Knowing me, knowing you

This is the 21st century. We rarely carry cash or send mail that isn’t electronic, Tesco know when we’re dieting or when we’re celebrating, the government knows when we travel into central London. Pictures taken from Saturday night can be found on the Web, along with our date of birth, our marital status, and our religious beliefs.

This is the information age, this is the noughties. Your identity is no longer exclusively your property.

But what’s strange is that although some people don’t realise the extent to which their privacy is being violated, and others don’t have any real choice, the noughties generation are casually displaying their private lives on the internet, as the older generation looks on with alarm and misapprehension.

But this same youth, who are frivolously distributing their personal data around, are going to grow up to become company directors, bank managers, politicians, security directors. And then what happens?

I recently read an article about teenagers who liberally stamp their identity all over the net. They write blogs detailing their greatest secrets and post as many (often indecent) photographs of themselves as possible. They want to be noticed, they want to be known. In an interview within the article, one girl said, “What’s the worst that’s going to happen? Twenty years down the road, someone’s gonna find your picture? Just make sure it’s a great picture”.

Maybe this is a sign of the times; that unless you’re signed up to Facebook and MySpace your social life will suffer, that thirst for fame and recognition is fuelling this trend.

Perhaps those who behave as if privacy doesn’t exist are actually the sane, not the insane. Maybe the future belongs to the uninhibited.

Surveillance is spreading through cities like wildfire, every purchase we make with plastic is tracked, our emails belong to our employer, and our phone calls belong to our mobile phone operator. In this light, it could be argued that only the younger generation have grasped the concept that a truly private life is already an illusion.

It’s not just our bank accounts and itemised bills that make up our data shadow, but road pricing databases and loyalty cards. On a more personal level, it’s our social plans and friendly chat that is splashed across social networking sites, and our emails and phone calls that, if recent reports are to be believed, will soon belong to the government.

There is much scepticism surrounding the government’s recently revealed plans to implement a huge database storing details of every phone call and e-mail sent in the UK ( http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/080523_GovtDatabase.html).

The plans would require ISPs and telecom providers to pass on information which would be stored in the database for twelve months, where it could be accessed by police and secret services after gaining authority from court. The media and public skepticism is unsurprising given the appalling track record of public sector data loss in recent times.
And that’s the problem with this data-centric society. Our data can be examined, judged, lost, stolen. If criminals can get hold of enough of our data, they can steal our identity, open credit cards in our name, even sell our property. This is ultimate proof that to control our lives, we need to control our data.

Credit cards remove the burden of carrying cash, social networking sites reduce our phone bills and make it easy for us to keep in touch with friends, loyalty cards give us discount offers on the stuff we really want. But are the long-term effects of this information age going to intoxicate our society, and mean that we lose control of our own identities?

Welcome to the 21st century, welcome to the information age.

Enjoy the issue and take care,

Eleanor Dallaway
Editor