THE legal and ethical arguments when discussing surveillance, especially in the post 9/11 world, are still the subject of academic thinkers, industry practitioners, and knowledgeable citizen activists. The idea of being watched can be unsettling. But how avoidable is it when the global lean-in to technology, the Internet of Things (IoT), and social media have been intense?

Governments have long maintained the need for surveillance as a national security measure, lest the world witness repeats of heinous terrorism acts causing the deaths of thousands of people. Surveillance can appear as a necessary evil, insofar as it protects the population from harm. The extent to which state-supported surveillance is required, however, is debatable. Revelations of state institutions in the United States spying on their citizens, as revealed by whistle-blower, Edward Snowden, a former intelligence contractor against the US government’s National Security Agency (NSA), still leave many concerned.

In 2016, Business Insider documented Snowden’s leaks between 2013 and 2014. The report said the NSA had not only collected phone records of Americans, and accessed data for companies such as Google and Facebook, but also that 38 foreign missions and embassies were being spied on, and former President Obama ordered intelligence officials to assemble lists of foreign targets for cyberattacks.

These revelations, along with the explosive revelations of the British consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, which syphoned personal data from millions of Facebook users and weaponised it to sway democratic processes, have forced many in academia, industry, and activism to rethink how data is shared. Privacy feels more and more unreachable with the advancement of the IoT as micro computing devices are embedded into everyday objects such as refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, microwaves, stoves, watches and more, allowing them to send and receive data to allow the users with the technology doing the heavy lifting.

Discourse on surveillance, as occurred during the World Press Freedom Day observance at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre in Greater Georgetown, must be contextualised within the broader understanding of how surveillance has been transformed to the point where technology users willingly release their data through their social media accounts and smart devices.

On what constitutes “data,” Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias in “The Costs of Connection,” explain: “If a shopping list is scribbled on a piece of paper, we don’t mean that. But if the list is entered on a mobile phone, perhaps on Google’s Keep app, then we do mean that. Furthermore, if we consider the algorithms that collect information across all users of Keep to see what people are making lists of, we definitely mean that.”

In Washington, D.C., London, and Strasbourg, parliaments are taking a closer look at how big tech companies such as Google, Twitter, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), Amazon and the like not only capture data, but also how that data is used to make profit, sometimes to the peril of democracies and economic systems, as was revealed in the Cambridge Analytica scandal in the 2016 election of former US President Donald Trump; and even in the historic Brexit vote that saw the United Kingdom breaking away from the European Union (EU).

“Journalism Under Digital Siege” was the global theme for Press Freedom Day 2022. It recognised, according to UNESCO’s website, “how recent developments in technological means of monitoring and surveillance impact journalism and freedom of expression. In fact, freedom of expression and the right to privacy are among the human rights most impacted by the digital transformation.”

The UNESCO website further read: “Under this year’s theme, the celebration will also discuss how these developments impact the rights to freedom of expression, access to information, data protection and privacy, by looking into big, data-related issues such as the transparency of Internet companies, digital footprints, data retention and artificial intelligence.”

Much of what UNESCO explored as the challenges facing journalism in a digital world related more to the role of big tech companies with monopolies on internet-based conversation, always-changing algorithms which affect the visibility of the news and information, foster misinformation and disinformation including from “Twitter bots,” and create other artificial intelligence-related developments which muddy the waters of healthy discourse by inserting machine-operated accounts feeding on, learning from, and prioritising discord. With the recent purchase of Twitter by billionaire Elon Musk, CNN reports Musk wants to “authenticate all real humans” on the platform.

The focus on whether the President, Dr Irfaan Ali-led administration will spy on Guyanese felt misplaced. For what it’s worth, however, His Excellency committed that his government will do no such thing. That aside, the conversation on the future of discourse in Guyana, with a sizable population present on a borderless, still-regulating social media, is still to be had.