Watched Without Consent: How Technology Quietly Replaced Our Privacy

In today’s world, we no longer protect privacy—we're watched without consent. It’s something we trade away. From smartwatches that monitor our heart rate to voice assistants that record conversations, our daily lives are documented, analyzed, and stored—often without our complete understanding or consent. The unsettling truth is that we live in an era where technology watches us more closely than we watch it.

Most people know that targeted ads appear after they’ve had a conversation near their phone. They notice when an app asks permission to access their location “even when not in use.” And yet, instead of resisting, society has adapted. We’ve become passive participants in a system built on surveillance. It’s not just happening in authoritarian states—it’s happening in Western democracies, in small towns and big cities, and in the subtle ways invisible forces increasingly shape our lives.

In The Laurel Series, especially in The Laurel Prophecy and The Laurel Legacy, we see this tension between freedom and control play out through the eyes of Nicole Ellison. In Laurel, Kentucky, Ivy bands—a sleek, wearable form of biometric tech—are presented as helpful wellness tools. But underneath their polished exterior lies a chilling truth: they monitor emotions, regulate behavior, and report noncompliance to a shadowy government entity known as the Ministry.

What makes the story feel so real is that it could happen. It is happening—just in pieces.

A Scenario Too Close to Reality

It’s 7:05 a.m. Your Everlight alarm wakes you up by syncing with your sleep cycle. As you stretch, your smart bed transmits vital signs to a third-party wellness company. Your kitchen assistant reminds you to log your meal, which your fridge has already scanned via its internal camera. Your wristband vibrates—your stress levels are high. An AI-generated message offers a guided breathing exercise. You decline. Your behavior is flagged for non-participation.

Later that week, a recruiter says your job application was rejected. “We had some red flags regarding behavioral consistency,” they say vaguely. You don’t ask questions—you already know. Somewhere, a system decided you weren’t compliant enough.

Sound dystopian? It’s not. According to Zuboff (2019), surveillance capitalism is now the dominant logic of modern tech companies, which commodify human behavior for profit. The more data they collect, the better they can predict—and shape—what you’ll do next.

What’s more troubling is how this data is used without transparency. As Lyon (2018) explains, surveillance technologies have become “embedded in everyday life,” creating a society where governments monitor people, corporations, employers, insurers, and even schools.

Why We Stopped Fighting It

The real danger isn’t the surveillance itself—it’s its normalization. People accept tracking if it promises safety, convenience, or productivity. We tell ourselves it’s harmless: “I have nothing to hide.” But privacy isn’t about hiding; it’s about agency. It’s the right to decide what parts of ourselves we share—and with whom.

In The Laurel Legacy, the character Benjamin Wells begins to question these assumptions. A law student and critical thinker, he notices inconsistencies in academic reports and unexplained disappearances of students marked “noncompliant.” His quiet resistance reflects what many in our real world are beginning to do—dig deeper, ask questions, and uncover truths hidden behind algorithms.

Even in the real world, scholars warn that automated surveillance can create “digital inequalities,” disproportionately affecting marginalized populations (Eubanks, 2018). Poor families, young people, and communities of color are often subjected to more intense digital scrutiny under the guise of fairness and security.

The series presents a haunting but hopeful message: not everyone is asleep. Some still believe privacy matters, resist being reprogrammed, and remember a time before we gave our lives away, one permission click at a time.

What Can We Do?

We can start by:

• Questioning defaults. Turn off location tracking when you can. Read the terms before clicking “accept.”

• Advocating for regulation. Support laws that protect digital rights and penalize unethical data use.

• Educating others. Use stories—fictional or real—to open eyes. Books like The Laurel Series are not just entertainment. They’re cautionary tales.

As Nicole Ellison says in The Laurel Redemption, “Maybe the world doesn’t need another version of me. Maybe it needs the truth I’ve carried.”

Technology is not inherently evil. But unchecked, it becomes a weapon of quiet control. The more we accept it without resistance, the more we allow our freedom to vanish—not with a bang, but with a notification.

References

Eubanks, V. (2018). Automating inequality: How high-tech tools profile, police, and punish the poor. St. Martin’s Press.

Lyon, D. (2018). The culture of surveillance: Watching as a way of life. Polity Press.

Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs.