Do many Little Brothers mean one Big Brother?


Why can't you choose who has access to your data?
Bruce Schneier writes an great article here but he overlooks a very important point.

Data collection in 1984 was deliberate; today's is inadvertent. In the information society, we generate data naturally. In Orwell's world, people were naturally anonymous; today, we leave digital footprints everywhere.

1984's police state was centralized; today's is decentralized. Your phone company knows who you talk to, your credit card company knows where you shop and NetFlix knows what you watch. Your ISP can read your email, your cell phone can track your movements and your supermarket can monitor your purchasing patterns. There's no single government entity bringing this together, but there doesn't have to be. As Neal Stephenson said, the threat is no longer Big Brother, but instead thousands of Little Brothers.

1984's Big Brother was run by the state; today's Big Brother is market driven. Data brokers like ChoicePoint and credit bureaus like Experian aren't trying to build a police state; they're just trying to turn a profit. Of course these companies will take advantage of a national ID; they'd be stupid not to. And the correlations, data mining and precise categorizing they can do is why the U.S. government buys commercial data from them.

The thing that is missing here is customer's choice of if you WANT your data shared. It obviously has value, that is why companies and the government want it. What's more, thanks to government efforts to categorize you, it is getting harder and harder to remain anonymous. Even something as simple as buying groceries using cash is becoming unusual, and I can see the day where you might have to fill out a report to use cash at all.

It's already true for certain products. Cough medicines for example. Scrap metal in Arizona. Fertilizer in any large quantity. Prescription medications.

I wouldn't object to data mining IF there were clear alternatives and ways to remain anonymous. But to have an increasingly paranoid government pushing mass registration for everything and then having companies supporting the paranoia so they can sell your data, well, let's just say I think there's an agenda there that no one is talking about. Even if it's not centrally organized, the push is definitely to classify you without your consent.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sat - May 12, 2007 at 03:08 PM  Tag


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