Cinnaman

Phone spying? Small Potatoes

I was alone – sort of – at the traffic light on the edge of Hartford Corners shopping center in Delran NJ. There were no other cars or people in sight, but I waited obediently at the red light because that is my wont.

And because I was pupil-to-pupil with The Eye.

I stared back at the silent lens above the red light and threw a mental kudo to George Orwell. Sure, it has become a cliché to voice this, but the man really did have it right. Everything but the year.

The technology he forecast is here. Is there any doubt that someday, somehow, the wrong power will rise up and use it against us?

The media, lazy as ever, is engaged in its intellectual slop-hurling over the “blockbuster” revelations that the Bush administration is collecting phone records of “law-abiding Americans” to analyze them for potential clues into terrorism. If the reporters had done their job, you would have understood long ago that Big Business already has your number – literally.

Read a book called The Search to understand how Google collects every key stroke you make on its site. Author John Battelle does a masterful job in painting the computer search phenomenon as culture-changing. Google has created not a search machine, but a “Database of Intentions” culled from our collective brains.

The fact is, Google probably knows a heckuva lot about you.

Privacy is shrinking daily as we keep our attention focused squarely on the important – Barry Bonds, American Idol and George Bush’s shrewd intellect or blatant stupidity. (Take your pick) If the Starbucks drive-in girl asked for your Social Security number, would you mindlessly give it up?

The government has not invented a new way to pry. It is just kicking it up a notch.

Next time you see The Eye, giving it a knowing wink.

posted by Lou Antosh @ 10:04 AM