Privacy: Nothing personal?
"I have nothing to hide," did you say?
Isn't there anything you wouldn't want to hide? Some skeleton better kept locked in a cupboard?
Well, it may not be possible in the future, if what is being dreamt by the authorities come to fruition.
All sorts of reasons are offered to justify why total and absolute monitoring of citizens are thought necessary. The main reason currently put forward is the need to fight terrorism. Then there also the secondary benefits of unmasking potential swindlers, con artists, criminals and such like, which will protect the average you and me from exploitation.
When the arguments are placed before the general public, there is general unanimity on consent: we have nothing to hide, so why worry about the plans?
We could take this view "nothing to hide" towards one extreme. If we have nothing to hide, then a cynic might pose the question: why dress up then, apart from the only reason of protecting oneself from the elements?
Yes, that scenario requires one to visualize the world as a huge nudist camp! In the private nudist camps, one would assume that they are patronized by people of all sorts of endowments. A global open camp is not beyond comprehension or possibility, it is a matter of scale, rather than of concept.
Leaving that aside, returning to the current (March 2009) world economic crisis, which has spilled over from last year, one is forced to pause for a moment to pose the questions: who perpetrated it, and who ended up as victims?
From what we hear, a bunch of "legal swindlers" called bankers were behind it all. The victims were none other than the Mr. And Mrs. Average Public.
Now, one is tempted to ask, given all the personal data that have been gathered, stored, updated and monitored, how come that the benevolent governments could not foresee and act to prevent that particular type of terrorism?
How come the upper echelons of society escape the net? Perhaps the systems are designed to look down, not up?
When you dig into this rather alarming trend in society, one does come up with frightening happenings. I surfed the BBC site today, while following a current thread of alleged data misuse (09-03-2009), and came across a number of reports, which have been published earlier.
I would like to present them to you here, for your convenience, although you can also read them at the BBC site. I pray BBC will not take issue of publishing them here.
1. Do you know what they know about you" " Published: 23-11-2007
2. Someone's watching you" " Published: 14-03-2008
3. 'No decision' on giant database" " Published: 17-07-2008
4. "Firms in data row deny wrong doing" Published: 06-03-2009
This manic desire to hoard personal data and the idiotic desire to trust them to insecure computer systems mean one thing - data "leakage" into unscrupulous hands. The time will come when divorce courts are presented with "evidence" gleaned on contestants in this manner.
Apart from this "legal" eavesdropping on you, there are other ways for outsiders to steal your personal data. Identity Theft is one such mechanism. Another one is theft from your computer(s) via malaware, which exploit security loopholes.
Where will all these end, or lead to?
The next place they will invade is your castle - your home. An innocent-looking box of tricks sitting on the TV will do it nicely for the authorities. Perhaps not far from there, the mandatory chip implant will make its appearance. That could tap into your thinking processes, monitoring as well as controlling.
Ah, I should stop here, NOW!