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@@ -2533,7 +2533,7 @@ export const backupDB = {
       "title": "Notes on Surveillance",
       "byline": "Ai Weiwei",
       "body": "<h2>To Watch and Be Watched</h2>\r\nSurveillance is the strongest characteristic of contemporary life, affecting everything from the highest levels of politics to the mundane everyday. Through rapid developments of technology, often by governments for scientific or military purposes, surveillance has become increasingly pervasive in society.  The gathering of information through observation functions as the most essential and valuable tool of those in power.  No one can say they are unfamiliar with this concept because no one in society is immune or exempt.  Yet why surveillance exists and how it functions is both familiar and unfamiliar, a physical and virtual language requiring definition.\r\n\r\nFrom early on, the act of surveillance functioned to identify, target, or help draw a conclusion about a subject—whether it be about an individual, a group, a movement, or society at large; it was a way to gather intelligence and come to a rational conclusion about the suspicious, questionable, or unidentified. Surveillance has existed since human intelligence manifested; or, to be clear, since humans understood themselves to be human, coexisting independently and among each other in a group.\r\n\r\n<h2>Game of Cards</h2>\r\nEach player has a set of playing cards which are known only to them. There’s the deck of remaining cards and the cards which have already been revealed. The cards that have been drawn—with their face values exposed—is public knowledge, which is shared fairly and openly.\r\nThe card that will be drawn next represents the present condition, affecting the exposed cards, your own unrevealed cards, as well as the cards remaining in the deck.  The cards in the deck are unknown to all and will ultimately determine who wins and who loses.\r\n\r\nA player would only agree to play if they believed that the unknown cards remain that way until openly revealed to all.  In reality, those in power, whether it be cultural or political, democratic or authoritarian, hold an advantage.  They know the value of the hidden cards.\r\n\r\nThe advantage comes from technological and logistical superiority, supported by special rules and laws.  Often, the excuse for this unfair condition is an opaque appeal for greater security against the specter of terrorism.  But why do we allow ourselves to play against a stacked deck?\r\n\r\nSociety has accepted the idea that data acquired through surveillance constitutes truth and fact. However, in many cases, the findings of this surveillance - from the cherry picked material presented, what is deleted and what is kept, the digital reconstruction of, and the context in which we see the data - is not in real time but a copy of that time which has been analyzed, interpreted, and then selectively disseminated.\r\n\r\nLike photography, is information gathered from surveillance reality or a (mis)representation of reality? Can the context in which it is made be divorced from the image we see? What of the intention to record in the first place?  The public’s reaction is manipulated through means of presenting a doctored reality.\r\n\r\n<h2>A Captivated Audience</h2>\r\nWhen a magician performs on stage, everything has the veneer of perfection; he pulls a rabbit out of a hat or tells you exactly which card you selected in the deck. A miracle has happened right in front of your eyes.\r\n\r\nIn 2011, I was arrested and secretly detained for 81 days. My interrogators brought up fabricated accusations issued in an attempt to dirty my name. I looked them in the eye and asked, “Do you think the people will believe this?” The interrogator replied with confidence that 99% of people will believe them.  A fundamental belief of those in power is that the understanding of the masses can be manipulated. That captivated audience, that 99%, will always exist, and that is who the magician performs for.\r\n\r\nSurveillance only works because of the demand for truth. However, this truth is provided by those with the power to conduct surveillance. The ones being watched are subject to the truth. In that case, that power of surveillance only exists when you are a willing participant in the system.  The power of the magician comes from the audience’s invitation for them to perform. The audience wants to watch, to see with their own eyes. They don’t even need to be convinced; they are being lied to, but they rapturously applaud. This is our society.\r\n\r\nCard players are different because you are invited to the game. You have to believe in fairness to even play. If the game is an illusion, you’ve already lost. Why waste your time with a game you can never win?\r\n\r\n<h2>Argos</h2>\r\nSurveillance is a constant, unblinking set of eyes watching over us; the Greek myth of Argos Panoptes come to life. From that, a sense of truth is formed. This generates within our minds an understanding of something parallel to truth and reality, which is the power of constant surveillance, that you’re under watch and your actions can be recorded and played back.\r\n\r\nModern surveillance is a game changer because those in power are not only interested in knowing more about you, but also in having the power to make you aware you are being watched at all times, which has two advantages.