These
articles are compressed, a good discussion of these issues and subjects would
need at least ten times more space to be better explained and discussed. Being
this a blog, such small sample must give an idea of the many branches these
topics grow.
Imagine you are at a conference or travelling on public transportation.
Then, somebody starts commenting and asking lots of questions interrupting the
presenter constantly. Or one of the
passengers starts misbehaving, annoying everybody. The presenters or other
members of the travelling group might be tempted to call security, and perhaps
that will happen, having to remove that person, forcefully.
Such scenes could be similar to when we spot a suspicious
backpack left in a very public place. We will always be prompted to act and do
something about it.
Now imagine there is another person in that conference or at
the public transport not really calling attention, but planning something bad
for the rest of the people around them. If the latter scenario is possible,
then all attendees to the conference or travellers are suspects, right?
That’s one of the most invasive currents of thought behind
governments and police departments to want to be watching over our shoulders
what we do online. It doesn’t matter whether we are the Dalai Lama or Mother
Teresa or a very simple low profile citizen of the world. Our every move would
be recorded and stored indefinitely. We would lose our online privacy at the
very moment such a bylaw passed as law. Forever.
With the incredible amounts of data on the Web, and such
records growing exponentially day after day, in order to implement a mechanism
to track and store all we do online it would need to be very good and smart
systems, controlled by not just one entity for the extraction of information to
be really effective. Such withdrawal of individual evidence would take place only
when necessary, and there would need to be warrants and orders, similar to the physical
ones, for anybody to get access to our information.
In a way we are already in that position of letting people
know about us: we post pictures, type statuses and send messages to those in
our circles and acquaintances lists. No less, no more.
However, if there is a leak of data of any kind, then such
information we trusted only to known friends and family members might be used by
criminals, probably with disastrous consequences.
Being said that, if we allow governments and police to
monitor activity, that might also mean less unlawful activity due precisely to
more virtual police force deployments.
Although there would be more good than bad if we put all that
in the scale of a better world, the possibility that harmful activity could
results from our allowing of data to be collected and analyzed, although slim,
would still exist. It is that low percentage of risk that bothers us.
Simply put, no system
is perfect, and it gets worse when many hands are mixing the dough. Human error
is imminent.
There you go.
Me? I would like to
see more control, but not to the point that our online surveillance becomes
something like a regime. I would trust such task to the global scientific
community after a carefully and planned strategy is determined, but would be very
much concerned if governments get too much involvement in the planning and
surveillance process.
What do you think? Are you afraid to comment on this after
reading the possible consequences?
