Big Brother is around

While the HK Customs and Excise Dept. has been using the Lineament Monitoring System to snoop (rather than monitor) our internet activities and recently, again, arrested a suspect of infringing copyright by using BT, Big Brother is in the air. We all live in a surveillance society. To quote from Gavin John Douglas Smith's column, the following description of an ordinary day in our life is not uncommon: 

"The mobile phone awakening you from your slumber transmits a signal identifying your current location; the roadside cameras monitor your speed, while also scanning your number plate against a database of suspicious vehicles. On reaching work, you swipe your ID card to gain access and log in to your computer which subtly records arrival time, the various websites you visit and emails you receive/send, while simultaneously counting the keystrokes you make during the course of a day. A lunchtime trip to acquire a bank loan involves the clerk checking and exchanging your personal information with a plethora of organisations to ensure that you are who you say you are and that your credit history is risk averse. As you leave, a photograph of you embracing an old friend is captured by the camera of a tourist, soon to appear on a publicly accessible website. On returning home from work, you are caught on the high street, gym, petrol station and then supermarket CCTV systems, your every purchase in the latter space being logged for marketing imperatives on your company-engineered "loyalty card". Even when you get into the commonly perceived "privacy" of your own home, each website you visit assigns you a unique code which helps monitor your web browsing activities."