Privacy Under Threat

The infrastructure is all there. All we now need is some repressive and subversive government to plug into it and they can track their citizens right down to when the go to the pub and who they meet with there. The privacy of individuals is under threat more than in recent history. Cameras track your moves in city streets, Software in your smart phones tracks your location and transmits it out over the internet. Almost all information about you that used to be private is now out there on the internet somewhere. Seldom in history has the ground been so well laid for total control over the activities and movements of people.

The latest push comes again from Facebook, already the focus of much controversy. their latest product "places" automatically tells "friends" where you are. In order to avoid this happening, you have to go in and refuse the service. In other words, the default in that you are tracked. This has a lot of people up in arms.

And then, there is the latest uprising against Google Earth, in Germany. They are taking issue with the idea that their homes are clearly visible on the internet. That's after extensive controversy about the inclusion of people in street scenes, a matter on which Google had to do some bending.

Some people view those who object to these privacy intrusions as hopelessly outdated - even neanderthal-ish. Instead of condemning, they should study some history, focus particularly on past oppressive governments, and remind themselves that all that could happen again, and now with much more efficiency.

For a summary of the most recent Facebook discussion, see this article. And for a look at the Google issue in Germany see this one.