Visions of Surveillance in "24" and "The Wire":
Peter Suderman has an interesting essay on attitudes towards surveillance in the latest issue of The New Atlantis. From the intro:
Two hit television dramas exhibit the complex human response to technological surveillance: 24 and The Wire. Both shows shed light on the growing societal awe of surveillance technology while also reflecting our fear and uncertainty about our ability to master it. Although surveillance technology dominates the worlds of both shows—24's built-up city of Los Angeles and The Wire's decaying Baltimore slums—the shows' overarching attitudes towards surveillance differ greatly. Fox's 24 bows in awe of the omnipotence and omnipresence of satellites and fiber optics, while HBO's The Wire regards phone taps and recording devices suspiciously, as flawed tools that reveal the corrupt nature of bureaucracy and are, at best, necessary evils. Thus, the difference between the two shows is one of belief: one’s view of surveillance technology is based in faith, the other's in doubt.
In that case, The Wire is the vastly more conservative show, at least as conservatism has been traditionally understood (as opposed to the reborn Trotskyites who claim the mantle today).
(Although "compromise" is strangely fitting in some ways.)
Not to be pedantic or anything . . .
Shows like the Wire, on the other hand, may offer a more realistic perspective of surveillance. Instead of allowing for a God-like power over agents and government actions, they are but one more tool, and one that is imperfect at best. Moreover, unlike "24" where the nation's top leadership seems to have nothing better to do than to follow and direct one single operation (and who knew that presidents spend so much time in LA?), in the Wire, the government's agents are often uncoordinated, and the left hand may not know what the right hand is doing. So, instead of a God's-eye view of the action, surveillance merely adds to the clutter, much of which is lost or ignored or useless.
All in all, the Wire's portrayal is more satisfying and, as one comment put it, perhaps more conservative because it recognizes human limits, human failings, and the general confusion existing within large organizations like governments. On the other hand, those who like the idea of being ruled by Plato's Guardians may take comfort in the Guardians' ability (per "24") to control even the most minute events on an ongoing manner.
So I guess it's not okay to cite international law in your opinions, but perhaps fictional tv characters are sufficient?
Do Scalia's seminars have precedential value? What's the style for them?
Randy: you may not have noticed that Scalia did not "cite" a "fictional tv character" in his "opinions."
But nonetheless, don't you find it disturbing that anyone would cite for argumentative support of torture a completely fictional tv character? If the case was that strong, surely you would not have to resort to something completely made up.
Or, to please the conservatives here, why couldn't I cite to the films of Michael Moore for support on any of the subjects he talks about, such as gun violence, the Iraq war, or health care? Or would you hoot me down for citing to such 'fiction'?
You are correct- one show deals with national security threats, while the other deals with crime, although I could make an argument that the illegal drug industry has security implications (border control, for example).
But that's not the big difference. The big difference is the idealized way in which the surveilance and security apparatus is portrayed in one and not the other. Sure- it's TV and not real life, but I prefer accuracy to hype.
Then again, I watch maybe 4 hours of TV a week (not counting such realistic videos as Stargate SG-1 and Babylon 5), so I'm possibly not unbiased!
right?
Content and form are two separate matters. No matter what form a message takes, we can analyze that message. For instance, the portrayal of women as being unable to manage without the intervention of a noble man is rather similar in Sleeping Beauty vs. Gone With The Wind despite being works of very different forms.
I'm sure this is true . . . but isn't there a trivially obvious reason why this would differ between the two? 24 is about elite operatives of the Federal government. Federal government agents have to fill out sheafs of paperwork too, of course, but 24 imagines some kind of agency where there isn't that kind of paperwork, and Jack Bauer can go around killing people willy-nilly without having to fill out incident reports and suffer disciplinary consequences and so on. That's a fantasy, sure, but it has nothing to do with technology -- rather, the costlessness of technology is a function of the fantasy of an unfettered agent of the government. James Bond and all that.
The Wire, on the other hand, is set at the level of local government. Of course they don't have enough money. Of course they fudge paperwork and get in trouble for it. These, again, aren't costs of technology really. They're just functions of local government being cheap.
Particularly in a city like Baltimore -- the one time I visited Baltimore, I walked from a Johns Hopkins campus down to the inner harbour area. Baltimore was, bar none, the most miserable hole of a city I have ever visited in America. Like a movie set of a slum -- there were the crumbling buildings, the cracking paint, the mangy dogs on the doorsteps, the great drifts of trash spilling out of the alleyways. I'm sure there are nice bits in the city, especially out in the suburbs, but from what I saw the city is just a hole. No idea where they get their taxes.
