“Big Brother” has loomed over the American Psyche like an apocalyptic nightmare since Orwell published his 1984. Administrative and punitive overreach by, what is referred to in whispered fear, the Deep State, haunts the alternative universe like the four horseman terrorized the Cypriot madman.
The Revelations of the antics of the NSA don't help, but they are mere pikers compared to Corporate America. Not only is every shopping mall and every retail outlet under constant video surveillance, but the technologies, driven by the ever greater need for markets, are rapidly expanding into public spaces like schools, intersections and our police forces, yeah even unto our very homes themselves.
I think this is what has driven this headlong retreat into cyberspace. The appeal of a private space wherein one could converse; perhaps find or lose oneself. It is an illusion, a dangerous illusion.
Heretofore, under the “Common Carrier” laws, a medium such as telephones, television, radio, etc., were required to provide at least an assumption of privacy. For instance, in order for the government to gain any information from ones phone records, telephone conversations, authorities had to obtain a search warrant upon some evidence of probable violations of law. Not so with the internet.
“Consider Target's privacy policy,” wrote Joseph Turow in The New York Times, “which is perfectly legal and not at all unusual. Target collects data about you across its website and app, in addition to knowing what you buy. It uses the information for its own marketing purposes. It also allows 'third-party companies' to collect 'certain information when you visit our websites or use our mobile applications'. In other words, it can share the data it collects with just about anyone.
“But Target is not just profiling you based on how you shop with Target. It may also collect what you say on any blogs, chat rooms and social networks you use, and it may obtain 'demographic and other information' about you from 'third parties.'
“You have to assume that Target can purchase any known information about you held by any other company. Not even your body is off limits—cameras in some store 'may use biometrics, including facial recognition,' for theft prevention and security.” (1).
You get the picture.
Or do you? That 'smartphone' you have is not as benign as it appears. Oh sure, you've long since reconciled yourself to the idea that the thing is 'tracking' your location—tied in as it is to the global GPS network. But it is also, while you think you have safely hung up, listening to your every word, picking up television commercials as your TV drones on, tracking you even while you sleep. Likewise the internet. Visit a website, looking for an appliance or a camera and soon your mailbox and Facebook will be flooded with ads, specials, and coupons. Facebook is introducing facial recognition technology. Big Brother Is Watching, and it ain't Uncle Sam.
Americans, Turow rightly points out, “dislike being tracked”. Why then this disconnect?
In an epic example of Orwellian 'Newspeak”, Corporate America has given us 'privacy policies' which, of course, are merely a license to mine one's every move, to plunder one's very being. By changing the nomenclature from 'information practice statements' to 'privacy policies' corporations found it easier to diffuse public concern and thereby reduce the visible need for prohibition.
“Fifteen years of research consistently shows that the label is deceptive—depending on the survey, between 54 percent and 73 percent of Americans assume companies won't share their information without permission.” It ain't so.
A decade ago, when I began these columns, I told a co-worker—not entirely in jest—that if I were an Englishman blogging about the Queen and printing what I write online about our presidents, I would be left to rot in irons deep within the Tower of London.
Reflection on 'Freedom' in the Brave New World:
“It's a 5 O'clock world
when the whistle blows
no one owns a piece of my time.”
----The Vogues “5 O'Clock World”
Americans have always possessed more form than the substance of freedom. Think about it. How much of your life is really free? You slip into unconsciousness a third of your day. That, I suppose is “freedom” by some definition. But otherwise, you owe your boss “a piece of my time” as the Vogues sang half-century ago. There is, especially now with the removal of any pretense of 'democracy' by crushing our unions, no 'freedom' in the workplace. Work—a third of our lives—is a top-down, authoritarian world and is becoming increasingly so.
Heretofore, it could be argued, one could work for oneself. Set up a business in order to exercise more control over one's life and, like John Galt in Ayn Rand's fevered dreams, exploit your neighbor in the bargain. But this too is becoming increasingly difficult for as soon as you demonstrate that a dollar can be made with new technologies or new markets, the big boys will swoop in and take over. They will not buy you out, they will not pay for your inventories less your equity. They will simply move in and take over leaving you with nothing. Who among us would put their life savings in a hardware store, for instance, living in eternal terror that Lowe's or Home Depot would drop a 'big box' in your lap and leave you and your decedents penniless. Same is true of pharmacies, grocery stores....ad nauseum.
This, it seems to me, is one of the reasons why Americans have fled headlong into consumerism. It isn't simply that we have replaced what we produce with what we buy as the arbiter of identity; it is that our consumer choices are the only choice we have left; they are the last frontier of freedom. The last frontier of personal latitude. The last arena wherein we can effectively and consistently exercise choice and, therefore, control. That and, perhaps, cyberspace.
But lo and behold the Corporate Pigs have come grunting, scarfing up what remains of our tattered 'freedoms', both front trotters deep in the trough. Manipulation. Control. Surveillance. Some pigs are more equal than others. (2)
Welcome to 1984. It isn't quite what you were taught to fear. It is far worse. When the state comes calling Corporate America will have already fashioned the tools of fascism. Or, more accurately, with the state and corporate interests already merging as one, Corporate America will simply usurp the police power of the state (Blackwater, privatized prisons and police forces, private security firms) with the tools already at hand. The frontier is closing up shop and the night is upon us. A small voice in my head now quietly whispers: who could possibly be tracking this blog and when will the time come? Paranoia perhaps? Perhaps.
“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”
Impeach and Imprison.
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- Turow, Joseph. “Privacy Policies Don't Work” The New York Times. Tuesday, August 21, 2018. Page A21
- Reference here is to Orwell's Animal Farm
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