Artificial intelligence, digital identity, biometric recognition and automated surveillance are transforming societies around the world. As governments adopt increasingly sophisticated technologies in the name of public safety and efficiency, a larger constitutional question is emerging: are the laws designed to protect individual liberty evolving just as quickly?
eLocal Investigates: This report examines the growing debate surrounding surveillance technology, democratic accountability and privacy. Drawing upon discussions from Tucker Carlson's interview with cybersecurity researcher Benn Jordan and former police officer Noel Pichardo, together with the enduring themes explored by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, this investigation asks an increasingly important question for New Zealand: Who watches the watchers?
Democracies Have Always Faced This Question
Every democracy must answer the same fundamental question: how much power should governments possess, and who ensures those powers remain accountable?
Throughout history, governments have sought new ways to protect their citizens, prevent crime and maintain public order. New technologies have consistently expanded those capabilities. From fingerprinting and photography to CCTV, DNA databases and artificial intelligence, each generation has inherited tools capable of collecting more information than the one before it. The challenge has never been whether technology advances—it always does. The challenge is ensuring democratic oversight advances alongside it.
Today, artificial intelligence, biometric recognition, digital identity, automated number plate recognition, connected vehicles and predictive analytics are rapidly transforming what governments, corporations and institutions can know about the people they serve. Supporters argue these technologies improve security, reduce crime and create more efficient public services. Critics ask a different question: if technology now makes it possible to monitor almost every aspect of daily life, are constitutional safeguards evolving quickly enough to preserve individual liberty?
That tension lies at the heart of this investigation.
Orwell's Warning Was Never About Technology
George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has become one of the most frequently referenced books whenever surveillance is discussed. Yet Orwell was not attempting to predict future technologies. His concern was far deeper.
He explored what happens when power becomes so pervasive that citizens begin regulating their own behaviour, not because they have done anything wrong, but because they believe they may always be watched. Privacy disappears. Independent thought becomes increasingly cautious. Public conformity gradually replaces genuine freedom of expression.
More than seventy-five years later, the technologies available to governments have developed far beyond anything Orwell could have imagined. Yet the constitutional questions remain remarkably familiar. The issue has never been whether surveillance technology exists. The issue is how democratic societies choose to govern its use.
Privacy And Freedom
These themes formed the centrepiece of a recent discussion between Tucker Carlson, cybersecurity researcher Benn Jordan and former police officer Noel Pichardo. Jordan explains that modern surveillance systems are no longer limited to recording events after they occur. Artificial intelligence is increasingly capable of analysing patterns, identifying associations, reconstructing behaviour and generating detailed behavioural profiles by combining information from multiple independent sources.
Throughout the discussion, Carlson argues that privacy is not simply a personal preference but one of the foundations upon which individual liberty depends. If citizens know they are constantly monitored, behaviour inevitably changes. People begin censoring themselves, avoiding certain associations or altering their conduct because they believe they may always be observed.
Carlson repeatedly warns that surveillance technologies, if allowed to expand without meaningful democratic oversight, risk creating what he describes as a "coming slave state." His argument is not that Western democracies have already reached that point, but that technological capability can outpace constitutional accountability unless legislatures, courts and citizens establish clear limits before those systems become permanent.
Whether readers agree with Carlson's conclusion or not, the discussion raises a question worthy of serious public debate.
Can genuine freedom exist without meaningful privacy?
The Modern Panopticon
More than two centuries ago, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed the Panopticon, a prison designed so inmates could never know whether they were being watched. The genius of the design was psychological rather than physical. Prisoners would eventually regulate their own behaviour because they believed observation was always possible.
Modern surveillance technologies have prompted renewed discussion of this concept. Artificial intelligence no longer simply records events. It increasingly interprets them. Vehicle movements can be reconstructed, behavioural patterns identified, associations mapped and future activities predicted through sophisticated data analysis.
The technology itself is neither inherently good nor bad. Like every powerful tool, its impact depends upon the legal safeguards, ethical standards and democratic oversight governing its use.
Does This Affect New Zealand?
For many New Zealanders, large-scale surveillance still sounds like something occurring overseas. Yet much of the technology discussed internationally already exists here in various forms.
Councils continue expanding CCTV networks throughout urban centres. Police deploy trailer-mounted Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) systems capable of recording thousands of vehicles each day. Retailers have trialled facial recognition technology to combat repeat offending. Modern vehicles increasingly generate detailed telematics, driver behaviour and location information, while proposals surrounding digital identity continue evolving as governments seek more secure methods of verifying identity online.
Each of these technologies has generally been introduced for legitimate public purposes such as reducing crime, improving road safety, protecting communities or increasing administrative efficiency. Viewed individually, each can be justified on practical grounds.
