Big Brother and His 50 New Cousins: All Eyes On You.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a story about some of the possible dangers of the excessive spying and tracking that we live under in this Post-Snowden era.
In that same story, I contemplated the idea that those big data collecting companies (moonlighting as Social media) could sooner or later start to sell or "volunteer" the consumer’s private data to the governments of the world.
But between you and me, I was wondering if they aren’t already doing that.
This morning, the answer to that question came a little closer as I stumbled upon this article:
It’s official, we’re screwed.
This week, there was apparently a new law that passed on Britain called The Investigatory Powers Bill, a law that forces internet providers to send over all your internet history so they can track your every movement.
Everything you buy online, the love messages you send to your partner, and every small personal detail about you... It now belongs to them.
How about those voice files that certain apps keep recording 24/7? Well, you better not have sex with your phone in the bedroom.
Here’s the crazy, insane and ballistic part of this whole thing:
There are over 50 agencies in the UK that now legally can spy you with total impunity, from local police, to transport departments, to the food standard commission.. Etc.
The first thing that comes to mind is this:
Why would the food commission want to read your work and personal emails or keep track on the movies you watch?
But then that question takes a back seat as you realize that there are tons of people who work in those departments who can have access to everyone’s private and personal data.
In fact, the article states that even a normal inspector could basically steal all the personal and private data of any citizen, if he wanted to.
This is dangerous on so many levels.
And we’re not talking about some dude who works in the department of transportation and who has a crush on his neighbor, so starts reading all her personal messages and accessing her private nude photos..etc.
That's just the vanilla part.
Under this new Orwellian Law, how long do you think until some corrupt cop starts selling the personal data of millions of citizens for a substantial sum of money?
Anywhere from the likes of Cambridge Analytica to celebrity porn websites, they won't hesitate to pay the big bucks in order to seize and/or publish all sorts of personal data that should’ve always remained private.
And at the end of the day, if you thought this is scary enough… Wait until the taxman gets involved.
The funny thing remains that less than a decade ago, “Big Brother” was the biggest conspiracy theory the world had ever seen.
If you dared to even entertain the thought that the government may be spying on you, you would've been labelled a loon, a crazy person.. At the best of cases, you would’ve been considered a fool who listened to some insane and paranoid conspiracy theorists.
“Stop saying crazy stuff! The government would never do something something like that”.
Then Edward Snowden came around and Poof! All that judgment and ridicule vanished in an instant.
And far from learning from these lessons, everyone just accepted that they are being spied on and moved on.
“It’s just a few people with very high clearance that can have access to that data anyways”.
Fast forward a few years and that clearance level has been reduced to over 50 departments and every average Joe who works in them.
Big Brother is coming, and this time he has a hell lot of new relatives.
wow...technology can change the world
That's true!
nice post, but whats really scary is that when bills like this go out no one really hears about it, its all swept under the proverbial rug.
but if I say anything about it I'm a "ConspiracyTheorist"
Haha Bart's got it.
Yeah it's crazy that no one hears about, sometimes it's in the news like today, but it's shocking how these events are told in such a nonchalant way
Good perspective on things. There is so much information being collected about us at all times and so much already stored. Most people think Google is a search engine company. WRONG! I worked for them...
They are a marketing company. They sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of information to companies for purposes of targeted ads, just to use one example.
It is almost annoying to visit some web sites and then find that the ads that are coming up on other web sites are coincidentally related to the other things you were just looking at.
I really do wonder what will happen when people or Google or Facebook or the various other collectors of information figure out even better ways to create personal profiles of us. As technology advances, I wonder if it will become part of our permanent history that a future family genealogist could look at to learn about his long gone relative.
1984 has happened. Traffic cams are now turned into surveillance cameras daily now for solving crimes, for example.
The worst part is the apathy of most people. I think democracy and the tragedy of the commons situation in decision making has led us to this position. Everybody has a vote but no vote can make a difference. people stay complacent because they have some power but don't try to change anything because the power they have si not enough to do a god damn thing.
You're right, everyone votes but it doesn't make a difference at all.
In many places it's not important how many people vote or how, the only important thing is who count the votes.