In this spirit, President Obama, who won his campaign largely by tapping into social networking, is now on the forefront of tapping it, yet again wiretapping it, that is. Obama has not only defended Bush's warrantless "information dragnets," but appears to be increasing their scope and invasiveness. According to another report in the New York Times , the FBI supported by the Obama administration has launched a proposal to make collecting information easier, by mandating a "backdoor" which allows all net communications Blackberry, Facebook, and Skype, for example to be unscrambled and read by law enforcement, so as to comply with a wiretap warrant. The FBI argues that they are essentially attempting to keep up with the rapidly changing times to execute legal warranted taps, whereas critics see this as another method which compromises innocent Americans' privacy. To the EFF , this proposal is a clear effort to cut the locks off the publics' private communications.
The most bold example of this trend is Senate Bill 773 - the CyberSecurity Act of 2009 - that would provide the executive branch a "skeleton key" to major private networks. SB 773, reported on as Project Censored 2011's third "most censored story" of last year, would give the President the power to essentially "shut down" private networks in case of a national digital emergency. Further, the bill would allow the government the power to survey private networks considered "critical to national security," and would compel "these companies to "share' information requested by the government." And again, the Obama Administration argues that the bill is not an imposition, but a necessity to "protect the American people."
Just five years ago (a year after Facebook was founded), any of these measures would have arrested the news cycle. After Bush's National Security Association spying program was revealed in 2005 by the New York Times article "Bush Let's U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts," there was a fierce public debate about the balance between privacy and safety, and how much of the Fourth Amendment we would willingly cede to prevent another attack. In fact, the Bush Administration actively tried to stop the NY Times from revealing the program that allowed spying on American citizens' phone calls without a warrant.
In 2010, though, the prospect of these massive information dragnets seems far less controversial. Far more articles were published about falling starlet Lindsay Lohan selling a photo of herself wearing a SCRAM ankle bracelet which tracks her movement and alcohol use than were published about SB 773, nor any of these cases in which warrantless surveillance is legalized. In other words, we appear to care more about a device tracking Lohan, than being tracked ourselves.
The public's dribbling attention to government surveillance shows us that a profound cultural shift has taken place in less than five years. This does not appear to be a fad, but rather suggests we are entering a Blabber New World, in which we like Winston expect to be followed, watched and scrutinized all the time.
A Blabber New World
Marc Prensky, the technology expert and educator who coined the eponymous term " Digital Native," asks in a recent article "Should a 4 year old have an i-Phone?" His answer is "Absolutely" (though they shouldn't be able to receive calls from their toddler buddies). Prensky believes that the this technology that the iPhone is "their birthright." If a kid can't afford an i-Phone, then there "ought to be public subsidies," so "every kid in school especially primary school" can be plugged in, as that is their future plugged in. (Lest you think Prensky's suggestion is too far out, a pilot program in California, supported by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, is replacing textbooks with iPads in six public middle school math classes).
Given how profoundly our culture has changed in a scant five years, I wonder what sort of world these four-year old cyborgs will enter. The children of the Digital Natives the Networked Natives will never have known a world in which they weren't always connected to the public at all times, and will grow up with a living record of their lives made public from the moment their parents posted their sonograms on Facebook.
What can privacy mean to a person whose first step is a matter of public record?
And how will Networked Natives read 1984? How will they relate to Winston, a man who desperately avoids the very screen that they are likely reading his tale on? How will they ever know a world outside of the all-seeing electronic eye, a world in which they live a life in which every sound could be overheard, and every moment scrutinized? In which, what's more, they may want to be perpetually watched?
As our children gaze at the screen on which they read 1984, how will they feel about Orwell's final lines of the novel:
"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
