PRIVACY AND JUSTICE IN THE DIGITAL AGE
by Jerry Day
2008 October 25
In Response to the letter from Ryan from Florida,
2008 October 21:
Questioning the capability of digital television systems to collect personal
data.
The mandated conversion of television from analog-to-digital allows
government to profit from you by reselling spectrum that had been tied up in
the analog system. You will pay this hidden tax as various agencies,
investors and spectrum "developers" pass the costs of the spectrum
commoditization and "sales" on to you.
Government will be collecting large fees for frequency spectrum that it does
not own and which costs it nothing. Since government claims the authority to
"regulate" spectrum, it goes one step further and claims the right to profit
from it.
The private broadcast and cable television industry must spent hundreds of
billions of dollars to convert the entire pipeline to very expensive digital
equipment and formats so your government can make a relatively paltry and
unearned spectrum sales windfall.
Society will bear a massive economic drag from this conversion due to it's
being artificially and needlessly accelerated by force of law.
Also, we have good reason to fear for our privacy in the new digital
broadcast environment. Digital television allows unprecedented scrutiny of
individual habits and behavior. That digital cable box is like a camera in
your house. Every time you press a button on your remote that event is
instantly transmitted back to your cable company, recorded, processed and
and analyzed by anyone they care to share that information with such as
"marketers" and sometimes government. The channel you selected, the time of
day, the volume or mute level, everything goes into a database associated
with your account, your name, your address and potentially all your
"consumer records".
It is possible now to put your television viewing habits together with your
medical records, your criminal record, your credit ratings, your employment
record, your education history, your political affiliations, your taxpayer
records, every credit card purchase and atm transaction you make, every
public record of any title or license, every click and keystroke you enter
on the internet, in text messages and in email, your bank account balance
activities and balances, etc. etc. Organizations that collect this
information are now sharing those databases and putting huge computer power
to parsing and analyzing ... you.
Imagine how much you would know about someone if you had access to those
records. Imagine how easily you could be prosecuted and sued for stealing
and sharing such private information. Companies, organizations and
government cannot resist the temptation and bonanza of knowing so much about
their "markets". In fact they have spent decades creating that
infrastructure to commit voyeurism far beyond any historical scale.
At this point, to put a camera in every room of your house would be a waste
of time because every time we brush up against digital technology we leave
such complete records in the hands of strangers that they can now see an
absolutely crystal clear picture of ourselves in aggregate. And the
strangers in commerce and government who collect and process your data have
big plans for your information.
We have miserably failed, as a society and as individuals to protect our
privacy, and ultimately our power. We are so exposed that we are now highly
vulnerable to manipulation, attack and control. We have given institutions
carte blanche with our freedoms, rights, wealth and future by permitting
them to collect and own every shred of information about us.
We have not been alert or diligent in limiting digital record creation, just
as we have tolerated massive government “bailout” transfers of our wealth,
government exploitation of “crises” and “emergencies” to justify
institutional power-taking, “normalization” of wiretapping, domestic
surveillance, torture, domestic Federal militias, confiscation of property
from crime suspects, confiscation of weapons from hurricane victims, it is
as if society is fast asleep and our cable TV company, our government, our
banks, our health care system, insurance companies, every institution puts
cameras right up our pants and then they act as if they have the right to do
it.
I believe we will soon see and learn the dangers and consequences of
allowing such intrusions. We have let this go so far that it is hard to know
where to start to fix it, and it may be too late to fix it without resorting
to some kind of revolutionary backlash. We must take the position that
people are stealing information from us, and they have no right to do so.
Let us all take a critical look at how, where and when we provide personal
data to strangers and look for ways to withhold our private information,
challenge those who collect it, and reclaim our rights, our privacy and our
dignity.
Jerry Day,
Independent Television Producer, Burbank, CA
2008 October 25