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Xprize Foundation founder Peter Diamandis has joined a growing list of tech executives who think that global surveillance is a good idea, saying, \u201c[h]umans behave better when they\u2019re being watched.\u201d<\/p>\n
Diamandis shared his opinion in a post<\/a> on X this week, and went much deeper on his beliefs on his Substack<\/a>, where he described, essentially: Big Brother, but good.<\/p>\n \u201cRadical transparency is coming. A future where you can know anything, anytime, anywhere. A future where no one can hide,\u201d he wrote on Substack. \u201cWe are wrapping the planet in an \u2018Sensor Ecosystem\u2019: a living, multi-layered sensing system that runs from the cameras in your home, to the phone in your pocket, to autonomous cars and humanoid robots on the ground, to drones and flying cars in the air, all the way up to a constellation of satellites imaging every square meter on the Earth every single day.\u201d <\/p>\n Diamandis\u2019 comments come roughly two years after Oracle founder Larry Ellison said something very similar. <\/p>\n \u201cCitizens will be on their best behavior, because we\u2019re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,\u201d Ellison predicted<\/a> during an Oracle event in 2024. <\/p>\n Diamandis appears to have been spurred to make such claims after hosting a podcast interview with Will Marshall, the CEO of Planet, the largest operator of Earth-observing satellites. <\/p>\n \u201cNo one can hide anymore,\u201d Marshall told Diamandis during the conversation. \u201cIf you build a school, we\u2019re going to see the school. If you build a data center, we\u2019re going to see the data center. And the accountability is going to be there for the whole world to see, no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n Diamandis, Ellison, and Marshall are not wrong that much of this tech is here and spreading. It\u2019s becoming increasingly hard for people to make it through their day without being photographed by home security systems like Ring, camera-laden cars like Tesla makes, or automated license plate readers from Flock. Even if they can, they are surveilled through their phones by ad networks and data brokers.<\/p>\n But Diamandis\u2019 comments are some of the most blunt about seeking to eradicate privacy. <\/p>\n \u201cYour kids will grow up in a world with no \u2018off the record\u2019,\u201d he writes to any parents reading his post. \u201cTeach them that the best privacy strategy is integrity, living so that being seen costs you nothing. And fight, hard, for a world where the watching goes both ways.\u201d<\/p>\n Diamandis seems to treat this as an inevitability, but that\u2019s not how everyday people are responding to the rise of surveillance tech. Some cities have covered their Flock cameras with trash bags<\/a> after reports that the company\u2019s data was being accessed by ICE, the FBI, and other law enforcement. Public pushback on Ring\u2019s \u201cSearch Party\u201d feature \u2014 aimed at finding lost dogs, an idea that is typically hard to argue against \u2014 contributed to the company canceling its own partnership with Flock.<\/p>\n Meta, meanwhile, has been dealing with complaints about its camera glasses (made in partnership with Ray-Ban), and is also fighting a lawsuit over privacy concerns<\/a>.<\/p>\n Much of Diamandis\u2019 Substack post is framed around giving advice to entrepreneurs or executives on how to live in a world with no privacy. This advice mostly boils down to: \u201cbe a good person.\u201d And even he doesn\u2019t have an answer for the question of whether people would do this because it\u2019s the right thing to do, or because they might be under surveillance. (He writes that it\u2019s the question he\u2019s \u201cbeen chewing on\u201d since concluding the interview with Marshall.) <\/p>\n What Diamandis doesn\u2019t wrestle with is the same set of questions that tech executives often elide in conversations about surveillance and privacy. The definitions of \u201cgood\u201d or \u201chonest\u201d are, unfortunately, often in the eye of the beholder \u2014 in this case, powerful tech companies that control the surveillance infrastructure.<\/p>\n Diamandis briefly argues that these companies are offering transparency, and that \u201ctransparency is a tool, and tools don\u2019t have ethics.\u201d He doesn\u2019t reckon with the fact that tools often inherit the biases of their creators. Who decides what behavior captured by a security camera is \u201cgood\u201d or \u201chonest\u201d? This question isn\u2019t explored, let alone answered.<\/p>\n All he\u2019s willing to say\u00a0is that transparency \u201conly builds trust when it points both ways.\u201d That balance seems tricky, at best, in a world where the technology to create such \u201ctransparency\u201d is controlled by so few.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n