The Internet Privacy Irony

"We got computers; we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed."
Life During Wartime - Talking Heads

For some time now scholars and commentators have pointed out the sense of anonymity that one experiences when going online and how it influences us. Many have suggested that it is this sense of being cloaked that unfetters a coarser side of one's nature, tossing off epithets as if you're in the locker room, exploring dark corners of the web that you wouldn't do at the library. Oh there might be the occasional cookie or browser history to contend with, but hey, any modern browser lets one go into 'stealth' mode to deal with that. And I must say that from what I have seen I have to agree that when the possible stigma of being called out for bad behavior is removed then individuals behave differently.

And now we learn (although I have always suspected) that indeed 1984 is here, albeit a few years late. The government is amassing all sorts of "meta-data" about us - our phone records, our social media activity like Facebook, this blog, maybe even our credit card transactions. Couple this with a new gargantuan data center being built by the NSA out in Utah, and it's not hard to see where this is going. The techniques of mining large amounts of data with platforms like Hadoop (which businesses use to gain insight into their customers' habits) is being applied on this treasure trove of data. It is no exaggeration to say that when the supercomputers connect all the dots of your digital breadcrumbs they will have a stunningly complete picture of you. And we simply have to hope that the folks in charge will play nice and not use this information to consolidate their power. You dare to run for office against Boss Hog? Well we'll just see about that.

The grand irony here is that people surfing the net in supposed anonymity are in fact revealing the details of their political views, sexual interests, and only God knows what else. And while that is scary as hell, it pales in comparison to the people I meet whose assessment is "well if you haven't done anything wrong you don't have anything to be worried about." That sort of naivety must be comforting to those in power.