The global village has see-through walls (for some)

some are watching, the rest is showing

Whatever you type into your computer in an online-environment is stored and passed over to the government for further inspection. No, this is not paranoia, but the truth. And it is a fact you can’t really over-dramatize. The recent events around AOL and Google have been but a glimpse of what is already going on underneath the slick surface of the internet-community.

AOL has put search key words and dates online for examination and trial for scientifical purposes. Even though they exchanged all names with numbers the New York Times tracked down an elderly lady within a few days. For people searching environments they know, it might even be a lot easier to track down what their fellows are interested in. One lady searching for dates of a church choir and church meetings was also interested in vibrators and sexual stimulation. An interesting fact for her fellow church choir members. But that is just a funny illustrating point. More interesting is the fact that all of these data are stored, connected to a certain IP address (and in the case of AOL to a certain person) and searchable.

Google was the only prominent search engine to publicly refuse the US government entry to their database. But they are cooperating with the Chinese Government o censorship rules and exchange of search data. Do no evil? What a laugh. Nowadays censorship is not so much about prohibiting certain information any more, but it is about finding out who is looking for what, remembering that and then acting accordingly.

As you can see from these two cases, the data stored on the internet has various ways to destroy a person’s life. Now think about the size of what we are talking about. Your Internet Provider has log files of all the websites you surf to, which he has to keep for a certain time to make them available to police and such. If you type into a search engine, whatever you search for is stored. Visit Amazon and they start to know about you from the first second. As soon as you buy something they also have your credit card number and your real life address. Playing online games, subscribing to newsletters, downloading mp3s, everything can be used to add up to a profile of your interests, your personality and your private life.

What me worry?

There are two powers interested in that. One is the state and one is companies. Unable to decide which one is actually really ruling the planet, I’ll tackle them both at once, because they have more in common than you might think. They want to know about you, so they can sell you their product (votes and commodities) and to take your money away from you. Their sole purpose, no matter what they might tell you, is to stay in power and to keep power away from you. Your power will be to choose between Coke and Pepsi, not between real choices of living your life free and easy. Google currently is sitting on so much money, the US stock exchange thinks about rating them as an investmentfond rather than a company.

Now ebay and Google want to cooperate outside the US. The plan is that Google will deliver text-based advertisement for ebay. The reasoning behind it is simple: Google is sitting on a mountain of small ads, ebay sits on a mountain of users who are typing into the search field products they are interested in right now. Exactly what advertisers want. A dream for the consumer? Definitely a monster of data accumulation for the biggest online sellers there are.

Another big trend within companies is to search friendship-sites like myspace and fellows for information about youthculture trends and, more specifically, about the interests of applicants. If you have an application interview at a big company, better check those death metal entries you have on your website. It is amazing how much of personal information people are willing to give away for free on these sites. Still, what search engine database researches can get or construct from their data is way more personal than this.

At the moment all we have is telltale signs of what the future will bring. At the moment masses of information are being stored away and the ideas of what to do with it have just begun. They circle mainly around the idea of what to sell to whom, which sounds innocently enough at first glance, though the question if you want your mail box stuffed with spam or advertisement that has been selected to fit your profile is nil from a user’s point of view.

Paranoia precedes dystopia

The troubles start when all this data is constructed into profiles and these hit back on you. You won’t have insight into those profiles (they are a company’s secrets), you won’t be able to change them and they will stick. That one porn search when you were drunk might pop up year’s later on the screen of your future employer. The one time you searched for an abortion clinic for one of your friends, who were in trouble, pop up on a file your new boyfriend bought on you and he will think it was you that had an abortion. Suddenly stranger’s knock on your door (virtually, via telephone or email) and want to interest you in whatever fine product you mentioned in a chatroom just yesterday. Secret Service knocks down your door because you bought “Fight Club” on DVD years ago and there are terrorists in there bombing skyscrapers to dust. Go, tell them you bought it for your mother, see if it will help you.

Georg Cracked, August 2006