The larger constitutional question is what happens when these systems begin working together.
When CCTV footage, ANPR, facial recognition, connected vehicles, artificial intelligence and digital identity platforms become capable of forming a comprehensive picture of an individual's daily life, society enters a fundamentally different relationship between citizen and State. Whether that capability is ever fully realised remains to be seen, but the technology is evolving rapidly enough that the public debate should arguably occur before—not after—that point is reached.
Where Are The KPIs?
Every major surveillance initiative is introduced with stated objectives. Governments promise safer communities, lower crime rates, improved emergency response, more effective policing or greater administrative efficiency.
These are legitimate public objectives.
But democratic accountability requires more than good intentions. It requires measurable outcomes.
If taxpayers are funding increasingly sophisticated surveillance infrastructure, they are entitled to ask whether those systems are delivering the benefits promised.
Has violent crime declined?
Have burglaries reduced?
Has vehicle theft fallen?
Have road fatalities decreased?
How many serious offences have been solved using these technologies?
How often are innocent citizens' data collected without leading to any criminal investigation?
What independent audits have been undertaken?
What return have taxpayers received for the billions invested in surveillance capability?
In almost every other area of public expenditure, governments are expected to publish measurable performance indicators. Should surveillance infrastructure be held to a lower standard?
The New Zealand Bill of Rights
New Zealand's Bill of Rights Act 1990 protects citizens against unreasonable search and seizure, while other legislation, including the Privacy Act 2020, regulates the collection, use and disclosure of personal information.
However, these laws were written before artificial intelligence, biometric recognition, digital identity and large-scale behavioural analytics became part of everyday life.
That raises legitimate constitutional questions.
Can legislation developed in an earlier technological era adequately regulate systems capable of continuously collecting, linking and analysing information about millions of people?
Should Parliament revisit these protections before surveillance capabilities continue expanding?
Should New Zealand consider recognising an explicit constitutional right to privacy in the digital age?
These are ultimately questions for Parliament, the courts and the public.
Who Watches The Watchers?
Perhaps the oldest question in any democracy is not whether governments require powers.
Every government requires powers to perform its responsibilities.
The enduring question is whether those powers remain accountable to the people who granted them.
History demonstrates that surveillance has expanded under governments representing many different political traditions. The technologies have changed dramatically over time, but one constitutional principle has remained remarkably consistent.
Power requires oversight.
The greater the power exercised by institutions, the greater the need for transparency, independent scrutiny and democratic accountability.
The issue is not whether today's governments can be trusted.
The issue is whether future governments should inherit surveillance capabilities that were never fully debated, independently measured or clearly understood by the public.
Preventing Government Overreach
Healthy democracies do not rely solely on the goodwill of those exercising power. They rely upon constitutional checks and balances designed to prevent excessive concentration of authority regardless of which political party forms the government.
If surveillance technologies continue expanding, Parliament may eventually need to consider additional safeguards. These could include independent judicial approval before accessing sensitive personal information, mandatory deletion periods where no offence has occurred, independent audits of artificial intelligence systems, transparent public reporting against measurable performance indicators, and clear statutory limits preventing "mission creep", where technologies introduced for one purpose gradually become used for another.
These principles are not obstacles to effective policing or public safety.
They are constitutional mechanisms designed to preserve public confidence in democratic institutions.
Beyond Elections
Democratic accountability does not occur only once every three years at election time.
Voting remains one of democracy's most important safeguards, but it is not the only one. Citizens also have a legitimate interest in understanding how surveillance systems operate between elections.
Who audits them?
Who measures whether they are achieving their stated objectives?
Who reports failures?
Who investigates misuse?
Who ensures extraordinary powers remain extraordinary?
If governments routinely audit the public, perhaps the public is equally entitled to ask:
Who audits the surveillance state?
Final Thought
Every generation inherits new technologies.
Every democracy must decide how those technologies should be governed.
Public safety and individual liberty need not be opposing ideals. The challenge is ensuring that one is never pursued at the unnecessary expense of the other.
Artificial intelligence will continue advancing. Digital identity systems will become more sophisticated. Surveillance technologies will become more capable than anything previous generations could have imagined.
The defining question for New Zealand is not whether these technologies will arrive.
It is whether constitutional safeguards, parliamentary oversight and democratic accountability will evolve just as quickly.
Power should never exist without accountability.
And perhaps the oldest democratic question of all still deserves an answer.
Who watches the watchers?
Sources
Primary Discussion
Tucker Carlson featuring Benn Jordan and Noel Pichardo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH3QGv2L9ng
Historical Reference
George Orwell — Nineteen Eighty-Four
https://dn790002.ca.archive.org/0/items/NineteenEightyFour-Novel-GeorgeOrwell/orwell1984.pdf