Cheaters and the sinister normalisation of our surveillance society
With zero outrage, a hit TV show turns snooping on private citizens into entertainment. How little we value our liberties
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/26/cheaters-sinister-normalisation-surveillance-society
In many ways the most horrifying part of this is how pedestrian and boring it is. Shrug. Who cares that people are using illegal methods to obtain information, heck the government does it all the time! Go on-line and pay a few bucks and get a laundry list of illegally obtained (but often scraped right off of government web sites because the government can’t be bothered to hire actual security professionals!) information about the most private part of any person. Of course, to the Facebook generation all this concern about privacy is rather idiotic, ‘privacy’ is the stuff that gets in the way of distributing their mundane activity. I am quite sure that I have spoor all over the ‘net that, if agglomerated and organized properly would have just about every single facet of my personal information. At this point, no one cares to collect that information (there are some pluses to being a nobody), so unless my wife thinks I am cheating on her (when would I have the time?), I doubt anyone would bother. However, were I to, for example, go into politics, no doubt all would be dredged up (this blog would be a fabulous place to get quotes out of context!) and used to embarrass me and my family.
I guess the real question is, is the notion of privacy a quaint relict from a bygone era, like cursive hand writing and very soon, the ability to type on a keyboard (not to mention, any knowledge of Latin or Greek)? Is anyone who cares about privacy just a curmudgeon who refuses to get with the times? I am starting to believe that this is the case. Privacy is dead because there was no one that cared to keep it alive. I see this as a big problem for the intelligence community (of which I am a member) as the young Turks now coming up through the ranks were raised on Facebook and Twitter and think nothing of posting their most personal information. That attitude will almost certainly lead to some loss of important information at some point and the longer this lossage goes on the more normal it becomes and the more difficult it becomes to change the behavior. Sort of like doping in sports, once everyone does it it becomes nigh on impossible to break the habit. Maybe I am over reacting and maybe these Turks can compartmentalize their life to the point where they won’t engage in that sort of behavior. Maybe these kids’ brains have developed different than mine. Maybe our nation will realize that all this top secret stuff really doesn’t need to be secret. Maybe I am getting senile and this blog is detailing my decent into madness…
