Those of us on the political Left are used to it. They've been bugging us since the early '60s. It hardly compares with what the Stasi was doing in East Germany during the Cold War, but you got used to hearing all sorts of odd clicks on your phone line. Decades later, I'm still trying to get my ASIO files. At first there was a blanket denial that they existed. More recently, ASIO admitted that they couldn't be handed over – for fear of revealing the identity of their dobbers. As Labor icon Jim Cairns once warned me, some of our best friends were enemies.. . . no-bid contracts; 'unvarnished advice' in secret meetings; denouncing armed thugs and drug dealers while putting them in power (Haiti) . . .
So one hopes that the surveillance of the Secretary-General and other upper echelon UN figures won't be hastily erased by Bush and Blair. Let's demand the right to hear this material, to be taken backstage in this mightiest of power plays.
Few, if any, can escape the electronic net. It's not just that you're under surveillance from cameras that watch you misbehaving on railway stations or shoplifting in department stores. It was revealed years ago that the US has an immense filtering system – a technology that screens and sifts every electronic communication on the planet.
Scores of satellites, with a little help from ground stations such as Pine Gap, check out the billions of emails, trying to separate spam from terrorist traffic. But can we be sure that all those offers of penis enlargement and discounted Viagra aren't, in fact, coded messages from al-Qa'ida operatives?
So make no mistake. Your personal emails are being read before you can open them. Can you keep a secret? I don't suppose you can.
I recently attended an international conference of privacy commissioners, hundreds of them, from across the world. Although some of them were still urging their respective governments to pass privacy laws, most conceded that the battle is lost.
Just as sexual censorship is impotent in the face of all-at-once, show-and-tell technologies, the notion of secrecy is becoming anachronistic. Like it or not, transparency applies to your life. Only the machinations of our governments remain opaque.
Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)
