The Inevitable Gaze: Social Media Surveillance and the Vanishing Act of Privacy

News often brings to light developments that, while concerning, feel eerily familiar. The recent reports about the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) planning a 24/7 social media surveillance operation, utilizing AI and private contractors to scour platforms like TikTok and Facebook for deportation leads, is one such instance. This initiative, as detailed by The Times of India "Deportation threat: US Immigration authority is planning to create 'spy team' for leads on Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms", highlights a deepening concern I’ve harbored for years: the relentless erosion of personal privacy in the digital age.

I recall writing about this back in 2017, when the debate around artificial intelligence and privacy was still, for many, a theoretical one. In my blog post, "Artificial Intelligence : Destroyer of Privacy ?" I questioned whether the very devices designed to assist us — like Zuckerberg's Jarvis — would become pervasive observers, relaying our behaviors, spoken words, and facial expressions to the cloud. I explicitly cited Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen of Google, who in their 2013 book The New Digital Age, warned that "People will share more than they’re even aware of." Seeing ICE now planning to integrate AI with commercial databases compiling property records, phone bills, and vehicle registrations, it's striking how relevant that earlier insight still is.

In another piece from July 2017, "Supreme may Propose : Technology will Dispose", I contemplated whether legal frameworks could ever truly stem the tide of technological advancement in surveillance. I envisioned scenarios, like "Spectacles (ala Google Glass) which allow wearer to take 1 hr videos of anyone / anytime, walking on the road and upload on the CLOUD." This was not merely speculative; it was a prediction of the pervasive monitoring capabilities that would inevitably be developed. The current plan for 24/7 social media monitoring, though initially focused on immigration enforcement, signals a societal shift towards ubiquitous digital oversight, extending the very concerns I articulated about the impossibility of controlling what others capture and share.

My blog, "Privacy does not live here !", further elaborated on the vast array of personal information — from birth details to financial records, health ailments to social connections — that is already, and often unknowingly, captured and made available. The chilling reality of ICE leveraging "AI and commercial databases like LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR" to build searchable profiles, as reported, is a stark confirmation of this long-standing concern. It's a digital Panopticon, where every public interaction and data trail can be aggregated and analyzed.

Kapil Sibal's memorable description of the digital world as a "Jurassic Park" where technology cannot be fathomed, tamed, or regulated, which I discussed in "A Hostile Advocate ?" from 2018, feels more apt than ever. The velocity at which surveillance technology, including facial recognition and AI-driven analysis, is advancing indeed leaves us with a sense of being outpaced by its capabilities. The vulnerability of immigrants in the face of such relentless digital scrutiny is deeply troubling, reminding us that while technology offers immense possibilities, it also presents profound challenges to human rights and individual autonomy.

Reflecting on it today, I feel a sense of validation regarding these earlier predictions, and also a renewed urgency. The current context, where surveillance capabilities are explicitly being weaponized against specific populations, underscores the critical need to revisit those ideas. The questions around privacy, data governance, and the ethical deployment of AI are no longer abstract; they are pressing realities demanding immediate attention and robust solutions.

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Regards,
Hemen Parekh