Death of Privacy
This Canadian scifi writer doesn’t seem to understand the concept of DoS, or the abuse potential of a deeply embedded surveillance and monitoring system. He claims that we could have
a small implant, say, that keeps track of your whereabouts using signals from the satellite-based Global Positioning System. Suppose the implant constantly broadcasts your exact location to a centralized facility. At that facility — call it the Alibi Archives — you would have your own personal black box, keeping track of your movements.
He claims that such a device would reduce crime and more quickly bring help for medical emergencies. He utterly neglects the ease with which such a small transmitter could be interfered with, and he does not seem to realize that creating a domestic surveillance system actually introduces the temptation to become totalitarian. The Protect America Act and the PATRIOT Act have had their original provisions expanded to deal with ordinary crime, not just terrorism. Government is by definition a bureaucracy. Its natural tendency is to grow, increase its scope, and subsume things that don’t rightly belong to it.
Is more public monitoring of private lives a good thing? He also doesn’t seem to realize that data, once stored, is a devil to get rid of — he is rather idealistic in assuming that law enforcement, the government, and your employer won’t try to find out what you have stored in that black box. Are you a political candidate running for office? Let me file a freedom of information act and see what you really said at that frat party 20 years ago.
