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Thu 2 Feb, 2006 01:33 am
How much of what we say, what we write or what we do is confidential? How important is our privacy? Since the tragedy of September 11, 2001, there is an emerging social dynamic in America that effectively brings our most private thoughts, emotions and deeds into the public domain. Do we accept the intrusion or fight for our private sanctuary?
Phone conversations, emails, personal websites, credit/debit card transactions, etc., are our excursion into public domain. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a fact of all electronic exchanges. Everything that can be conveyed through a public information conduit (which is more likely to be electronic these days) IS being monitored, not by humans, but by sophisticated PRAs (pattern recognition algorithms). We are giving up our privacy in the interests of security. This, in itself, is not bad but there are consequences in expressing ourselves freely. We cannot, for example, use certain words, phrases, themes, or even images without being tagged by a monitoring PRA.
We take comfort in the perception that someone is watching over us but cringe at the thought of someone watching us. The former implies innocence and the latter guilt. The greatest danger in accepting the "watchers" is neglecting to institute a body to "watch the watchers". Are we running headlong into subliminal censorship? Can we ever find a truly private sanctuary in our lives?
To give a more positive spin on this social dynamic we can look to Ancient Greece. Is there such thing as a private citizen or, in belonging to a society, are we ever really free from public domain and public service since we are the beneficiaries of a civil infrastructure? The ancient greek word for private individual is ιδιώτης from which the word idiot derives today. In other words, within the mindset of the time, you could not be a citizen and a private individual. In contributing to the integrity of the civil/social infrastructure you had to serve the public good; you were considered a δημότης (a member of public life), or δημοκράτης (a keeper of, and contributing to, the civil infrastructure), the latter from which we derive the words democrat and democracy .
We believe in freedom of expression in America yet now we must always be aware that someone is watching. We should consider that a random train of thought could lead to indiscriminate discussion that would be scrutinized to our detriment. We must be careful of what we publish in our writings. We must accept the fact that as citizens, just like in Ancient Greece, anything we say and do is, as a matter of course, public domain.
There is a thing called Google earth, like a mega improved version of multimap, where you can type in any where on the planet and you get a zoomed up view of it, to the point where you can recognise cars in people driveways.
Its amazing to look at but then you realise theree is clearly technology being used that can watch us when we arnt aware of it.
Quite scary if you think about it.
material girl wrote:There is a thing called Google earth, like a mega improved version of multimap, where you can type in any where on the planet and you get a zoomed up view of it, to the point where you can recognise cars in people driveways.
Its amazing to look at but then you realise theree is clearly technology being used that can watch us when we arnt aware of it.
Quite scary if you think about it.
And what most people don't realize is that the resolution the intelligence agencies can get on satellite surveillance is about two or three orders of magnitude better than what is commercially available to the public. They can tell what magazine you are reading if the front cover is facing up when the "bird" passes overhead.
Re: Privacy, Security and Public Domain
chris2a wrote:How much of what we say, what we write or what we do is confidential? How important is our privacy? Since the tragedy of September 11, 2001, there is an emerging social dynamic in America that effectively brings our most private thoughts, emotions and deeds into the public domain. Do we accept the intrusion or fight for our private sanctuary?
Most of your post has little, if anything, to do with 9-11 and much to do with the rise of the Internet. Prior to the Internet people kept "blogs". They were called diaries and people wrote in them and kept them to themselves. They didn't publish them for any/everyone to see and comment on except for a small minority that went to a publisher and had them printed and bound for public consumption.
The "loss" of privacy has more to do with vanity than any intrusion. People want attention so they publish their "private" thoughts for the world to read. One doens't have to fight for privacy. The only person responsible for most people's loss of privacy is themselves. The concept is pretty simple - if you want to keep something private then you don't make it public.
Re: Privacy, Security and Public Domain
fishin' wrote:The "loss" of privacy has more to do with vanity than any intrusion.
This is not completely true. Furthermore, privacy is not the core issue of my proposal. It is the dynamic flux of civil infrastructure, social interaction and public consciousness in response to a trigger event like 9-11.
The only person who is truly private is one that cannot interact with the outside world, such as those who are afflicted with autism. The epithet
idiot was not as derogatory in ancient Greece as it is today.
You may want to read the initial post in its entirety again.
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