We have long been aware of the potentially Orwellian threats to individual privacy that come with new developments in technology. Often the trade off is inevitable: technology permits a modern soceity to meet the needs of its members, but in return heightens the level of technological dependence to which we are subject.
How many times have we heard someone speculate about a return to the world of fifteen years ago in which mobile phones were entirely unused and unnecessary? In only one decade such technology has become so deeply entrenched in modern life that such a return to a previous state seems about as possible as reversing the movement of tectonic plates or the erosion of mountains.
There is no doubt that an Orwellian dystopia becomes all the more possible with each passing year’s worth of technological development – and while we argue whether such and such technologies encroach our privacy or not, it might be better to consider whether or not traditional notions of privacy have long since already become obsolete…
What kind of privacy can we reasonably expect in living in a modern metrolpolis (as most of us in the world now do), and how can we guard against a slow enslavement to technologies and systems that we as individuals do not own?
Consider a fairly typical day for many Londoners for example:
1. Oyster cards give us cheaper and quicker access to the city’s transport systems (but in return enable for us to be tracked at every stage – in the case of personal oyster cards as are used by all student and monthly/weekly users).
2. CCTV covers pretty much every public space and we are regularly tracked by as many as a few hundred cameras over the course of a single day. Even in seemingly deserted spaces we are rarely alone in the way that we imagine – in short privacy in an urban public space has long since been technically unattainable.
3. Our bank cards log the details of all our economic transactions – all purchases, exchanges and the times, date and places of such. With this alone our movements and actions can be pretty easily pieced together.
4. We use mobile phones and GPS devices on a daily basis which can be located and tracked anywhere in the world…
The list goes on – and the point is that, though sometimes this information is private (bank statements for example belong to us as individuals and should not be in the public domain), such privacy is nonetheless dependent upon a massively intricate quantity of data remaining entirely secret, and even then certain people will have access to it (bank emplyees, CCTV guards etc etc).
The simple and perhaps sad fact is that every single day of our lives in modern British urban soceity can be pieced together using a vast range of technological and digital means. In return we gain the ability to function effectively in such environments (try going a couple of days without using mobile phones, bank cards, oyster cards etc – pretty impossible if you live in a UK metropolis).
We have little choice but to accept the conditions for living imposed by the modern technological soceity, other than to leave it for some other environment. The question becomes; assuming all our data is always safe, and will never be abused (a pretty big ask) are we willing to accept that even then the privacy enjoyed by previous generations is now largely impossible to guarantee in a modern urban soceity?
For me personally I am happy to relinquish some degree of privacy in return for having a bank account and card for example – I do not feel so strongly about it to handicap myself to such a degree as to not have such an account (I am sure living without one is perfectly possible – but for me the inconvenience would not be worth it).
However, just because our old Western ideals of privacy are being constantly reconfigured and pushed back by new technologies, it is nonetheless important to carefully evaluate each new development individually and guard against ones which threaten to overstep even the now greatly loosened boundaries of individual privacy and freedom.
In short, the privacy of old may no longer be realistic or possible – but it does not mean we must accept being spied upon or controlled either; luckily there is plenty of middle ground, and it is here I would like to think we are…
Dejan Levi