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Relax, you have no secrets left
By TERRY LANE
Sunday 30 April 2000

`MY name is for my friends," Lawrence tells Sheriff Ali.

Well, not any more mate. Now a chap's name is for anyone and everyone. You cannot live, breathe and do business in the world today without giving away your name to strangers several times a day.

So far today I have had emails offering to make me rich beyond the dreams of Croesus; the university degree of my choice; a once-in-a-lifetime real estate opportunity in the Florida Everglades; access to the hottest teen-sex site on the World Wide Web; a circular letter telling me that if I don't pass it on to 10 pals immediately hobgoblins will eat me. These emails have come from the US and India. How did they get to hear that I was in the market for Florida real estate below the high-water mark? And at amazon.com I am so well known that they greet me on the web site: "Hello Mr Terry Lane. If you are not Mr Terry Lane please click here."

Hmm, what if I tell them that I am Mr T.E. Lawrence!

In fact, I put my name, address and email address on the Internet with such careless frequency that my Web browser now completes the entries automatically.

In the snail mail today came an invitation to subscribe to the Guardian Weekly - I am even known in the UK. As it happens, I am well regarded in Europe. I have had no trouble withdrawing money instantly from automatic-teller machines there.

So I am not inclined to get my knickers in a twist over the issue of privacy, even though the federal Parliament is debating the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Bill at the moment. The pollies are seeking a compromise that will satisfy the EU on the one hand and the local media-moguls on the other.

The EU demands that its trading partners protect personal information, and the media moguls want to be free to flog my name, address and hat size to anyone who will pay for it. I think the milk is spilt and the horse has bolted. Privacy in this day and age is an outmoded concept. There is nothing left to protect.

The real protection we need is not so much from traffic in personal information in the business sector as inappropriate access in the government sector. But, even there, it is too late to do anything about it.

The police have access to health records and at least once have used them to coerce a reluctant witness into testifying, with the threat that they would tell a girl's mother that she had had an abortion if she didn't cooperate. Presumably, they can also get into the social-security records and anything else that might take their fancy.

ASIO and police special branches know all about our political affiliations and activities if we happen to lean to the left. They exchange information with each other and with foreign spying organisations. The tax office has a better idea of the state of my bank account than I do.

It would be better if governments were to come clean and admit that they know everything about us, except our individual DNA - and they are working on that.

I suppose that it would be possible to keep my name for my friends, but at a cost. I would have stay off the Internet and not carry a credit card or make Medicare claims. I won't have a driver's licence. I'll disconnect the phone and stay away from politics. I won't work for wages or earn enough money to pay taxes and I won't enrol to vote. And I must never borrow money. In short, I'll take to the hills and live on broccoli that I grow myself. Or else I accept that the moment I join a video library I have knowingly given my name to the world. Privacy, I fear, is a charming, old-fashioned concept.

------------------------end

Comment:
"Privacy, I fear, is a charming, old-fashioned concept." Hmmmm.... Yes-n-no. I rather like the old-fashioned concepts. There's a quiet mood that comes when I switch off the equipment, shut the studio door, grab the dog-n-gear and just disappear for awhile. No compliance freakzzz need bother asking where I go. No record exists. You see, it's not me.

Regards from an illusion.

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), April 30, 2000

Answers

>Privacy, I fear, is a charming, old-fashioned concept.

The same techology that is used to expose a person can help one hide. What's to prevent a sharp hacker from having five-six-seven different identities? Why should one always give correct and honest answers to any gov't data base? For that matter, why should one be honest on any form? (Depending on the penalities for lying, of course).

Privacy is what we make of it. True, it's becoming harder and harder to come by, but not impossible if one is half-way intellegent and serious about having some.

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), April 30, 2000.

Yeah, I know it's "intelligent." I'm pre-coffee, okay?

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), April 30, 2000.

What could be more private than living in Australia?

-- (nemesis@awol.com), April 30, 2000.

Along the same lines, here is another example of how instantaneous information technology, combined with the "Big Brother" mentality, can be so effectively used as a tool for opression and domination...

