We live in the digital age. Everything that once seemed private is private no longer, due to the expansion of digital technology. We are losing our privacy in ways we never expected. And who is the main source of this loss of privacy? How much do they know? And how do they use it?

"Anyone willing to spend a few bucks and a little time on the Internet can find out more about what you read, think, and earn than Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler could have learned about the inhabitants of their totalitarian states." (Nowhere to Hide, by Robert Scheer) This nails the privacy issue dead on. We are more closely monitored today than ever, and we are co-operating whether we think we are or not.

"On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog." This phrase has been bouncing around since the beginning of the Net. It was used like a trumpet in war, proclaiming the arrival of unprecedented freedom. In a way this is true; you could go on the Net, and go on a life-changing journey. No one knows your identity on the Net, but everyone knows your profile, which can be sorted, packaged and sold.

Your profile is what the companies in the digital world know about you. Every time you swipe a grocery card, walk past a security camera, or give out information to the telephone company, your profile is being built. The information that you give out may not be useable to anyone, but when clumped together with other freely-given information, all of a sudden they have a record of everything you have ever bought, right down to the Costco size box of condoms.

But there is more to the lack of privacy than what you give out into your profile. Before the digital age, spying on private lives was a taxing and tedious task. It had to be selective and required loads of paperwork. Enter Echelon. Echelon is essentially a giant vacuum cleaner that grabs every email, telephone, radio, and radar signal, and more, from around the world and sifts it through filters. If a message has more than two code words such as bomb and Parliament, and they appear close to each other, then the message is read by secret officials; who then figure out if it is an actual threat or coincidence. There was an act passed called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This was to prevent the Echelon network from spying on their own citizens, but they just got around that by getting other countries to spy on citizens for them. They trade information like baseball cards.

So who that you know is watching? More than likely your boss. People treat their email like it is a private letter that is sealed in a envelope and no one is allowed to read it save the recipient. The truth about email is that it is less like a private letter and more like a postcard where everyone who comes into contact with it can read it. Even if you are not using a computer at work there is still a good chance that you are being monitored.

Maybe your phone conversations are being listened to or maybe you are being watched by a hidden video camera. All in the name of maximum efficiency. If you are not doing company work then you should be not working for the company. Some high-tech firms even use keystroke-logging software that records every word typed, including those that are eventually deleted. The problem with this whole issue is that the majority of the public is unaware that this is going on.

Take Mr.Chiders, for example. He was fired from his job at Citizens Utility Company. The reason... because he posted messages at Yahoo criticizing his boss. He wrote these from his home, on his own time. Chiders had been assured of his privacy when he signed up to the message board but Yahoo had been forced to hand over Chiders' identity when they were handed a subpoena. Chiders couldn't even claim freedom of speech, as his postings weren't political. Chiders wasn't even aware that he could be fired for his opinion on a message board. Chiders is now employed with another company that "is much better."

But people like Chiders are rare, as most people who have been faced with this situation don't even fight it, or even bother to consider what they had done wrong. This was the main point in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Huxley's idea was that the public would come to accept totalitarian intrusion as a part of the normal fabric of life. That is exactly what is happening today and we are just sitting back and going along with it.

© Adam Gain 2001

Adam's Paranoid Guide to Protecting Yourself on the Internet