I am sitting outside on my patio (well I was when I started).
The sun is shining. The birds are singing.
I have BBC Radio 6 playing in the background courtesy of my iPod which is connected to my WIFI hub and its streaming live over the internet. I have just checked myself in for an ungodly early flight tomorrow morning. The electronic boarding pass is now sitting somewhere safe in binary form on my blackberry.
I am downloading some television on my home computer which I might watch later, I have also printed off some colouring in sheets for my son to keep him happy and quiet.
Finally, later I will download my favourite podcast to listen to during the flight when the telly has stopped hogging all the bandwidth.
As my home computer and iPod whir away unseen but permanently connected through some magic air I write this on my work laptop. It’s disconnected, passive and cold. The little blinky lights at the back are dark.
I detest popups, email notifications or any other distraction.
The internet has now become the center of my universe. It’s connected to half the appliances in my house. In a very very short space of time it has become a staple of life. Like bread, milk and MOTD I wouldn’t really know what to do without it.
First thing I do when the bing sounds after landing at an airport is turn on my phone and check stuff. Any stuff. Work emails, private emails, facebook, the news. I check everything where something might have happened.
What’s happened in the last hour since I have been disconnected?
Generally not a lot is the answer.
I flew to Dubai recently and they proudly announced that after they reach cruising altitude the inflight Wi-Fi service will begin. This filled me with an excited glee. Emailing, surfing, skyping, facebooking ten miles up!
So you can imagine how I felt when they quietly announced 20mins after take-off it was in fact not working and thus not available on that flight. I felt something akin to road rage as I sulkily reverted back to the 600+ available on demand entertainment channels I had at my disposal.
It’s a huge part of my life. And I know I am Mr Average in this regard. I am not an early adopter. I’m no technophile. I wait. I read reviews. I scoff that I don’t need that new thing which looks like a book with a screen. It’ll never take off I say knowledgably. Why on earth would people buy it?
I then quietly buy one for myself a year or two later when the jealousy kicks in and the realisation that I was of course wrong.
As an example of this I still own a 300 year old blackberry.
Its clunky, has intermittent reception. It’s a bit scuffed, scratched and the letter ‘a’ on the keyboard sometimes annoyingly sticks. But it does work. Sort of.
I will eventually switch to an IPhone or the like at some point but only after I am convinced they work properly and I don’t run the risk of hanging up the phone with my nose every time I make a call.
Even this blog is 100% dependent on the internet.
Where else would I be given a forum to talk such random shite? Sure as hell no magazine or newspaper would give me the time of day and even if they did I wouldn’t be able to say ‘shite’.
And I quite like saying shite.
No, with the internet I can write what I like, when I like and if someone reads it great. If not well so what?
This is good and bad.
You see I am not writing this anonymously. My name and face is there for all to see. But I could just as easily made this an anonymous blog and when you realise you are anonymous things start to change. Once the shackles come off the nasty side of human behaviour starts to come out.
If you are bored, go to one of those torrent sites and read through the comments people post about the torrent. I’m not suggesting you download anything, that would be illegal, I am suggesting you read the comments which accompany it. I guarantee you will read things there which will make you wince and your eyes water.
It’s a bit like the law abiding citizen turning to crime when he/she knows they wont get caught. Why for example were there so many average people engaging in looting during the riots in London a couple of years ago? It was because they believed they wouldn’t get caught and hell everyone else was doing it.
If I asked you if you could commit a crime which would give you an economic benefit (bag of swag, widescreen TV, sports car) and told you you would not get caught and no one would be hurt. Would you do it?
A lot of people would.
Mob mentality is the same. What you might consider well beyond acceptable suddenly becomes normal. Its ok when you are surrounded by 1000 people doing exactly the same.
I would challenge you to go visit one of those weird Baptist/Preacher sermon-shows. The ones you sometimes see on the telly where they take people up on stage, press a hand against their forehead and announce ‘That Jesus is now in your life’ or something along those lines. The normal order of things is at that point the person collapses and then stands up 'reborn' whilst the crowd whip themselves up into a frenzy.
