I just came across an advert for a computer program that
enables employers to monitor their employee’s internet usage. Anybody, anywhere
can buy it.
So, first things first: Anybody in any situation can make a
case for being allowed to watch the activities of those in whom they believe
themselves to have a legitimate interest. But that isn’t the big picture. It’s
the piecemeal, fragmented picture. It’s like defining a jigsaw puzzle in terms
of one piece. The big picture is this:
Western culture is becoming ever more obsessed with the
surveillance mentality. Britain,
for example, is said to have the greatest number of CCTV cameras per capita of
any country in the world. I don’t know whether that’s true, but it wouldn’t
surprise me. The damn things are everywhere. And now there are fresh proposals
to allow the security services to monitor every private person’s e-mail
correspondence.
Whenever individual examples of any kind of surveillance are
contested, the answer is always along the lines of ‘we have a right to know
this’ or ‘we’re doing this for your safety.’ This is the piecemeal approach,
and it suits those with a vested interest in it because an individual piece of
a jigsaw gives little clue as to what the whole picture looks like. They obviously
don’t want people to see the whole picture; it doesn’t suit their purposes.
And so it goes on, bit by piecemeal bit, inexorably,
hysterically, gradually bringing us closer and closer to the kind of society that
Orwell envisaged as long ago as 1948. We’re getting there, and nobody is moving
to stop it because nobody knows how to stop looking at each piece of a jigsaw
in isolation.
It’s New Year’s Eve 1983, folks. Will anybody find a way to
stop the clock?
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