The death of privacy

The year 2021 is proving to be another pivotal time in the history of the evolution of human society. Three separate, recent instances of the revelation of what, to all intents and purposes, were private encrypted digital exchanges have forced us to open our eyes to a new reality about which most of us have been ignorant. Nothing is private any more. The “Big Brother” phenomenon George Orwell wrote so prophetically about in the novel 1984 is here, maybe not in the exact form he imagined, but it is with us.

Two weeks ago the world’s press reported on the arrest of hundreds of criminals in 18 countries, after an app – ANoM – used exclusively by the seamy underworld, was hacked by the FBI. In a three-year sting operation codenamed Trojan Shield, conducted in partnership with the Australian Federal Police (AFP), those authorities and their European allies were able to track “murder plots, drug deals, corruption, and money laundering, including 450,000 images of enormous bundles of cash and cocaine,” generated in 90 different countries. Hundreds of weapons and millions of dollars in cash have been seized and dozens of murder plots averted. This unique plot started when a convicted US drug importer, in exchange for a lighter sentence, offered the FBI backroom access to the encrypted mobile phone device he was developing – ANoM – which would entrap international criminals.

The plan was to fit each device with customised encryption software that allowed it a high level of efficacy in avoiding police detection, but now he would add a “master key” in the encryption system that attached to each message, enabling it to be stored and decrypted by the FBI and AFP while being transmitted. ANoM was distributed to an unsuspecting and constantly growing, ANoM-connected crime network and the masterful dragnet duly ensued. Hundreds more arrests are expected as the legal provisions are sought in other countries where the criminals have their bases.

Caught in the act with nowhere to hide. No ifs and not buts. It also happened to accident-courting British PM Boris Johnson. His turncoat confidant, ex-chief aide Dominic Cummings, with the vengeance of a jilted lover, has become unofficial state witness number one against him. Last week, Cummings made public the WhatsApp text exchanges between them in which PM Johnson revealed, in what he might have considered confidence, his extremely disparaging view of his hapless minister of health: "totally f**king hopeless." Other texts are testament to the chaos that reigned in government when the pandemic took hold in the UK in 2020 and confirm the general view of the PM’s incompetence on the matter. Although PM Johnson has since acquitted himself with an impressive vaccine roll out, the revelations may be significant when the parliamentary enquiry gets underway into the government’s handling of the crisis.

Mr Trump was also caught with his digital pants down when last week the truth about how his officials tried to do his bidding and corrupt the Department of Justice was laid bare in a stream of e-mail message exchanges, released by the House Oversight Committee. Ex-Pres Trump was desperate to have the November election results overturned in his favour and he pressured his staff to achieve it, sacking those who did not seem able to or interested in doing so. Now out of office, he faces a series of probes into his behaviour as President and as a business tycoon. Watch out for many more digital revelations.

Some of these developments might be amusing and they are embarrassing but, in the altogether, they are deeply worrying. We should all be concerned about how we might be hacked and observed, from early on in our lives and into infinity, through our innocent and unexamined use of new communication technologies. We should consider where this level of nakedness is leading.

Soon, every act, recorded thought and exchange will be encrypted somewhere and could easily be deployed against us. If we know that Big Brother is watching us at every turn could we fall into levels of self control that prove harmful to our psyches and intellectual and emotional development? Whom amongst us can be a blank canvas? Life, especially during our youth, is about making mistakes, falling down but picking ourselves up again, brushing down and getting on with it. Anyone with even a half-lived teenage past has experiences that are better kept under wraps, but today’s young have nowhere to keep those secrets. Already, people have experienced Facebook posts coming back to haunt them professionally, but that is the tip of the iceberg.

We are at a crossroads. Either we change our social behaviour and moderate what, how, where and with whom we communicate, or we descend into an expanded, dark, cryptic alternative world beyond our comprehension and even our interest in understanding.