Motley Moose – Archive

First off: Moose I miss You. My long absences are only explained by manic writing sessions covering lots of breaking news (and a new novel). But I’m hoping, as so well displayed by Shaun in previous post, to have a sensible discussion about the NSA leaks without it reverting to the usual Rox/Sux Obama debate, or framing intelligence services as all good, or all bad.

I’ve published a piece today in The New Republic which (going beyond the personalities of either Manning or Snowden or their interlocutors Assange and Greenwald) tries to look at the role of whistleblowing and the press in the modern age.

More below the flip

I think nowadays most informed people realize that privacy on the Internet is an illusion. There is no real secrecy in cyberspace, and if you live in the States — unless you are born of a jackal, raised by wolves, and currently residing in a hut somewhere in the woods of Arkansas and have never so much as seen a light bulb or a sharp stick — then records of your existence are somewhere online. Your information may not be easily accessible to the public, but with enough money, diligence, and tech savvy, someone out there can find you. You can only hope that you either aren’t worth the trouble, or that no one with the means and determination to find you intends you any harm. And to some extent, that was true even before we were all linked together on this vast series of tubes. But there’s no disputing that it’s a whole lot easier to find people than it once was.  

He is –you-.

In England today there are millions of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras pointed at public places.  Fortunately (depending on your point of view), most of them are completely unmonitored the vast majority of the time.  

Seeing an opportunity to leverage the voyeuristic inclinations of millions of  people at home with time and computers on their hands, a group of entrepreneurs have created a company called Internet Eyes where you can register for free to randomly watch some of these.  If you spy someone Doing Wrong (shoplifting, being impolite to a picture of the Queen, what-have-you) you can peck a button and send an alert.  If you alert a shop-owner to a crime you can be eligible for an award.

So what do you think?  Is this “Crowd Sourced” surveillance a Bridge Too Far into invading privacy, or just a sign of changing norms?