Big Brother is Watching You - as predicted by Sam Seaborn

I was just watching an ancient episode of the West Wing (for WW fans, it's when they decide to nominate Mendoza for the supreme court instead of the crazy anti-privacy guy), and the climax is a moving speech about how the next century is going to be all about privacy as the internet develops.

Watching it twelve years on I'm reminded that nobody needed a crystal ball to see that the current state of affairs was around the corner. The cloud moves information around - what kind of tool could possibly pose more of a threat to privacy than that?

But what worries me most is that aside from governments, the press and a select few sensible cloud users, nobody seems to care. Facebook now puts a cookie on your computer automatically to monitor which websites you go to even when you're not logged in. To demonstrate just how much information Zuckerberg has about the average user, a demonstrator filed a freedom of information suit to make facebook hand over all information they had on him - they sent over 500 A4 pages.

Google isn't much better - they record your IP address, location, browser and lots of activity whenever you log on  - and if you're not logged on they match the data to the IP address anyway. This applies to Apple too - if you own an iPhone then your location is probably recorded wherever you take it, and sold to advertising companies who use the data to send you relevant adverts. Scary stuff.

This kind of apathy over a serious matter is what allows it to develop. A 'just-get-on-with-it' attitude that dominated in the west for many years allowed bankers to act irresponsibly, leading to the financial meltdown we've suffered over the last three years. Only in late 2008, when the American people stood up and said something, did governments across the developed world start to scrutinise banks and ensure that they traded sensibly and sustainably. It's the same again now - many people shut up when it comes to privacy because they don't think we can win - but if everyone would just speak up and say who's side they were on, the government's occasional, half-hearted suits against internet giants might just turn into a real, sustained and impassioned war until everyone has the right to privacy that they deserve.