\r\n\r\nFirst, those in power can exploit the data gathered against a target—often through disclosures of distorted fragments of information—in the name of evidence or truth, transformed into the sharpest weapon. This can be information gathered such as where you have traveled to, who you choose to associate with, or what you have said or done in the most intimate settings.\r\n\r\nIn China, the police will never show the unedited recorded images or video, even though they have the CCTV recordings. Often, the reason given is that a technical error occurred. In the US, cases of police misconduct often go unresolved because body cameras “malfunction” or security footage goes missing.  They are able to tell the so-called “true story” while obscuring the full picture. Without providing all of the information, it will always be a one-sided game. The public is misled and exploited through the masquerade of transparency.\r\n\r\nIf arrested in the US, the police will tell you, “You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.” With surveillance, there is no declaration of any rights to not be observed, and all materials gathered can be used against you.\r\n\r\nSecond, to announce that a recording or evidence exists, without revealing it, can be damaging. The mere suggestion can imply a more serious situation than what took place in reality.\r\nPeeking into someone’s life without the observed noticing, or even to openly announce this capability, has a powerful psychological effect which changes human behavior. You may or may not be under surveillance and you will never know for certain.  This uncertainty not only serves to promote self-editing but can also drive a person mad.  It is like living in front of a two-way mirror.  We can all see ourselves, but who else is also watching us?\r\n\r\n<h2>To Know the Unknown</h2>\r\nThe more private something becomes, the greater the desire to know more. The level of exposure and public interest to know more are tied; how private it is increases its perceived importance and the sensation surrounding it.\r\n\r\nConsider the case of Michael Flynn, the retired lieutenant general who has refused to testify in the investigation on the Russia-Trump campaign. How much does the US intelligence community already know? The public’s attention has been captured by what did or did not take place. What we do not know constructs the desire to know more. The unknown can be as vast as the universe.\r\n\r\nPerhaps knowing too much puts us in a more difficult position to enjoy, imagine, and dream. When we first saw a footprint on the surface of the moon, a thousand years of poetry about the moon collapsed and no one wrote any new poems about the moon. Knowing more, we ended up with less.\r\n\r\n<h2>Getting Lost</h2>\r\nToday, the individual can no longer get lost. There are new technologies which tell us which roads to take in the most unfamiliar surroundings, that track how many steps we have taken or how many calories our bodies have exhausted, or the present temperature anywhere across the globe, immediately.  Those in power can also easily track us. They can check the record of anyone they want using text messages, email, and phone calls to see who you have been in contact with; GPS to track where you have traveled to; or simply bug your home or hotel room to listen in on your most private conversations. They can draw a complete map.\r\n\r\nIn 2015 I discovered hidden listening devices installed in the electrical sockets around my studio-home.  Hearing a story about a snake and discovering one under your table are completely different feelings. It’s still alive and you can’t kill it. The authorities begged that I return these to them, hating that they had been exposed.\r\n\r\nThe individual will always be left in a state of confusion because surveillance affects all the traces of our lives. The traces are the marks we have made; these are the choices that identify us as individuals. This includes our language, politics, education, traditions, and who we choose to associate with. The traces are evidence in our art, architecture, literature, poetry, and music. It is in all our activities and we have no other legacy than our traces.  All these things that we care deeply about have become data for a superior power to scrutinize without our consent. The saying, “It is none of your business” is now meaningless.\r\n\r\nWe believe that civilization is constantly working towards enlightenment. That knowledge has given us our self-consciousness, influenced what we know as human rights, and given us the understanding of equality. However, this is an old measurement.  With new technology, we were promised greater equality, a Utopian future, but new technology has raised more questions than provided answers. We are no longer created equal. We have become creatures guided by unknown forces in ways we don’t understand, and we live with a greater sense of uncertainty because we now doubt the information around us. Your judgement, your ability to discern fact from fiction, is under increasing stress.\r\n\r\nSuddenly, you are standing, helpless, in the middle of nowhere—lost. Your sense of trust is gone. It is gone because we now have different realities and different truths, which often contradict each other.  Indeed, we have become lost in an effort to be more clear. We depend so much on virtual reality that reality has become less important; our old understanding—of size, shapes, volume, texture, temperature, sound, lines, and light—remains, but, at the same time, they also exist in virtual reality, which gives us a completely different understanding about our very existence.",
-      "disabled": false,
+      "disabled": true,
       "__index": 1,
       "dateCreated": "Sat, 03 Jun 2017 20:04:13 GMT"
     }