Anyhow, all that aside, we don't really need to turn to fiction, whether 24 or the Wire, to understand the modern surveillance society. We just need to look at Britain -- the most heavily surveilled population on Earth now, right? With talking surveillance cameras so the operator can scold the citizenry. They're even planning on bringing out hovering surveillance drones, apparently. The whole panoply of science fiction toys. On the more mundane level, the other developed European countries give us a pretty good sense of what life will look like with massive surveillance. (Note that the US total in that article does not include the "warrantless" intercepts, but as far as I know, there's no reason to think those would bring us up 1000% to the level of Italy or the Netherlands). Not appreciably safer -- Britain's immense CCTV deployment availed them little in stopping the July 7th bombing -- but not much different from today.
My favorite 24 trick is the way they pull up drawings for any randomly selected building, and have no problem sorting through the thousands of drawings associated with those buildings to get the as-built plan of the exact floor on which Jack is trapped. This is assuming the drawings are even in electronic form, which most are not. We have no experience doing stuf like this.
Man, you simply don't get out enough. There are much more miserable cities in this country than Baltimore. Heck, you could have traveled just a few more miles up the road to Wilmington, Delaware if you wanted real destitution. And just pick any of the large cities in New Jersey, they are all miserable.
But if you want real poverty just venture to any city in the south, even in the states that are supposedly booming. Even the supposedly hip and prosperous cities like Atlanta, Houston, Charlotte, and Dallas conceal vast underbellies of crushing poverty. And don't even get me started on Mississippi, Alabama, and my home state Louisiana.
I have never watched 24 but I imagine it is full of fanciful technology like satellites being able to read license plates. Such things are not only beyond the realm of current technology (and anyone who claims otherwise is simply lying), they are physically impossible.
As for the idea that 24 promotes the idea of incorruptible and omniscient government, that's just nuts, Spitzer. Have you actually -watched- the show? I'm in the process of working through it and as of Season 5 we've had:
*SPOILERS FOLLOW*
-Two corrupt vice-presidents (Seasons 2,4, and 5)
-A President portrayed as not just weak and cowardly but treasonous (4,5).
-Corrupt and/or Incompetent officials including but not limited to the following agencies: CTU (1,4,5), NSA(2), CIA(5), DHS(5), and DoD(2). The bad apples have ranged from field agents to agency directors and deputy directors.
-A secure government facility that has been compromised by moles (1,4,5), anti-government militia types (2), and bad security procedures by employees (3,5) leading to exploits by terrorists.
Even the good individuals on the show are shown as fallible. David Palmer, after 4 years in office, is shown as having started to compromise on his previously rock-solid principles in Season 3. Jack has had multiple plans blow up in his face over the year (though I'll agree that he gets away with an unbelievable amount of monkey-business), Tony Almeida demonstrated several instances where his emotions overrode his judgement and led him into critical errors in seasons 1, 2, 3, and 5.
Yeah, it's completely horrifying. It's almost like somebody using a hypothetical to illustrate a legal point - it shocks the conscience that somebody would do something like that.
Granted, it's not as horrifying as the use of hyperbole in political argument. Doing so in a time when BusHitler goons disappear people to Gitmo all the time and every phone call is listened to by government jackboots strikes me as fatuous - when we live in a time that resembles Orwell's 1984, we have more important things to do than to wildly exaggerate reality in the interest of making political points. So while I find using works of fiction to support torture - or to at least discuss it - is disturbing, it isn't the most disturbing thing I've seen recently.
I sense sarcasm. Horrifying, no. But it disappoints. In fiction, anything is possible. Hence, fiction, in the above example, is not a good source for citation.
"Using a hypothetical" is not a valid analogy. Litigators in fictional TV law shows (e.g., Perry Mason, Matlock) often win cases by solving mysteries and/or getting on-stand confessions. I hope real U.S. Supreme Court justices don't recommend this as a general rule for real litigators.
Today, privacy is a real issue. But I expect that 30 years from now, when practically everyone will have a personal, portable AV recorder, everyone will take for granted the complete absence of privacy. Opening closed doors will not be fascinating or newsworthy, because every door will be transparent. And no one will be afraid of being seen, because no one will know what it's like NOT to be seen. The desire for privacy is, after all, a learned desire.
Indeed, I don't see, today, any mass fear of e-mail reading or phone tapping, given that so many of us freely post our controversial opinions in public forums.
I do think that this is an interesting point. How do we think our concepts of privacy will change over the next few decades? For instance, the concept of the home being a private space for the nuclear family is really rather modern. The ways we utilise space and the social conventions surrounding privacy have changed dramatically over the centuries - and even decades. I have speculated that in the urban culture of the late middle ages, for instance, that outdoor/(semi-)public space may have been a more appropriate venue for private conversation than domestic interiors. This is potentially going off on something of a tangent to the main line of discussion here, of course... But at least it's a distraction from the torture discussions on Volokh today. ;) (And this isn't to say that I am not concerned about increased surveillance... But for the purpose of this post I am more interested in how people react to it rather than its socio-political implications.)