World sleepwalking into Big Brother society

 

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Posted on 22 Sep 2008 at 14:36

The world is heading into a Big Brother society that goes far beyond what was imagined by 1984 author George Orwell, experts have warned.

Social psychologist Saadi Lahlou, writing for the Sage journal, Social Science Information, warned that current technology developments mean that it will soon be possible to not only to track an individual's movements, but also to predict them.

Lahlou argues that users are not fighting hard enough to maintain their privacy in the face of "the system", which he defines as an Orwellian mass of interconnected data-collection devices including mobile phones, internet sites and surveillance cameras. This system can monitor, search, compare, analyse, identify and predict the movements of individuals, he warned.

What's more, if several systems for tracking movement, position or activity are combined - for example, combining GPS information with phone signals or triangulation with wireless internet signals - then individuals stand little chance of being able to hide their position or actions.

"We are creating a system that will be aware of all that we do: when we turn on the washing machine, what we write and to whom, where we go and what we do there, what we buy and when with whom and how we use it," Lahlou wrote. "And this virtually from cradle to grave. The system as a whole will know more about us than we know about ourselves," he said.

He suggests a new definition of privacy based on "face-keeping". Given that continuing technological advances will leave few with the option of withholding information about themselves, Lahlou suggests that users' privacy should be protected by allowing them to wear exactly the "face" they want to show in any specific domain and nothing more.

"We all have many faces (combinations of role and status), but each one is used only in some settings," he explained.

Author: Robert Jaques