Never mind watching the TV – if WikiLeaks is right, the TV is watching you
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Version 0 of 1. Most people who have ever used a company computer and called IT will remember the unease they felt the first time the tech people “took control” of their computer and they had to watch as the cursor meandered around the screen, guided remotely by someone else. It turns out that the “someone else” may not always be the guys in your own back office. Until now, the very suspicion would have been regarded as an early sign of paranoia. No longer. At a time when consumers everywhere are being urged to avail themselves of the “internet of things”, it turns out that the CIA got there first (by a long way). And it is not just we who have the ability to control our appliances – from our computers to our phones to our televisions, even our front-door locks, heating systems and, potentially, our cars – but the thousands beavering away on the government payrolls at Langley, Virginia, and Cheltenham, England. Now, it may be that you have long had suspicions about this, but the publication of a huge cache of secret data, courtesy of WikiLeaks, will not only confirm your worst fears but suggest that the US and UK intelligence services have already gone much further in their planning than most of us had contemplated in our wildest imaginings: targeting drivers via their car computer systems, for instance. What’s more, with the former CIA director, Michael Hayden, describing the leak as “incredibly damaging”, we have as much confirmation as we are likely to get – certainly a lot more, a lot earlier, than with the earlier mega-leak from the NSA, via Edward Snowden. The nature of the intelligence services’ activities, as revealed, may also cause greater public alarm, because the early details – about email and mobile phones, for instance – are so easily comprehended and so close to our daily lives. But is there really cause for alarm, beyond concern about personal privacy, which – we are told – the millennial generation prizes less highly than their elders did anyway? There surely must be. First, on the part of the security services themselves. If the CIA, and the NSA before it, is so vulnerable to just one individual with a relatively simple piece of kit and a mission, it needs to be thinking about its own security in a whole new way. It must be assumed that it already is. Second, however relaxed you may be about personal privacy, you probably don’t want the security services – friendly or otherwise – logging on to your computer during the night, monitoring your activities via your television or second-guessing your in-car computer. Crime or terrorism suspects are one thing, you might argue, ordinary private citizens something else. But who determines who is who? And who gave the authority for the sort and scale of electronic intrusion that is now possible? Do our legislators – MPs over here, the US Congress over there – have sufficient oversight? Should they not have more? And, third, if “we” have this capability, then doubtless others do, too – or they soon will. Should the latest revelations about the reach of our intelligence services have any bearing on how we relate to allegations – they are still allegations – of Russian interference in the US presidential election? Is there a difference between accessing information in an attempt to find out what was going on (as probably every advanced intelligence service was trying to do during this very strange US election) and using whatever was gleaned for nefarious purposes? Would a similar distinction apply to the CIA, say, hacking your WhatsApp? These are the sorts of questions that are doubtless being discussed behind many layers of locked doors and sound-proofing in the days and weeks to come. In the meantime, I am going to treat the Samsung smart TV in the corner of our sitting room with a new respect. I might try saying “good morning” and “good evening” to it, politely, even try out a few languages. If and when it replies in Mandarin, then it is probably far too late to be worried. |