Note: This story was originally published with the title, "Here in the Fishbowl".

6 Comments

1. 1. cdrkln 06:34 AM 8/18/08

   The security issue vs privacy is most certainly a relative thing. Anyone that lived in a small, primarily rural, community before everyone had an easy way to get out of the community (like a car) knows how little privacy there was. Everyone was watching everyone else, and through the gossip mill, anyone who wanted to know what someone else had been up to had no problem getting the information. And yet, most considered those communities much more secure than the "cities". What was the result? A way of life many long for today.

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2. 2. thepete 05:43 PM 8/18/08

   I think a core issue is being missed. All of this voluntary stuff with Facebook and MySpace is just that--voluntary--Big Brother is not. I check my email several times a day. My father barely checks his once a month. It's a mistake, I think, to compare a voluntary openness to forced surveillance. Any time I want, I can shut down my blog, silence my Twitterstream, close my Facebook and delete everything in my MySpace and my life will go on. George Orwell's Big Brother gave his subjects no such freedom. I do think it's dangerous for us to not be aware that government and (more creepily) corporations are watching us, but again, we can opt out at any time.
   
   Just my 2 yen, of course.

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3. 3. The Bard 06:21 PM 8/18/08

   Is the often quoted saying 'If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to be concerned about' valid when other less scrupulous people or corporations abuse ones openess or transparency? The core concern should be about the dangers of allowing access to personal information on a grand scale becoming available to the political elite thus facilitating a lurch to totalitarianism.

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4. 4. The Bard in reply to cdrkln 06:27 PM 8/18/08

   I agree, however in small communities the gossip or 'scandal' issues were 9 day wonders and not archived for automatic retrieval or other usage by faceless people many miles away to be used for a wide range of purposes not all benign.

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5. 5. Tan Boon Tee 11:39 PM 8/19/08

   A disclaimer in one of the websites points out that the user of the internet runs an inherent risk of being tracked. No message or information via the internet is private. In short, there is no privacy.
   
   With the mushrooming of tiny and ultra-efficient surveillance gadgets all over the world (particularly in the big cities), eavesdropping and bugging have become incredibly rampant if not near insanity. There is no such thing as privacy.
   
   George Orwell would never believe that terrorism could have helped to expedite the Big Brother mentality so soon. In the eyes of national intelligence, no body can keep any secret. Everyone would turn into a living zombie with an identification number covertly tagged. Where is privacy? (Tan Boon Tee)
   

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6. 6. rbrtwrd 08:37 AM 8/22/08

   One snage wit hsimply counting numbers of viceo surveillance characters is the assumption that they're all use dby 'government' for 'security' purposes. Many are used for traffic control, many are installed by organisations for monitoring doors and carparks. One mainline railway station I regularly use in London is bristling with video cameras - but for crowd control (it is a very busy station at rush hour) rather than anti-terrorism. So it's a lot more complicated than just saying more remote video=better security, or alternatively that remote video is ineffective. You have to dig deeper and look at what they're being used for and by whom.

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