My Life in Circles: Why Metadata is Incredibly Intimate

[intaglio]

14. Both paranoia and ignorance are what you are demonstrating

Living back in the 50s everybody in villages or country towns "spied on each other". My sister came home from medical school one day early 60s with a large Sudanese gentleman and you could, literally, watch the net curtains twitch as we walked him back to the station. The parishioners at the local church kept their vicar under surveillance because a previous incumbent had been defrocked for pedophilia.

When my grandmother fell ill the newsagent and the off license were spreading the news because she had not come in for her Daily Mirror, the 5th of Martell and her Senior Service. That added to the milkman seeing us go into the cottage hospital with grapes meant that Gran was ill. Back then it was not called "aggregating data" but "putting 2 and 2 together."

It still happens, I've called at some houses on a quarterly round and not received a response when I know that the (elderly) occupant is (mostly) always home. So I check, often I've found that the customer has gone to hospital but others have found comatose or deceased pensioners. Our local shops know who is ill or who has been short of money, our neighbours know when I'm depressed or when we have bought something that requires delivery.

Another name for it is community, not f'n "spying", and, yes, it can be used by the cops or the spooks or by marketing companies - so what?