Frightened by Big Brother

Jim Holtz

Speaking of that

I frightened myself the other day. I was researching a story related to the on-line chat room Facebook, so I decided to sign up on the site. I used a fictitious name; after all I didn’t want to become a victim of a predator looking to take advantage of an aging journalist. I did use my Gazette e-mail address, however. As soon as I hit the “continue” button, four faces and names appeared on my screen of people whom, as a reporter, I had e-mailed in the last year while working on stories. Apparently the four are already on Facebook, and the website suggested that I might want to sign them up as “friends.”

I am not prone to be too concerned about the misuse of cyberspace or by the power of Big Brother and corporate America (or the world) to somehow control me through the Internet. However, I have to say that I was surprised to learn that the automated computer banks and their controllers at Facebook, and therefore lots of other places, obviously have instant access to every e-mail that I have ever sent. In their banks of gigabytes they have recorded not just my messages, but presumably everyone else’s. By entering my e-mail address, I triggered the Facebook megacomputer to scour all of those old e-mails of mine to find if any recipients that were already signed up. Of course, this is not hot news; I have heard commentators say that government and corporations have had this capability for a long time. I just have never come up against it.

The aspect that I find equally disconcerting is that of all the people whom I have met who are on Facebook, none have ever expressed any concern to me about this. I have written in the past about the trend toward public cell phone conversations and the modern tendency toward it’s-all-about-me-ism, so perhaps this is just another manifestation. Perhaps people want everything about them broadcast to the world and therefore aren’t concerned that out there is a permanent record of every e-mailed message, photo, tweet ant twitter they ever sent.

Orwell must be smiling.

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