These days, I assume that everything I do is probed and examined by omnipotent corporations

[marmar]

from the Guardian UK:



These days, I assume that everything I do is probed and examined by omnipotent corporations
Charlie Brooker
The Guardian, Monday July 7, 2008



I've got the opening scene of a dystopian thriller all worked out. It's a hot summer night in a typical suburban flat. A young woman (let's call her Alison) stands over the body of her boyfriend, who she's just killed in a fit of madness. A crime of passion. She didn't mean to do it, but gah - now look at the mess she's made.

She's quivering, gazing down at the body like someone staring into a hitherto undiscovered dimension filled with swirling nightmarish tapestries, still clutching the murder weapon in her dismal little fist, breathing through her nose like a cornered church mouse, and somewhere in the background the phone is ringing. Ringing, ringing, ringing. It takes her an age to notice. In a daze she answers it, her eyes still harpooned to the corpse. She presses the receiver to her ear and someone in a call centre greets her by name.

"Hello Alison," says the voice, which - while friendly - sounds as though it's reading from a card, for the 50,000th time. "I'm calling from OmniCorps Ltd, and according to our predictive software there's a 97.8% chance you've just murdered your boyfriend. Now, we're obligated to pass this information on to the authorities, which means the police are already on their way, but before they arrive we'd like to offer you the opportunity to take advantage of an exciting offer. So if you'd like to go to your window and look outside, our escape van should be arriving any moment..."

Alison parts the curtains: it's already there, impatiently tooting. "Just get in the van," says the voice. "Get in, and we'll take care of the rest."

Still in a trance, she goes downstairs. She gets in. In the back are three other people. All have committed similar crimes within the past hour. Speckled with blood, they stare at each other in crazy silence as the van pulls away.

It turns out that the marketing arm of OmniCorps Ltd has been automatically tracking the entire nation's internet activity, viewing habits, credit card transactions, use of public transport etc for years, in order to build an exhaustive database of consumer profiles. They've become so good at profiling, they're able to accurately predict whether a given individual will commit a crime, and if so, what time of day they'll do it. They're like the "Pre-Cog" department in Minority Report, except that, instead of arresting murderers, they offer them an escape route. But once Alison gets in the van, she's driven off to a gigantic underground sweatshop, where she and thousands of other murderers are doomed to spend the rest of their lives slaving on a production line, creating bargain-basement products for - you guessed it - OmniCorps Ltd. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/07/civilliberties.humanrights

[PDJane]

1. I have been warned

that I'm likely on every watch list down there....by someone whose word I trust. I'm not sure that I care much, at this stage...women tend to get more radical with age, y'see.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. New movie.... "I know what you did last summer, and the summer

before that, and the one before that... and last night too".

[gateley]

3. This will be true of us all -- if it isn't already.

"This place is a joke. Each day I move around carrying a mobile phone (traceable) and an Oyster card (trackable), monitored, on average, by 10 times as many CCTV cameras as there are in the Big Brother house. "

I looked up Oyster card -- it's for London's subway system.

We've got the cell phone. Who really knows if our ATM cards are trackable or not? And although I don't THINK we have as many cameras on the streets as they do in London, again, who knows?

[hendo]

5. Yup

you might want to pick up an RFID blocking wallet when you get a chance. Thinkgeek has quite a few.

[gateley]

6. Ten, fifteen years ago I would have laughed at that.

Now, I'm gonna go check out Thinkgeek! :hi:

[hendo]

7. Yup, you know what they call people who think everyone is out to get them?

Perceptive.

Paranoia can produce wonderful new products.

[elocs]

4. This is why I recently turned down a job in the pharmaceutical industry.

I didn't want to work for somebody who felt entitled (if even justifiably) to know all that I think, say, or do, or though, said, and did. I want to be free to eat a poppyseed bagel if I like. Probably everything there is to know about all of us is scattered out there somewhere. God help us all when it is all available in one place.

[azul]

8. choice point 2020 awaits you