TV Informs Woman of Husband's Kosovo Death

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian state television shocked viewers Thursday by broadcasting an interview with a woman before and after informing her that her husband had died while performing peacekeeping duties in Kosovo.

RTR television's correspondent in Ivanovo, 200 km (125 miles) northeast of Moscow, was the first person to tell the woman her 31-year-old husband, who had been due to return home in May, had been shot dead in the Yugoslav province.

Before breaking the news to the unsuspecting woman still in her dressing gown, the journalist filmed her, smiling timidly and looking in amazement at the surprise guest.

``Natasha will learn about her husband's death in a couple of minutes from us. Now she is cooking dinner for herself and her four-year-old daughter,'' he said in his report.

``Natasha is very puzzled by the interest television is paying to her, an ordinary textile worker.''

Seconds later, the woman and her mother-in-law were shown sobbing uncontrollably.

The war in Chechnya has left women weeping over the coffins of their slain sons and husbands into a familiar television sight, but the RTR footage was unprecedented in its treatment of a family tragedy.

An RTR editor told Reuters: ``It was a chance occurrence of circumstances.''

A spokesman for the KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo said in the local capital Pristina Wednesday that the body of a Russian soldier had been found, but provided no further information.

*****

Privacy and confidentiality have all but disappeared, and the people are left helpless, knowing that tryannical governments, corporations, and media know things about them before they do, able to manipulate their souls at will, with no regard for our feelings or individual right to freedom. I'm starting to think advanced technology is not such a good thing, that we are being sold a lie, so that it can be used as a weapon by our opressors.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), April 30, 2000.

Hawk,

I'll have to go with ya on this one,BIG BROTHER is around and information is KING,short of brut force it is the most powerful thing on the planet.When a government and "the" media are allied there is much room for nefarious re-percussions,it's probably only going to get worse,I'm convinced.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), April 30, 2000.

"What could be more private than living in Australia?" Psst! Nemesis....don't tell anyone, don't make waves.

Nemesis has a good observation going here. Australia is a wonderfully private place if you can manage the aloneness. It's an emptiness that goes beyond mere words, beneath an endless sky. It's just big, a droning throbbing heat bigness that scares people to go and live in suburbs where they find a different type of aloneness. I love the freedom of vanishing in a big country. There's so much in it.

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), April 30, 2000.

Pieter,

Damn!!! I'm homesick!!! And I live in America.

Gonna have to visit,maybe park it.Excellent description.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), April 30, 2000.

That was discusting! The poor woman stood there innocently confused by the attention while the station was filming her just to get the gut renching reaction she would have to her husbands death!

Before breaking the news to the unsuspecting woman still in her dressing gown, the journalist filmed her, smiling timidly and looking in amazement at the surprise guest.

This is so cruel, pumping up the audience so they would be sure not to miss it.

``Natasha will learn about her husband's death in a couple of minutes from us. Now she is cooking dinner for herself and her four-year-old daughter,'' he said in his report.

``Natasha is very puzzled by the interest television is paying to her, an ordinary textile worker.''

Seconds later, the woman and her mother-in-law were shown sobbing uncontrollably.

The moment of learning about the death of a loved one is a time of uncontrollable soul renching pain which can cause loss of self control and is very personal and should be private.

The poor woman is probably feeling the pain of the public rape of her soul on top of the pain from the loss of her husband.

The war in Chechnya has left women weeping over the coffins of their slain sons and husbands into a familiar television sight, but the RTR footage was unprecedented in its (discusting) treatment of a family tragedy.

An RTR editor told Reuters: ``It was a chance occurrence of circumstances.''

CACA DEL TORO

You are right Hawk, nothing is personal or private any more.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), April 30, 2000.

Cherri,

I don't disagree with anything you said, yet I often feel there is too much privacy, too much aonymity in modern America. There is little neighborliness in my empty-nesterish neighborhood. We live in a ubiquitous electronic world community but don't have enough tangible local community. I live in a metro area of 1.5 million but I only know a dozen well. I know, it's mostly my own fault but in this modern world it's too damn easy to slip into anomie.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), April 30, 2000.