffing dogs even though I have never used illegal drugs nor have any been in my vehicle. However, cops know that when they do this they will never face repercussions from their superiors because if they don't find anything (which of course they didn't in my case) they can just claim that the dog alerted on my car (something which I cannot prove to the contrary). This gives cops the ability to search any car they so please. How is this related to surveillance?

The more closely the government keeps track of you the more easily it can make life difficult for you. What if you have nothing to hide? Don't be so sure. Perhaps you own an unofficial copy of a copyrighted item. With civil asset forfeiture, your computer or other property might be confiscated without your even being charged with a crime. In a twisting of constitutional law, since your civil asset is not a person, the state requires you to prove its innocence (that it wasn't used in the commission of a crime) instead of the other way around. And even if you prove your stuff and yourself innocent, it will require a lot of money and time.

The question of whether art imitates life or vice versa has been asked many times. This is one of the times where they eerily and regrettably coincide. Stay safe out there.