The Evolution of Surveillance

From USB Drives to Facial Recognition

In the borderlands between China and North Korea, a sophisticated network of trust and risk operates. Defectors coordinate with smugglers to move USB drives loaded with outside information across frozen rivers. These drives, described as “like gold” to North Koreans, move through an elaborate gray market where “you might go to the market and kind of look around furtively… and then you follow them into a quieter place” to make the exchange. This might seem worlds away from the sleek facial recognition systems being deployed at American airports, but they represent two points on the same continuum: the evolution of information control and surveillance in our modern world.

The Normalization of Control

The progression from “cute and novel” to “pervasive and insidious” rarely announces itself. It begins with convenience - predictive keyboards that make typing easier, face unlock features that save us seconds. These voluntary adoptions create the infrastructure for what comes next: systems that are technically optional but practically mandatory.

Consider the airport facial recognition systems. As Sigal Samuel notes, “I feel time pressure to make it to my gate quickly and social pressure not to hold up long lines.” What begins as an opt-in convenience transforms into a coercive choice, wrapped in the language of efficiency and security. The TSA frames it as reducing “friction” - a seemingly benign goal that masks the broader implications of normalizing biometric surveillance.

The Infrastructure of Inequality

But perhaps most telling is who gets to opt out - not just in theory, but in practice. Federal regulations explicitly exempt certain classes of individuals from biometric requirements: diplomatic visa holders, NATO officials, and those determined exempt by the Director of Central Intelligence. This creates a two-tier system: one population whose biometric data is collected and retained for decades, and another whose privacy is protected by their proximity to power.

This mirrors what Virginia Eubanks warns when she describes the “digital poorhouse” - how automated systems often first target those with the least power to resist. As one of her informants presciently notes: “You should pay attention to what happens to us. You’re next.”

The Speed of Transformation

The pace of this transformation is particularly striking. In North Korea, information control requires physical infrastructure - border guards, river crossings, USB drives distributed “a couple hundred at a time”. But in our digital age, control systems can evolve and spread at the speed of software updates. What began as “harmless personality quizzes” on Facebook became tools for “engineering the public” through Cambridge Analytica, creating what Renée DiResta calls “bespoke realities.”

This rapid evolution mirrors what Maggie Appleton observed in technology design: a journey from “what the user sees” to “a reliable process for identifying and solving problems.” But when applied to surveillance systems, this efficiency-focused approach can mask the broader implications of what we’re building.

Maintaining Agency

Understanding this evolution is crucial for maintaining individual and collective agency. As Joy Buolamwini of the Algorithmic Justice League warns, airport facial recognition is “a way of acclimating the public to having more and more sensitive information taken.” When we understand that today’s convenient features may become tomorrow’s surveillance infrastructure, we can make more informed choices about which systems we adopt and normalize.

The parallels between North Korean information control and Western surveillance capitalism might seem stark, but they highlight an essential truth: control systems, whether overt or subtle, rely on our acceptance of their necessity. The question isn’t just whether we can opt out of airport face scans - it’s whether we recognize and resist the broader normalization of surveillance in our daily lives.

In a world where some are exempt from surveillance by virtue of their position while others face 75-year retention of their biometric data, we must ask: Are we creating a future where privacy becomes a privilege rather than a right?