A little girl in an African backyard swings a homemade Hula Hoop around her waist, watched over by her proud father.
Thousands of metres overhead, there is another eye on her.
This is the face of modern warfare: an armed drone piloted from Nevada beaming a live feed to an image recognition centre in Hawaii, with mission control rooms on both sides of the Atlantic.
The target is a Kenyan terror cell, which counts both UK and US citizens among its members.
But what about the innocents, like that nine-year-old girl, in the kill zone, completely oblivious to what is happening above?
This is the question playing out in real life in conflicts across the world, and dramatised in the tense new political thriller Eye in the Sky, starring Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul and Alan Rickman in his final role.
Who is really watching you?
Unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as drones – because of a perceived similarity to the male bee – serve as 24/7 “eyes in the sky” for ground troops in areas considered too dangerous for manned aircraft or for surveillance missions deemed too dull.
Such innovations in technology can help win wars far away from the battlefield, as Alan Turing’s Nazi code-breaking machine – depicted in acclaimed film The Imitation Game – showed us more than 70 years ago.
But how much are advances in surveillance today part of a more sinister trend of covert information gathering in our everyday lives?
Technology is a natural part of what we do in the digital age. It helps us stay connected to our friends all around the globe and to our workplace. It helps us with the shopping, the banking, the bills, and provides us with the latest in entertainment and travel. It can even keep us healthier for longer through real-time information on our vital signs.
But there is a darker side to the digital trails we generate, as shown most starkly with the Edward Snowden revelations about the secret government tracking of metadata – the ‘footprint’ of information left behind that exposes where and when you’ve been when on the phone or online.
What our digital lives say about us
It’s not just governments tracking us.
With so much of our lives now digitised – from email, search and social media to financial transactions and online dating – information can be used to build up increasingly sophisticated pictures of our behaviour.
Even if the data doesn’t directly identify us (although it can be linked to our physical selves through IP addresses, social media and email accounts) it is regularly used to sell us products through targeted advertising.
Information on our physical location can also be obtained through Wi-Fi tracking of our phone, smart travel cards for public transport, and the thousands of cameras recording our pictures daily which can be analysed through facial recognition software.
With the increased use of personal monitoring devices to stay fit, there have even been cases overseas where information from wearables has been used to catch people out in court.
How much privacy do we really have?
Privacy in Australia is still protected under the Privacy Act (1988). Complaints are looked after by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner while the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 governs how much and when Australian agencies are allowed to watch us.
Every social media scandal with leaked personal information and pictures, and every Ashley Madison-style hack that hits the headlines, may bring about a sense of schadenfreude.
However, it gets more serious when it’s our own data being used to defraud us through identity theft. Recent statistics show this type of crime cost more than 770,000 Australians an average of $4000 each over a year, leading to serious warnings from police.
When it comes to privacy in the workplace, your employer is generally allowed to monitor your use of email and the internet, although different protections may apply with keeping recorded CCTV footage.
While it hasn’t happened here yet, in what may be the ultimate “time and motion” study, journalists at a UK news organisation arrived to find devices installed to monitor when they were at their desks. Allegedly there to improve energy efficiency in the building, the devices were removed promptly following complaints.
So what next?
While we’re not yet in the “Big Brother” territory predicted by George Orwell in his classic novel 1984, it seems if the technology is there boundaries will be pressed. It remains important to remain vigilant, especially on the rights of children, the monitoring of our political activities or how our health and credit data is being stored and used.
With so much information about us already available, the next step looks to be increasingly sophisticated ways of joining and analysing the dots using the smart algorithms of artificial intelligence.
Among projects being developed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is Mind’s Eye: a visual intelligence program aimed at predicting human behaviour as it unfolds.
It’s not quite the world of pre-crime arrests depicted in Minority Report, but perhaps we’re getting closer.
There is also work being done on biometrics like body odour, DNA and gait analysis (like in the latest Mission Impossible) to augment existing facial recognition technology.
Eyes in the sky?
When it comes to drones, despite a trend for using them in law enforcement and covert work as depicted in Eye in the Sky, in civilian life they look set to have other uses.
Australian startup Flirtey, in partnership with Virginia Tech and NASA, has recently used a drone to carry 4.5kg of medical supplies. Other reports have shown they could be used in remote Australian search and rescue operations.
Yet for most of us, drones remain way to do aerial photography, or for hobby racing (Star Wars drones were a hit at Christmas). Still concerned about your privacy? The flight is strictly regulated, aimed at safeguarding our privacy among other things.
At least for now.
Eye in the Sky is in cinemas from March 24. Visit the Eye In The Sky official website for more.
