Friday, July 13, 2007

Little brothers are watching you

Orwell's 1984 presented a vision of a future where Big Brother watched everyone in an electronic panopticon. The real future may be a bit different.

Wikipedia recalls a TV series called Probe in which fantastic "agents for a group known as 'World Securities,' who were outfitted with various electronic implants, and were equipped with a button-sized 'scanner' that contained a micro-miniaturized video camera, microphone and transmitter, which connected them with a team of technicians and experts who constantly monitored his surroundings, actions and vital signs, and were able to supply the Probe with encyclopedic information on any subject" fought crime on a weekly basis.

Currently that functionality and more is available from any camera-equipped cell phone that can browse the Internet that is available at any shopping mall. And today, "Samsung Electronics will launch in Europe this month its Mobile Blog 3G Phone (SGH-L760), which allows users to upload content directly to blog sites on the Internet. The phone is expected to further fuel the current boom in mobile Internet and user-created content services, as it can upload directly to popular UCC sites like YouTube, Ublog and Buzznet."

Not only is there a very good chance that anything interesting you do will be photographed, it's becoming increasingly likely that you will have no reasonable expectation of privacy any time you're in the presence of another person. With mobile phones capable of transmitting to your blog, any conversation could be uploaded to someone's website.

Being interviewed by a reporter you don't fully trust? Leave your phone on.

Think you may have a sexual harassment case? Leave your phone on.

The policeman who pulls someone over had better watch his language, because it may wind up on the motorist's blog.

Right now, "liveblogging" is the provence of one or two hard-core geeks. What happens when "liveblogging" is as easy as forgetting to shut off your cell phone?

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