Dark Knight portends dark days for civil liberties

Stuart Corner
Friday, 18 July 2008 12:23

Opinion and Analysis

There is a scenario in the new Batman movie which, although technically absurd, foreshadows a surveillance system that is frighteningly close to reality

Bruce  Batman Wayne's resident tech genius and chief of R&D at Wayne Enterprises, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), manages to modify his cellphone so that it acts like a sonar and listening device combined and relays back, over the cellular network, a three dimensional image of its surroundings and any ambient sounds that it picks up.

Unbeknownst to Fox, Batman somehow installs this modification on every cellphone in Gotham City and hooks them up to a huge bank of monitors on which he can, potentially, see and hear everything around every cellphone in the city. (Yes, I know it's ludicrous, but please bear with me)

Batman's purpose is noble: he's out to catch The Joker who is on a rampage of wholesale slaughter and destruction. Batman reveals his system to Fox whose help he needs to monitor the bank of screens for any sign of The Joker while he, Batman, scours the city for the elusive villain.

Fox is appalled at the level of surveillance Batman has created and initially refuses to help. He is swayed by the need to end The Joker's reign of terror, but announces that he will resign from Wayne Enterprises as soon as The Joker is caught.

Now, here is where science fiction and surveillance fact come unpleasantly close to intersecting. In the UK, a society which already boasts more CCTV cameras in public places per head of population than any other nation on earth, the Government has flagged its intention to significantly ramp up the amount of information it gathers, and retains from telecoms service providers on the electronic communications of their customers: phone calls, email, instant message, web pages browsed etc.
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