An Orwellian Nightmare?

Imagine the scene. One fine sunny morning, there is a knock at the door. You answer it to find two men outside, carrying some large boxes.

“Good morning,” one says, “we’re from ConstantWatch and we’re here to install the equipment.”

“What equipment?” you ask.

“Just the usual,” the man replies. “Cameras, microphones and internet monitoring equipment.”

“But I didn’t order any of that,” you protest. “I don’t want it.”

“I’m very sorry,” the second man begins, “but it’s the law.”

Seeing your expression, he continues, “yes, I’m afraid it’s a new law. All households need to be fitted with this equipment so all of your activities at home can be watched. What you do, what you say and how you use your computers and mobiles. All of this now needs to be monitored.”

“Monitored!” you exclaim. “But who by?” “Ah well, we’re not allowed to tell you that, I’m afraid. It’s a secret.”

The scene above is the stuff of an Orwellian nightmare. Or, if you have a black sense of humour, something from a Monty Python sketch. The idea of constant surveillance at home seems an infringement of our basic human rights; any government trying to introduce such a measure would face riots in the streets.

And yet, the chilling fact is, many of us have already surrendered to the situation described above. We have devices in our homes which have the potential to watch us, listen to us and monitor our every interaction on the internet. Our phones, tablets and computers all have the potential to be put to those uses, and many already are.

I’m sure you have followed the story of a Cambridge Analytica, a shadowy firm of computer data analysts, and their alleged role in both the US presidential election and the Brexit referendum. Their method was simple: by monitoring millions of Facebook posts, likes and clicks, they were able to build up an uncannily accurate picture of the population. By looking at the areas Facebook users were interested in, they were able to build up a picture of their age, gender, location, interests, likely income, political views and so on. This information, allegedly, was used to target key voters and manipulate what they saw on social media sites ultimately influencing the outcome of the UK and US votes. Even if you don’t believe the conspiracy theory, there is no doubt that Facebook collects data on its users in order to target its advertising.

And it’s not just Facebook. Google also knows a frightening amount about you. If you use location tracking, it knows everywhere you’ve been from the very first day you started using Google on your phone. It knows everything you’ve ever searched, even if you have deleted it. It also stores all of your YouTube history, so they probably know your taste in music, what you think is funny, what your leisure interests might be. They can even access your webcam and microphone.

The amount of information these internet companies have on us is scary. What’s even scarier is we don’t know who they share it with and how they use it. You may think, so what, people have always used targeted advertising. But what is truly alarming is the effect in the young. They don’t get their news from BBC 1 at 6pm; they don’t form their tastes from Top of the Pops. What they are exposed to online comes through an increasingly narrow funnel, reinforcing what they think and not exposing them to unexpected ideas. We need to counter this through the offline world, through our wisdom and experience, by exposing them to what they can’t find on the internet: the joys of a library, or a jazz concert; an art gallery or a lakeside walk. For if we leave them to only digest what is fed to them on the internet, we condemn them to a world even Orwell couldn’t imagine.