Undoubtedly, the smartphone is among the most remarkable of inventions, certainly of the modern era, and quite possibly of all time. It places unprecedented amounts of information at our fingertips, allows us to communicate across vast distances, and grants ordinary people access to tools that only governments, corporations, and media organizations once possessed.

Nevertheless, this technology, like every other, comes at a cost. The smartphone, you see, comes with a high-definition camera. As such, it has inaugurated a revolution that has transformed everyday life into, potentially, a theatrical experience in which fellow citizens are reduced to objects, to involuntary participants in someone else’s content creation. This has undermined trust, increased interpersonal conflict, and even led to varying degrees of violence.

It is for these reasons, and not, ultimately, some abstract “right to privacy” (as significant as this is), that we need now to advance the discussion on the pursuit of anti-surveillance technologies.

Human beings are embodied persons. In the “liberal democracies” of the West, there exists a diverse range of metaphysical views on the nature of a human person. Yet the institutions, laws, and customs of the West, particularly the modern West, are arranged to express the idea that human beings, irrespective of the contingent characteristics that individuate them, are subjects that, as such, possess equal dignity, equal rights. The smartphone camera has been used by some private actors as an instrument of the objectification of others.

More exactly, we are embodied beings. We perceive, we cognize, through our bodies, by........

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