In the news this week has been a call from a Teachers Union to ban video-sharing sites such as You Tube because of its use as a medium for the cyber bulling of teachers and pupils. While the proposition is unworkable, unconstitutional (if we had a constitution) draconian and laughable, it does raise some interesting points.
Although Government traditionally (and rightly) faces the greatest scrutiny with regards to the collation and misuse of information, increasingly it appears that corporations and individuals are turning more to the Internet as a tool to gleam information and exert influence.
In the scramble to connect to the latest social networking site de jour, more and more personal information about us is becoming available to anyone who takes the trouble to try and find it, and what’s more, much of this information is beyond our control. So wherein lie the dangers?
The recent Scottish Elections saw tabloid journalists trawl candidate’s profiles in an attempt to come up with “dirt,” finding it in the case of young candidate Stuart Douglas through pictures of him drunk on his MySpace profile, posted by friends. The ease and speed at which potentially damaging material can be sniffed out (not to mention the separate issue of the increasing influence of the Press as a moral compass) is alarming.
The media is not the only group getting in on the act: Criminals, employers, family members and potential partners can all go online and check up on a personal information and character. While one can control and tailor the content of their personal profile in sites such as Bebo and MySpace, information posted by others is harder, if not impossible to regulate, and a careless comment or inappropriate image might be all it takes to compromise privacy and security.
Of course there will be those who take the “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” line, but these people are generally fascistic in nature and their opinions should be ignored. Others among us will claim to be open books whose life stories are a free-for-alls, but I’m pretty sure that everyone everywhere has something they don’t want someone else to know about.
Banning sites such as You Tube, MySpace and Bebo is not the answer, but if the internet is to fulfil its potential as an open, social and fundamentally democratic medium, we must be careful that the Information Revolution does not turn into an Information Dictatorship.
Although Government traditionally (and rightly) faces the greatest scrutiny with regards to the collation and misuse of information, increasingly it appears that corporations and individuals are turning more to the Internet as a tool to gleam information and exert influence.
In the scramble to connect to the latest social networking site de jour, more and more personal information about us is becoming available to anyone who takes the trouble to try and find it, and what’s more, much of this information is beyond our control. So wherein lie the dangers?
The recent Scottish Elections saw tabloid journalists trawl candidate’s profiles in an attempt to come up with “dirt,” finding it in the case of young candidate Stuart Douglas through pictures of him drunk on his MySpace profile, posted by friends. The ease and speed at which potentially damaging material can be sniffed out (not to mention the separate issue of the increasing influence of the Press as a moral compass) is alarming.
The media is not the only group getting in on the act: Criminals, employers, family members and potential partners can all go online and check up on a personal information and character. While one can control and tailor the content of their personal profile in sites such as Bebo and MySpace, information posted by others is harder, if not impossible to regulate, and a careless comment or inappropriate image might be all it takes to compromise privacy and security.
Of course there will be those who take the “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” line, but these people are generally fascistic in nature and their opinions should be ignored. Others among us will claim to be open books whose life stories are a free-for-alls, but I’m pretty sure that everyone everywhere has something they don’t want someone else to know about.
Banning sites such as You Tube, MySpace and Bebo is not the answer, but if the internet is to fulfil its potential as an open, social and fundamentally democratic medium, we must be careful that the Information Revolution does not turn into an Information Dictatorship.
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