I challenge you to go.
I challenge you to go up on stage after 100 folks have just collapsed in the preachers arms. And then just stand there. Each time he touches your forehead just stand still shaking your head. Maybe even say things like ‘Nope, didn’t work’ or ‘ uh-uh, nothing. Try again?’
You wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.
I would collapse, get reborn (i.e. stand up) then quietly sneak out feeling slightly ashamed of myself.
Edward Snowdon is my hero.
Cos he actually did say no. Well he ran away then started releasing stuff but please bear with me as there is only so much of a link I can concoct.
Whilst everyone else just accepted that there was some snooping going on he had the gonads to go and expose it all. He also had the proof. He exposed it and is continuing to expose it. Drip feeding it to the worlds press. A slow and painful process which ensures it remains on the front page and keeps everyone involved on their toes.
I for one have nothing but admiration for the chap and what he has done.
I accept there are lots of people who would happily lynch him but in general terms most people I know agree with me. That said I was very surprised when George W got a second term so what do I know? Clearly there are huge amount of people out there, whom I don't know and who disagree with me. And they vote.
What he has revealed is shocking. I imagined stuff like in Jack Bauer’s 24 happened but the extent to which powers have been abused, twisted and extended is shocking. There also appears to have been little or no oversight to ensure what they were doing was actually was really in the interests of security.
What on earth was the national security threat which lead to Chancellor Merkel’s private cell phone being monitored? Or the prime minister of Brazil’s. Who on earth actually thought what they were doing was acceptable or that a dragnet approach to monitoring cell phone and internet traffic was the best way to ensure the borders were protected.
It’s mostly the US however Britain doesn’t come out of it smelling of roses. The information and technology sharing deals means the UK is complicit even if we didn’t actually do the snooping. We helped facilitated it so defacto we have to bear some of the blame.
All that said, I don’t believe for a second the UK prime minister or the US president actually knew it was happening. I don’t. I believe they signed an umbrella approval and then the rest was just interpretation of the ‘rules’ further down the food chain.
Paranoia and fear is what has allowed this to happen.
Replay the horror movie of 9/11 often enough and is it any wonder anyone who looks a bit Middle Eastern is a potential threat. When I don’t shave for a while - I look Middle Eastern!
No for me Edward Snowdon should be lauded for what he has done.
He has single handedly managed to bring the discussion about what we are willing to accept in the name of security into the cold harsh light of day. The cloak and dagger shadowy stuff does need to continue of course. Not everything should be available for everyone to see but the boundaries do need to be set very clearly and openly before we let the James Bonds of this world go off and do their stuff again.
If you are not guilty, why are you worried?
I would counter this with I’m not guilty but it still doesn’t mean I would allow my private phone calls and late night internet searching to be monitored. There are lots of things I would rather keep private, this doesn’t make me a criminal, terrorist or threat to any country’s national security. It makes me a human being, same as everyone else.
Imagine for a moment if it transpired that the roles had been reversed and the German intelligence service had been caught monitoring the private conversations of the United States President? Or that the French government had been monitoring all cell phone traffic and strong-arming ISP’s to give up details/backdoors into their software so these could be monitored as well. Globally.
Ahh but the US/UK are not the bad guys here.
I think you would find there are many many countries around the world who would have justifiable reason to disagree with this statement.
Anyway – I think you get the gist of what I am saying. It’s bad.
What’s more important now is what does anyone do about it? If the answer is nothing then what’s the point? It would be all for nothing and this cannot be allowed to happen.
If it does the Pope’s internet cache will continue to be monitored and Edward Snowdon will most likely live out the rest of his days freezing his, larger than most guys, gonads off in Moscow.
I will continue as is, linking every appliance in my house up to the internet.
I will also continue avoiding the latest new-fangled tech thing until I realise how good it actually is and hope that after growing a beard I don’t find myself having a three day cavity search.
And all because I wrote a blog containing the word ‘Shite’.
