The Scramble For Your Information
The Scramble For Your Information
‘Those who would give up Essential Liberty
to purchase a little Temporary Safety,
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.‘
Benjamin Franklin.
If I were a little more ignorant, this writing would have been entitled Big Brother or something as clichéd as that but I find ‘Big’ is too large a word to attribute to a mind so small. It’s a mind that would entertain the petty ambition of extracting information from those who are unaware of the consequences of giving it, under the guise of convenience.
It sounds like the mischievous ‘Little Brother’, so-called by the native Americans, who were also duped into giving up information for convenience in the 15th century. That didn’t end well at all.
I pick up my phone to call a friend, I’m trying to tell him I’ll be late. Instinctively, I look for an envelope or some other icon on the phone menu showing a possible missed call, something or other. I see an unfamiliar caution sign, I’m thinking maybe the battery needs replacing or there’s a serious software issue. Naturally, I explore and the alert reads ‘Enable Google Play services.’ Really, I must? I thought I’d ignore it but it kept coming back.
After spending precious time that I did not plan to, I still couldn’t disable it. Totally frustrated, I eventually gave in to the pressure as I realised, not that it wouldn’t stop but it can’t stop, it’s an alert that’s not designed to be turned off. Does this sound like a typical event in your smart (er than you) phone life?
Nowadays this type of android-human master-slave interaction gets me more and more frustrated. When I think about the number of details I’m forced to provide just to open an online trading account: email verification, card details, text verification messages, addressed utility bills and passport scans, I often think about who’s collecting all this information. Behind the request, there is no face yet we have come to accept this. We send verified personal data to unknown sources, every day.
Urban Dandy London 