纳米技术与隐私:有关全景敞视监狱外的持续监视

Nanotechnology and privacy: on continuous surveillance outside the Panopticon

我们认为,隐形标签、传感器和射频识别芯片等形式的纳米技术将在两个方面引发不同于过去几十年中传统意义上的隐私问题。一是它们将不再仅仅围绕监视集中和权力集中的理念,如全景敞视监狱的隐喻含义,而是要关注分散层面上的持续观察;二是对隐私的关注可能不仅仅涉及对信息流动的制约,同时也涉及到相关材料和纳米制品,如芯片及标签的设计。我们首先建构了一个框架用以概述当前有关隐私问题的辩论情况,进而提出我们的基本观点。

We argue that nanotechnology in the form of invisible tags, sensors, and radio frequency identity chips （RFIDs） will give rise to privacy issues that are in two ways different from the tradition- al privacy issues of the last decades. First, they will not exclusively revolve around the idea of central- ization of surveillance and concentration of power as the metaphor of the Panopticon suggests, but will be about constant observation at decentralized levels. Secondly, privacy concerns may not exclusively be about constraining information flow but also about designing of materials and nanoartifacts such as chips and tags. We begin by presenting a framework for structuring the current debates on privacy, and then present our arguments.