prohibiting high blood alcohol levels. The automobilised society thus brings with it considerable invasions of personal privacy. Cameras already watch over dangerous intersections. As well, there is increasing use of systems for automatic electronic identification of road vehicles, in order to reduce congestion or charge for road use, or both. A computer can record when your car passes a monitor underneath or beside the road.
Far from cars enjoying “freedom of the road,” they actually do more to put people on police files than any other technology today. The solution is to move towards a society in which cars play a much smaller role. Proper town planning, which makes it easy for people to live affordably near workplace, shops and amenities, can greatly reduce the need for cars, and make walking and cycling much more attractive. For longer distances, cheap public transport offers a service without the rationale that surveillance is needed to avoid accidents.
Medical records
Records of a patient’s medical treatment can, in the wrong hands, be used to embarrass or discriminate against them. Hospital personnel are known to “browse” through computer records on patients, just to pass the time or to look for people whose names they recognise. Hospitals sometimes make special efforts to ensure the privacy of prominent individuals, protecting their records from routine observation.
The simple solution is for patients to keep their own medical files. They could, if desired, give copies to anyone they trusted, whether a family member, a friend, their doctor or indeed a hospital.
Prisons
Prisons are the ultimate in surveillance. The prisoner is both constrained and observed. There are several ways to reduce the number of prisoners and hence the extent of surveillance. One is to abolish victimless crimes, such as for vagrancy and drug use. Another is to increase social equity, so that there is less incentive for crime.
The ultimate aim should be to abolish prisons. After all, they do not reduce the crime rate and are an insult to human dignity. Prisons should be replaced by a range of methods and policies genuinely oriented towards rehabilitation.[12]
Workplaces
Workers are monitored on the job by management to maintain output but also to keep workers under control. The alternative is for workers to control their own work collectively.
This alternative includes semi-autonomous work groups, in which workers decide the way they will do a job within the general framework set down by management. It includes collectives, in which all workers as a group make the crucial decisions about what to produce and how to carry out their jobs. It includes workers’ control — usually associated with larger organisations — in which workers make the basic decisions about their enterprise and work, using decision-making methods including voting, delegate systems, and rotation through managerial positions. In addition, methods of production can be selected or changed to facilitate workers’ control.[13]
It should be noted that under workers’ self-management, what a worker does is still watched by others. The difference is that it is workmates who do the watching, not managers. This is a change in the distribution of power. Self-management should be distinguished from techniques such as Total Quality Management, which also involve workers watching each other, but in a system designed by management to extract the greatest profit while maintaining managerial control.
Spy agencies
Organisations such as the FBI, MI5 and KGB, which are found in countries throughout the world, are responsible for some of the most objectionable snooping. They escape serious scrutiny by claiming the higher needs of “national security.”[14]
There is a simple solution to surveillance by spy agencies: the agencies should be abolished. These organisations mainly serve their own ends and the ends of state elites. The chief targets of spy agencies are not foreign spies but domestic citizens. There has never been an open and honest assessment of their value to the wider community. Such assessments are prevented by secrecy provisions.
What about preventing terrorism? Spy agencies have probably done more to promote than to prevent terrorism, especially remembering that most terrorism is carried out by governments. A grassroots antiterrorism programme would include serious attention to the grievances of minority groups (whose members may resort to terrorism to gain a hearing) and community-level communication and solidarity.
What about defence secrets? These should be made obsolete by abolishing the military and replacing it with community-based methods of nonviolent defence, which require little or no secrecy.[15]
Government services
Information is collected by governments to make sure that recipients of services are genuine. This applies to unemployment benefits, child support schemes, pensions for people with disabilities, war veteran benefits, education support schemes, health benefits, and the like. Keeping detailed information on recipients is considered essential to prevent cheating, in order to keep costs down.
One solution is to provide basic services free to anyone who wants them. This applies today to services such as public parks and public libraries. Why not also to food, shelter and health services? The basic principle is that services for identified individuals are replaced by collective provision, for which there is no need for individuals to be identified.
To address the ramifications of such changes would be an enormous task. Let me outline a few cases. Consider food. Basic staples could be provided at community centres to anyone who wanted them (possibly with donations invited to help cover costs). This would be quite possible with today’s production, which is more than ample to feed everyone if distributed appropriately (including in most of the countries where people die of starvation).[16] In many countries, governments control markets in order to limit production. Such schemes would become unnecessary.
