Well, we can all be worried about that, even those who don’t have computers, don’t use email, aren’t on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media. Is anything truly private in this world of cyberspace? The Cloud, a mysterious netherworld of warehousing all your computer data, is entirely beyond my understanding. Most of us can barely get out heads around a hard drive inside our computers, let alone something as nebulous (pun intended) as The Cloud.
The point is that without computers, the world as it functions today would come to a halt. If all data were lost, then we would be paralyzed. I have no idea how many computers there are in the average new car, but I would venture there is more technology under the hood of your new car than was aboard the Saturn rockets that launched our trips to the moon. The modern desktop certainly is infinitely more powerful than the early Apollo missions.
In recent weeks we have been shown how our sense of privacy is largely an illusion. In memory of those who have been around awhile is the telephone party line. There might be up to 4 or 5 on a single phone number and the number/pattern of rings would identify for whom the call was intended. As children, we never paid any attention to that and listened in on all the neighbors conversations. That invasion of privacy wasn’t limited to kids and you were always attuned to the mid-conversation electronic click that signaled someone had picked up their telephone to listen. At least, everyone knew that privacy was not to be found in telephones.
Then came the wiretap, a valuable tool in criminal investigations, although evidence collected under such circumstances is subject to very strict admissibility criteria. Everyone remembers when President George W. Bush authorized wiretaps without a warrant to the consternation of many high government officials, to say nothing of the average citizen. That turned out to be the tip of an incalculably huge iceberg with the revelation that the National Security Agency was eavesdropping on millions of emails and phone traffic of virtually all of us.
In the name of national security all this has been rationalized. If one terrorist attack can be prevented, then is it worth the cost of our loss of privacy; doubtless many have been averted. One would view 9/11 in a different light that the clownish shoe bomber or setting your underwear on fire in an attempt to being down airliners; but the principle remains the same.
The level of, or lack of awareness, that such is going on has been mindboggling. Governors, mayors, congressmen (no congresswomen as yet), and TV personalities, have voluntarily relinquished their privacy with internet exposure, and then faced public disgrace when it became public.
A psychologist in a major university counseling center related that students were outraged when a potential employee checked their Facebook page and saw any number of pictures that would be personally damaging. The naiveté of such stupidity is astounding but it goes much deeper than that. At least the perpetrator knew (presumably) what they were doing when they posted the picture. Now we realize that our personal information may be watched by the government. That millions of personal emails were “embedded” in a bundle of collected surveillance data is not in the least comforting.
The problem is so broad, so complex that I need more information and will have a column in the near future with more data on how to protect ourselves.
On another matter, I received an email from Marlene A. Condon of Crozet, commenting on my column “Don’t Call Birds Brainless.” She is a published Author/Photographer, The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books). She brought to my attention that migratory bird nests are protected, even before eggs are laid and should be left alone. I’m sure the house wrens will rejoice but I am still angry that they killed my baby bluebirds. As we all know, nature is harsh.
– Hayden Hollingsworth