Living in the goldfish bowl

David Stoughton of ValueKinetics writes:

When I was eleven and twelve I experienced a crisis with religion. Although not from an especially religious family, I went to schools where religion featured prominently - in the syllabus, not just at morning prayers. Indeed, I recall winning a scripture prize around that time.

The crisis, when it came, was one of claustrophobia tinged with paranoia. I had been fed on a diet of stories about the omnipotent, all-seeing, god who watched over us. One who knows not just what you’re up to … but what you’re thinking as well. No chance of a respite, nowhere you could call your own. Oh, and there was a rider, ‘anything you think can, and will, be used against you in a higher court’.

The reminder that, “details of user e-mails and net phone calls will be stored by internet service providers (ISPs) from Monday under an EU directive,” recalls that time strongly for me. We live in an age where surveillance is the leitmotif of our culture.

We are all familiar with the facts. Data on us is gathered, tracked, and stored by a score of, more or less authorised, agencies; and we are under continuous observation, “ (with) more than 4 million surveillance cameras, the UK is the most watched nation in the world, in relation to the size of our population”. Shortly, ID cards and biometrics will extend both the scope of the data kept about us, and the range of those who have access to it.

I know that, occasionally, the data this surveillance tracks helps to keep us secure. Only yesterday more suspected terrorists, who had clearly been under surveillance for many weeks, were picked up – rather hastily, after an entirely typical security blunder. More often though it is used, and abused, for altogether less defensible purposes. “Councils in England and Wales have used controversial spying laws 10,000 times in the past five years, figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show… officials have been using it to spy on suspected dog fouling, littering and other minor offences.”

More alarmingly if, like me, the goldfish bowl scares you, “a survey of more than 180 local authorities found:

• 1,615 council staff have the power to authorise the use of Ripa (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act).
• 21% (or 340) of these staff are below senior management grade”

But, of course, it’s not just government that wants our data; business gets in on the act too, and they are just as indifferent to principle. “Nearly half of UK companies could be breaching the Data Protection Act (DPA) through the misuse of customer data,” said a report in 2006. And then there are the hackers. They want to know all about you too – well, obviously!

So I’m beginning to feel like I’m back in that goldfish bowl – but this time being watched from all sides. Shortly I expect to wake up to hear one of these agencies whispering, “we know what you’re thinking”, and then I’ll be thrown back completely into that late-childhood paranoia.

Can inducing paranoia in the populace really be excused on the grounds of its occasional benefits? Even if it can, where is the respect? Sometimes I find myself thinking the hackers have more respect than government. At least they have the decency to attribute some value to our data. They buy and sell the stuff. Unlike government, which shares your data with almost anyone who can offer a half convincing excuse - sorry, I mean reason. Or just leaves it on the train.

Comments

[Mike Bayler]

I'm very glad you chose to write about this David. I share your concerns. I was particularly bothered by the fact that the bill was pushed through as a "commercial" rather than a "police" issue ... ???

While I have no answers for this issue offhand, something about the cavalier way this has been executed and communicated gets my goat. I'm going to donate to the ORG (Open Rights Group) as our mutual good friend recommended, and keep watching the watchers as best I can - while trying to survive the recession that - gosh - was brought to you by the same award-winning team.