Â鶹Éç

Good morning. Barely a day passes without a fresh claim about A.I. and other digital tech. A story I read at the weekend, however, stood out. It concerned a recent policing conference in Dubai which offered a glimpse into the global surveillance and intelligence-gathering business. The conference featured a brain-wave reader which purports to detect lies, as well as miniaturised cameras that sit inside vape pens, and video cameras that can zoom in from over half a mile away to recognise faces and number plates.

I don’t mind admitting that this all sounds very James Bond to me. Certainly, if the tech on display at the Dubai conference is for real it signals an emergent era of policing that will raise fresh questions about its effects on people’s privacy and about how political power may be wielded.

In the Christian calendar, today is often called Spy Wednesday. It is the day of Holy Week on which Judas decided to betray Jesus for the price of thirty pieces of silver. Spy Wednesday reminds Christians that Judas became, in effect, a spy in the midst of Jesus’ inner circle. As the anxious authorities closed in on Jesus, it is a close friend who keeps the target under surveillance and seals the betrayal with a kiss.

One suspects that modern surveillance technology will increasingly rely less on human skill and more on artificial intelligence. Some emerging surveillance tech clearly seeks to make windows into people’s minds or identify potential perpetrators from miles away. For some political leaders and law-enforcement agencies, and perhaps even for the public at large, such technologies may prove irresistible, not least because they could appear to help address policing targets at a time of stretched budgets; I guess they may be sold as free of human error.

In comparison, Judas’s kiss seems quaint. Yet, Judas’ surveillance and betrayal of Jesus reminds us of the human cost of the techniques any society might use to maintain its rule of law. Jesus is innocent of any crime, yet is still put to death as a threat to social order. Jesus says to Judas, ‘are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?’ Unlike a brain-wave reader, a kiss is human and, more often than not, intimate. Its intimacy underlines the tragedy of the broken friendship between Judas and Jesus. I as much as anyone want to live in a safe society. However, as attractive as the new frontiers of surveillance may ultimately prove, they are only as trustworthy as those whom they serve. The destruction of even one innocent life would be too high a price.

Show less