Being watched

SPIES LIKE US

Tricky times for all. What with the terrorist attacks last week and potential for more to come, never have we experienced such an unprecedented threat of danger of this kind before. 

During the Second World War, sirens were sounded and many had a choice to evacuate from the blitz bombing of civilians in London. Even the IRA gave bomb threat warnings. The cold war was the closest we've come to being annihilated by our unknown adversaries but with this current terrorist threat in our mists, we can't know when or from whom the next attack will come. 

Surrender Our Rights

It's come up so many times in the news recently and I've broached this topic before. Our right to privacy. Many are concerned about their private information getting in the wrong hands and with the digital age, this information can be easily accessed and kept forever. With CCTV/high definition cameras, we can be monitored wherever we go, secretly watched from the air, with our every movement tracked by our smart phone. Our devices not only give away our location but also have cameras and microphones which can eavesdrop on our most intimate moments too. Face recognition technology and 'buzzword' tracking software that can flag up words used in our communications and utilised to predict our every movement, work out our preferences/patterns and profiled/assessed for later use - not just for marketing but to determine who we are and what we are likely to do in any given situation.

So, what's worse? The threat of danger from unknowns or feeling like you're being spied on all the time? How ironic I thought, that people say 'I have nothing to fear by being watched as I have nothing to hide' - yet we recently underwent a huge investigation with News International into the hacking scandal and infringements on our civil liberties.

How doubly ironic that I am (still) employed by this same organisation and I also feel like I'm being watched by them right now. 

Many of the celebrities being hacked into, voiced their feelings of paranoia and stress caused from being hounded by the press, not knowing how or from where their intimate secrets were being leaked and used against them. Is this what we want? Surely the better solution is to bring communities together. Getting to know our neighbours and between us all, making better efforts to protect and look out for each other, will help protect our community at the same time as retaining our privacy.