Europeans know all about internal passports, but not even the East German Stasi could observe the entire population at a keystroke. What's more, spy cams are getting smaller and cheaper all the time. Such devices are designed to be hidden in everything from smoke detectors to neckties. New York police taped large portions of the Million Youth March in Harlem. Social psychologists say that taping political events can affect a participant's self-image, since being surveilled is unconsciously associated with criminality.
Ordinary citizens shy away from politics when they see activists subjected to scrutiny.
But even ordinary life is altered by surveillance creep. Over the long run, mass monitoring works like peer pressure, breeding conformity without seeming to. Communications professor Carl Botan documented these effects in a 1996 study of workplace surveillance. It's a brave new world. In 1998, anybody could be watching you.