Are we already living in a 'big brother' society?
 

I was browsing the web earlier and just happened to come across a video about Google tracking & storing search records indefinitely. So I sat down and watched this documentary.

http://googlonymous.com/

There is a flash video on there. A lot of the stuff they were mentioning... I didn't even know was possible. Or was being done. It's really interesting to watch and raises a lot of red flags IMO.

I am actually still watching it right now so I can't fully comment yet. I just wanted to share this with you. Watch it. I'll offer my thoughts as soon as I make it through this video.

The Brits are already knee-deep in Big Brother voyeurism.

Us not so much. Yet.

Ohhh yeah. There are surveilance cameras everywhere, and national databases tracking all manner of personal data about us. The government wants to introduce a national database of biometric identification data, too.

You also shouldn't forget about the part where the government are taking away our rights, while giving themselves a whole ton of new powers. Terrorism has given them a good excuse to pretty much do whatever they want... and what is more, a lot of the public are apathetic about their rights.

Orwell's dystopian vision of the future could well be a reality here soon enough. Unless the next few years see some substantial changes in the attitude of the public. He should have called it 2042, perhaps. I won't criticise him for being off by a century though. His vision was still shockingly clear.

The idea of Big Brother, though, was us all being afraid because we thought someone would be watching us.

Truth is, while there are cameras up everywhere and data being collected, no one is looking at it except when they need something specific.

Also: No rights are lost when you walk into a public place and someone takes a picture. No rights are lost when you use a private company's services and, by its terms of service, it records what you do. The notion of "rights" when it comes to people claiming 1984 seems to get blown completely out of proportion.

While there are Big Brother aspects in our societies, I'd say we're much more on the way to Huxley's Brave New World vision. To thin it was written in the mid 1920's is mindblowing.

I dunno. When it comes to dystopian futurism, I'm much more of a Bradbury man myself.

There's not much inherently wrong with monitoring public spaces. The problem is when you have a government like Britain's, where Parliament can effectively take away everybody's rights overnight. It creates a tremendous problem, as the surveillance system sets up an infrastructure for oppression.

I like how the great trifecta of dystopian authors have been invoked in such short order. I would expect that Benjamin Franklin quote to come around eventually.

Regardless, like a few others have said, we're not quite there yet, although some nations are flirting with that idea in a more benign manner. Based on what I've seen and read about the British system, it doesn't seem as if ordinary life has been changed dramatically with the increased surveillance. Unless something seriously out of the ordinary happens, life runs normally.

I could see the viewpoint that establishing that infrastructure in the first place would make it even easier for governments to curtail human rights, but I wonder if those who are arguing this confuse reasoned liberty with anarchistic freedom.

The argument being made is the potential for malice, not its intent. The Road To Hell and Good Intentions, yaddy yadda...

Governments, even benign ones do not last forever.

As long as the monitoring stays out of my house, they can put up cameras wherever they damn well please. People should be more vocal about insisting on the right to do something they care about though. Like, I'm not a smoker and don't like the smell of smoke and like it when a restaurant says "No Smoking."

But it pissed me off when my city decided that indoor smoking was illegal, wherever you are, and no one complained.

Having the cameras up and then insisting on a buttload of stupid rules on how we should act or dress or speak is what's coming, and I don't like it a bit. It isn't the monitoring, its what the monitoring could be used for. People should be allowed to read or listen to or say what they damn well please (in a private setting, not corporate perhaps) without fear of being targeted by the government, and that's something I'd defend to my dying breath.

So cameras on street corners are nothing new, and they're nothing to worry about. The government being able to demand your search history from Google... that would be a nightmare.

Bradbury is too poetic for me to think of him on the same plan. I mean that in both good and a bad ways. =p

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