Who's Watching You?

Do you find yourself hopelessly paranoid about government bureaucracies, the corporate Gestapo, eyes in the sky, or even our addiction to social networking sites? Yeah, neither did I. Who's watching you? by Mick Farren and John Gibb is a disturbing exposé about our technology driven world that will make you think twice about performing the simplest of tasks. This book covers everything from facial recognition, corporate data mining, and biomimetrics, all the way up to the potential power of Google as an A.I. entity and the already robust control of the ECHELON interception network. If the idea of simply being watched doesn't bother you because you believe in the now trite expression, "If you have nothing to hide, there's nothing to worry about," then maybe the possibility of mandatory retinal scans and virtual slave collars for all world citizens doesn't concern you either. But for the rest of us who prefer to not be herded like senseless sheep this book is definitely worth taking a look at,,, while you still can, that is.

America is not the only country where the threat of terrorism, and the subsequent encouraging of that fear by the State, has led to the steady erosion of civil liberties for the average individual. This book explores the situation in Britain, said to be the most watched society on Earth. No one knows just how many closed circuit TV cameras are working in Britain at any given moment; estimates range from 2 to 3 million. The average person could find themselves on a CCTV screen up to 300 times a day. No longer do bored security guards have to sit in front of rows of TV screens. New software allows the system to distinguish between normal and abnormal behavior. Such abnormal behavior is automatically flagged and displayed on the one TV screen for the guard to analyze. The retailers of this world are building up a more comprehensive portrait of an individual's purchases and buying habits, with that person's willing consent. It is done through recording credit card transactions and the use of store discount cards (Is a discount of a few percent on your purchase really worth giving all of your personal information to some retailer's database?). What the retailers don't know about a person, the credit reporting agencies do know. Their information comes from a seemingly infinite array of sources, and accuracy of the information is not guaranteed. Echelon is a global electronic interception system that aims to capture every phone call, email, fax and telex communication between America, Europe and the Middle East. It is run by the National Security Agency, with help from its British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand counterparts. A major listening station is at a place called Menwith Hill in Yorkshire. Without the absolutely highest security clearance, don't even bother trying to get in. Members of the European and British do not have such clearance. France is building its own smaller version of Echelon, using current satellite technology. This is a fascinating, and pretty spooky, book. There is a list of groups in the back of the book working on various aspects of the privacy issue. About all a person can do is to keep any more civil liberties from disappearing in the name of security (those liberties that are gone are not coming back anytime soon). This book is recommended for everyone; those who know their way around this issue, and those who know nothing about this issue.