The bastard brother of the ‘end of privacy’ (August 2013
article) seems to have become the new age of the 15-second celebrity. Everyone
will be now be famous for as long as it takes to create a vine or write a
response comment in a ‘Comments are free’ section of a national blather-reel. I
mean, this is the breeding ground of dissent is it not? But while everyone
purges their rhetoric away online, White Papers regarding privacy and corporate
surveillance and tracking are slipping through parliament unnoticed. Not the
first time. Thatcher did it with the Falklands war, just as Reagan followed with
Grenada. Then they started their reelection campaigns to tally in with the
assured victories. But as we post, while we all think that the readership are
taking note of our well-crafted often hilarious
comments and, while thinking that we’re contributing to a greater debate; ‘meta
laws’ keep rolling on in the background.
Do you feel better now that you’ve vented in your favorite
paper? Good. Well, you might as well treat it as therapy because unfortunately nobody
is listening. Perhaps what your outpouring is actually doing, is keeping you
away from any real engagement in the issues you care so deeply about. For example, across the spectrum of the main
US recent news, and although the imagery of the occurrences in Gaza were
exploited endlessly, they somehow failed to show the extent of the
protests taking place around the world. This could mean
that you are more likely to post a comment on a quasi-liberal digi-broadsheet
than participate in any physical show of unity. Ah, well. Looks like another day I can stay at home on my own and view
it all through the telescreen -yet still have my say. And be hilarious.
It’s amazing the catharsis we feel by just pressing the
return key and heading for a celebratory cup of Horlicks.
Here’s an example of a permitted comment:
In a study of 397 gay, lesbian and bisexual men and women they
discovered that problematic alcohol and substance use were positively related
to shame and internalised heterosexism. There are probably other determinants
of harmful use of alcohol and other drugs, but I'm guessing shame, poor
self-esteem and lack of confidence play a significant part.
This is linked to an academic journal, which you will never
read to check the data. This was probably written by the postee under a
pseudonym and seen as a way to disseminate their own research. This example no
doubt relies on cross sections of a banging gay bar culture in a major city, a
random sample of which does not equate to gay culture unless all of ‘gay
culture’ lives in the same gay bar.
But perhaps the worst crime from a government to its people
is when they piggy-back terrorist acts in order to set an extreme agenda on the
over-compensation of surveillance. It is
here that they cite that, all of us – yes, even that old lady in the care home -
could be potential terrorists. Then as happens, every liberty is stripped and
we are humiliated into these new ‘protective’ laws.
Only last month, at an international airport, I stood behind
a woman accompanied by her twelve-year-old daughter. The girl was in tears as
we waited in line at the newly installed full-body scanner. When it was her
turn, the girl held up the line and the security guards grew restless, the
mother lost her cool and dragged the now wailing girl up the steps to the scanner.
The scene was quite odd. As the girl stood cruciform behind the Perspex shield
she dropped her head in shame. Not only the ‘secret’ room who scanned her
digitally naked body but the airport staff and customers did the same to the
clothed version on the pedestal before them. After a few seconds she crept down
from the booth, sobbing, to collect her iPod and the too-old for her holiday shoes
from the plastic tray - with the weight of a hundred eyes upon her.
But we have to concede, since there have apparently been jihadi much
younger than this girl, I’m sure everybody felt a little more
secure on the flight.
Here’s another post that proves my point:
…Any anti Surveillance
law will be upheld by royal prerogative (as the dispossession of the Chagos
islanders was). The stakeholders in the status quo need a Stasi to mitigate the
risks of networked democracy; in the age when protests can go viral, it's vital
that the security services are able to disperse protest movements and detect
potential troublemakers before they can cause trouble and have the means to
bring very precise amounts of force to bear against them as soon as they start
doing something; hence mass surveillance.
Right track, wrong argument. The real issue here is that of
Chagossian diaspora and their apparent treatment by the Queen. Nevertheless,
since this person is only online packaging his real gripe into a collective dolly
mixture of vent and anger, people still are still agreeing - tick the like box, they just forget it as
a confirmation of their own views. And the postee has his 15 second fix of acceptance.
As the world heats up, so do the unleashing of newer surveillance
laws. France, home of Foucauldian Panopticism is objecting strongly as are many
European countries - but not Britain and the US. They are passing legislation by
stealth while we’re all Wikipedi-ing, WTF the Chagos Islanders actually were.
There, it's already midnight and we’ve all missed the
protest.
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