Plebgate, the Sousveillance society and your Boxing Day Browsing ...

We have a most interesting juxtaposition
- of press cover for the EU Information Commisioners' "review" of Microsoft's new terms and conditions,
- of the release of the EU Digital Priorities for 2013-4,
- of attacks on the appointment of Clare Perry to look at how to better help parents protect their children from those who would pervert their natural interest in the opposite sex
- of attacks on the current proposals for retaining intra-UK communications data in case it might be a value in "the ware against terror"
- of ongoing press cover for Plebgate, which I called Smeargate in my previous blog on the end of the myth of on-line anonymity.

Assuming that your Internet connection does not go down over Christmas, remember that everything you do on-line on Boxing Day (expectedto be a peak period for content download) will be recorded and may well be sold, legimately or otherwise, provided to security services (public or private) to "help protect you" and/or "used to improve services to you".

If that depresses you, think also of "Plebgate" as an example of successful "sousveillance",? albeit I am using a wider definition to include using some of the "big data" that is already out there to hold those in "authority" to account for their actions. That said, it is a salutory story from which you can derive a wide variety of conclusions. Mine would be:

1) Honesty is the best policy: if only because it is getting ever harder to hide your lies.? ?
2) Most of what you find on the Internet is even less reliable than the news or the papers.
3) Dig your garden (Voltaire: Candide)

Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/when-it-meets-politics/2012/12/plebgate-the-sousveillance-soc.html

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