Cloaking, veils, camera's and privacy

The conflict between security and privacy is one of the utmost concerns for people in our world today. It sometimes seems like the only way to stop criminals who want to murder and exploit is to spy on everyone and sort through to find them. Be it through camera's on the corners, wire taps on phones or emails we are faced with a challenge of balancing our desire for safety and to support the governmental security forces we pay taxes to protect us and our innate mistrust of their corruption and political motivations.

Earlier I posted an article about camera's going up on the corners of cities, and my belief is that this is going to happen more and more inside homes and schools etc. and I thought before of how it might be possible to protect people from the camera's through cloaking devices that make us nothing more than a blur to hide identity. The cloaking technology is not something I fully understand the science of, but here is an article about one form of cloak:

Scientists create first cloaking device

LOS ANGELES, Oct.19 (Xinhua) -- Scientists have created the first cloaking device to demonstrate the theory of hiding an object from electromagnetic radiation.

The cloak deflects microwave beams so they flow around an inside object with little distortion, making it appear almost as if nothing were there at all, a group of researchers reported in the Oct.19 online advance edition of the journal Science.

Cloaks that render objects essentially invisible to microwaves could have a variety of wireless communications or radar applications, according to the team led by scientists at the U.S. Duke University.

The first device is far from perfect in that it is barely 8-cm wide and can only reduce back scatter and forward scatter, the researchers said. But the achievement represents "one of the most elaborate metamaterial structures yet designed and produced," they wrote in the Science paper.

It also represents the most comprehensive approach to invisibility yet realized, with the potential to hide objects of any size or material property, they added.

But how would these cloaks be affordable to everyone? They wouldn't. And so something else has struck me as a possibility - the veil. Right now certain sects of Islam require/encourage women to where berka's that cover their face for religious modesty. The debate right now is as to how much veiled women can/should participate in cultures where nobody else is wearing them. Turkey, a country with a majority of Muslims doesn't even permit the complete veil, for they see it as a symbol that divides people. On the other hand, many Middle Eastern countries require it by law so that women MUST wear the veil. European countries, who like to be politically correct, yet are finding themselves threatened by extreme Islamic terrorists have not been able to decide what to do about it yet...

And then, add to it the paparazzi who follow stars and make their lives hell anytime they go out in public. People who become the fascniation of the public such as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie can't go anywhere... and if video blogging starts to generate income for private individuals, their invaded privacy the rate of stalkers and interest in people who can't afford the protection is going to grow. I have seen first hand at conventions the scary way that obsessed fans lose all sense of reality when they see someone famous. And the way they will track people down... In a society where the potential to track someone's every movement by camera is all around, the safety of individuals who sky rocket to fame through their fad video blog would be a major concern.

As I watch all of this happen, and think about my novel, it strikes me that during the era of which my story takes place, that instead of an expensive cloaking device, or in addition to it, the veil might be a privacy solution. It might start out that more and more women would be wearing burka's in some places, and celebrities who want to move around in these places could do so by wearing plain black veils and blend in with the population. And as more and more places allow such veils for religious reasons, to prevent it for other reasons would be discrimination, and as more people began wearing them, it could become a popular way of traveling in secret.

The other complication I would throw in there is that some people might decide they would rather be filmed all the time. With the false accusations and sensationalized media convictions such as in the Duke Lacross Team Rape Accusation the only proof some people can have to avoid jail or clear their name (often the more important of the two) is to have PROOF they were somewhere else at the time. Nobody takes anyone's word for anything anymore, and people are more apt to believe what they want to believe than ever before.

So not EVERYONE would wear a veil, but it would be an option... and cloaks would be a better options to be worn with or without a veil, because it would hide people from the video camera's, but through a code, an individual might be able to de-blur themselves. Of course then there would be the piracy of codes.

All of this is very complicated, but so is life! :)

Now, I'm off to write... I'm editing up chapter 5 today and the story has really been smushed together so that the plot is happening at a much faster rate. I would love to finish this chapter by the end of this weekend- that is my goal.

So if my beta readers are reading this - hopefully you'll find out what happens next soon!!