I watched an interview with Bernie Ecclestone, the F1 magnate, with Eddie Jordan on Sunday and he described his own reaction to Max Mosely as 'over the top' when he had demanded that he resign over the affair of his filmed session with dominatrix prostitutes. He said that 'Max was now fighting for the rights to privacy for all people'.
Indeed. There are different laws for the rich, as we have seen in many cases. Mosely not only got compensated for the film being shown on the internet but he is now taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights claiming that whole affair has 'lost him his dignity'. Some would claim that if you did not have any dignity beforehand then you can't lose it but maybe that's a little unfair on poor Max. Certainly, the outrage has been turned on Ecclestone and his own sense of morals and ethics have been reversed after a severe talking to from Max.
Power and money should never be underestimated.
What About Joe Public?
For mere mortals like us, we have our privacy breached daily. Despite being on Telephone Preference Service (TPS), I still get a call a day from some nebulous call centre with the delayed start before they try to confirm my name and then I get some spiel before I cut them off. Whether we like it or not, TPS is about as effective as an MP's Expense Rule Book - if you want to bend the rules, you'll find a way.
So what of the new EU Directives which come into force next week? As of Monday, your ISP or telecom firm will be storing details of all your emails and net phone calls - not the content as yet but who you are communicating with. It comes in the wake of the London bombings and several countries like Sweden have outright refused to implement the directive while Germany is mounting a challenge.
Civil Liberty whingers feel this is another erosion of our privacy. I have reported on more extensive plans being discussed at high level which extends to phone calls and all internet communications including social network sites. In reality, the knowledge of who is communicating to who is of little use as in a world of pseudonyms and avatars on the web, knowing 'Terminator' is communicating with 'sweetliljools' is not too helpful.
The content of the communication is of more value in the search for terrorists, so we are but a short step away from everything being monitored.
The Arguments
Of course, you only need to have one bombing to justify such an invasion of privacy, just like a speed camera can be erected on a street where one death has occurred - in my main street it was the death of a dog which triggered its installation. In Britain we already have worse than 1 camera per 14 people and this was not much better when 7/7 took place. In fact, the bombers were clearly identified as they boarded a train at Luton and then on their way into the Undergrounds at Kings Cross. Seeing them did not prevent the bombings - the only way they would have been stopped was if they had omitted to buy a ticket.
There's the rub - the technology currently looks for exceptions. If all our data is to be stored then the only way it can be filtered is to first search by demographics and then to search by keyword, hoping that 'death', 'glorious victory' and 'Osama will be pleased' crops up. Or indeed the user names 'Osama_cave' or 'Allah_Fist' are nicknames used.
The argument by whinging Liberals is that this is a short step to full invasion of privacy. They are not wrong. Most surveillance cameras have been erected in city centres in the name of security and public safety. Laws have now been passed that councils can use the same cameras and images to spot people who park illegally, overstay their ticket or use a parking space for a two minute drop off. Number plate recognition catches them out and fines are sent by post - no matter what your excuse, you are guilty. The extension of this thought is that many agencies and commercial ventures will be very interested in your data and so before long lots of them will have access to our details and our most intimate thoughts and communications.
If you think that is scaremongering, it isn't. It means that Max Mosely might have to find another method to arrange his visits to prostitutes, it means that for all of us we should think twice about who and why we are communicating. As a for instance, the moment you register for the Electoral Roll, your information goes public. From that moment onwards your new address and details of who lives there is in the public domain. Junk mail comes flying in, unsolicited phone calls abound and your information is visible to any number of firms who pay for it. You have not ticked any boxes allowing them to have access to this but they do. You cannot get a mortgage without having joined the Electoral Roll so don't even think about not doing it.
Our information is freely traded today and there is little we can do about it. It's a precious commodity and knowing what we communicate about is even more precious. You can bet your shirt that taxes will arise associated with our information - that's one certainty.
But then again - what price Freedom? Surely erosion of our privacy is paramount in the search for terrorists? What do we have to hide if we are not terrorists? Max Mosely is showing exactly what we have to hide. His 'crusade' on behalf of all of us is to stop what is happening and saying 'what I do in privacy is my own business'. Max is campaigning against Google Street View which shows images in streets where he might be visiting 'paid for ladies', against firms that might pick up his internet booking of a good spanking by a lady with a paddle, against the use of cameras anywhere to show his private acts in public. The natural extension of what Max is doing is that he is saving us all against the tyranny of invasion of our privacy just so he can have uninterrupted sessions with 'Madames'.
The counter argument is on dodgy ground if we leave it in the hands of Max Mosely or, for that matter, in the hands of whinging Liberals who no one takes seriously.
Just today, Jaqui Smith is agreeing that 'chip and pin' technology will be incorporated in our Identity Cards and so can be used in our standard transactions at ATMs, for instance. This is claimed as a benefit - but this means our identity and all the information stored on the card about us will be freely available to banks, credit card companies, shops, internet companies - the lot as well as scammers and thieves.
Why would you want to do that? It is a wholesale public airing of even our biometric data - the possibilities are endless. It would be far easier for spouses to catch their other halves watching porn movies but would it stop terrorists?
The Jury's Out
One thing I do agree with the whingers on is that too often we see our data grabbed under the auspices of security and only to be made available to wider services and eventually the commercial world. Even cool technology like Google has its drawbacks as the lady who tried to escape a violent partner found out - the world is watching her and anyone can access it.
Far be it for me to whinge about safety - I would not wish a single injury or death by a terrorist if there was a way to prevent it. But as the 7/7 and JC De Menezes cases showed, we had a birds-eye view of the events and the people involved and it did not prevent the atrocities. It is what your intentions are and how you propose to use the data collected that determines whether terrorism or crime will be stopped.
Today, we have a track record to show that state and local government priorities are not centred around countering terrorism and crime but collecting more money from us. Until that is beaten out of the heads of the individuals involved, then I am against further invasion of privacy.
Whingers, make a place for me.
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