New Instruments of Surveillance & Social Control: Wireless Technologies

[Joanne98]

Increasingly there are indications that the uses of wireless technologies have been developed to target an individual’s biological body, with specific focus upon the neuronal functioning of the brain. In this paper I examine how some of these uses have had detrimental effects, and what this implies for both present and upcoming developments for particular wireless/sensor technologies. I consider whether this is not shifting dangerously towards a psycho–civilised society, where greater emphasis is placed upon social control and pre–emptive strategies.

Introduction
The rate of technological innovation in some fields is developing exponentially with new advances in wireless sensor networks, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, motes, nodes, grids, and media platforms. Information flows are increasing not only in their quantity and density, but also in their immersive quality. The historical developments of information communication systems can be said to have traced a similar path to how nation states have organised their global power base and dominance. First, power over the land and dominance in waging war on one’s neighbours through ground battle, the domesticated horse and the infantry soldier. Second, domination of the seas and the strongest Navy gave advantage to sea–faring Empires, such as Portugal, Spain, and Britain. The end of naval dominance then gave rise to the advent of the railroad and the dynamic change in transport technology, both in routes and in speed. The transcontinental scope of the railroads finally gave out to air power, winning the World Wars through dominance in the skies. And now, finally, the ‘final frontier’ is space, for ‘the vast potential resource base of outer space is presumably so enormous, effectively inexhaustible, that any state that can control it will ultimately dominate the earth’ <1>.

Likewise, modern communication technologies have moved from the land (the telegraph); to the sea (wireless radio; radar); back to land (cables; fibre optics); and to the intermediate land/air stage (masts/antenna); to the outer frontier of space (satellites); and finally now even beyond these frontiers towards a solar system Internet (Turner, 2007). Whoever controls these channels for communication can, in some degree, to be said to ‘dominate the earth’. And the possible uses of wireless communications for the dissemination, targeting, and receiving of clandestine ‘communications’ is an active industry.

The aim of this paper is to examine some of the examples and instances where the use of wireless technologies have been developed to target an individual’s biological body, with specific focus upon the neuronal functioning of the brain. I also show how some of these uses have had detrimental effects, and what this implies for both present and upcoming developments in particular wireless/sensor technologies. This paper shows that an upcoming area of importance is neurotechnology, a discipline that places brain functioning and knowledge of the human brain as primary. Technologies are now being researched and trialled that seek to penetrate and, to a degree, intervene in neural functioning. Whilst some have termed this positively as a coming ‘neural society’ (Lynch, 2004), I consider whether this is not shifting dangerously towards a psycho–civilised society, where greater emphasis is placed upon social control and pre–emptive strategies. I trace a timeline that follows developments from a historical context to the present; and finally to future scenarios and implications. It may be that the social pursuit of increasingly connective and immersive technologies has the potential to open up a Pandora’s box of problematics.

Opening Pandora’s box

The background to this narrative begins with the story of a true Pandora’s box — a U.S. project titled Project Pandora that was organized and administered by the psychology division of the psychiatry research section of Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR). This project was set–up to specifically research programs on the health effects of microwave exposure following the ‘Moscow Embassy’ incident. From 1953 to 1976, the Soviets directed microwave radiation at the U.S. embassy in Moscow from the roof of an adjacent building. Whilst this clandestine microwave targeting was allegedly known for some time by U.S. officials, the event was not made public until 1976 when the U.S. State Department finally accused the Soviet Union of bombarding the U.S. embassy in Moscow with microwave radiation for illicit purposes. It was initially reported as a harmless procedure for charging Soviet spy–bugs: ‘Soviet antennas, which are beaming the waves in both to charge up the batteries of their listening devices and to jam embassy–based U.S. electronic monitoring of Russian communications’ (Time, 1976a; 1976b). However, the State Department soon indicated that, in addition to interference mechanisms, the microwave radiation could have serious adverse effects on the health of the occupants of the embassy (O’Connor, 1993). This was supported by Soviet data in which Soviet non–ionising electromagnetic energy (NIEM) ‘research literature reported adverse health effects in laboratory animals and in Soviet radar workers at levels well below the 10 mW/cm2 U.S. ANSI safety recommendations’ <2>. Despite this being below the U.S. recommended levels the Soviet standards excluded military personnel whilst the U.S. did not, according to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), 1986 (O’Connor, 1993).

Soviet studies in the area of electromagnetic microwave radiation reported psychological symptoms in human subjects that included lethargy, lack of concentration, headaches, depression, and impotence <3>. O’Connor notes how the Soviet medical journals termed these collective symptoms microwave sickness whilst the U.S. literature referred to the symptoms as neurasthenia (1993). Time magazine reported in March 1976 that the State Department launched

a medical investigation of the thousands of U.S. diplomats and their families who served in Moscow since the early 1960s. In the wake of the microwave disclosures, former embassy employees and their families have recalled suffering strange ailments during their tenure in Moscow, ranging from eye tics and headaches to heavy menstrual flows. Some point out that former Ambassadors to Moscow Charles Bohlen and Llewellyn Thompson both died of cancer, within the last two years one other Moscow diplomat died of cancer, and five women who lived there have undergone cancer–related mastectomies — although no medical authorities attribute these deaths and illnesses to radiation. (Time, 1976b)

U.S. officials and military, long before the public exposure, were aware and concerned about the consequences of microwave bombardment of civilian and military targets. In 1972 the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released an internal report (later declassified through the Freedom Of Information Act Program <4>) that had been previously prepared by the U.S. Army Office of the Surgeon General Medical Intelligence Office titled ‘Controlled Offensive Behaviour — USSR’ (initially released in July 1972). The report states that

This report summarizes the information available on Soviet research on human vulnerability as it relates to incapacitating individuals or small groups. The information contained in this study is a review and evaluation of Soviet research in this field of revolutionary methods of influencing human behavior and is intended as an aid in the development of countermeasures for the protection of U.S. or allied personnel. Due to the nature of the Soviet research in the area of reorientation or incapacitation of human behavior, this report emphasises the individual as opposed to groups. (LaMothe, 1972)

It is interesting to note that the Report authors believed the Soviet research to be in the area of ‘reorientation’; suggesting that the U.S. were worried over concerns that the Soviets may be planning a mass zapping of U.S. citizens with the hope of ‘brainwashing’ them into a newly orientated ideological outlook. The 174–page Report is extensive, with much material extended upon various forms of beamed energies and wireless strategies. On the opening section on Electromagnetic Energy the report concludes that

Super–high frequency electromagnetic oscillations (SHF)
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