Cyberspace’s Weapons of Mass Deconstruction

by C. Warren Axelrod on April 8, 2019

The cyberworld is replete
with exhibitionists and voyeurs, facilitated by social-network (or should I say
social-engineering) technologies such as those provided by Facebook, Twitter, Google,
Instagram, and others. Even seemingly staid news sources seduce the reader with
teasers for titles.

This dystopian world has
crept up on us slowly, but determinedly, with nary a whisper from lawmakers and
regulators. But I ask you … If you are legally bound in many jurisdictions to
reveal that you are recording a telephone call, why don’t you deserve
notification—with your consequent acceptance or rejection—that an Amazon Echo
is monitoring your every word (although, supposedly, only recording after the
device has been awakened—which can happen inadvertently, especially as if a
family member has the name of, or similar to, Alexa) or that an Echo Show is watching
your every move?

The Amazons and Googles
of the world have encouraged, and continue to encourage, many millions of
households to install voluntarily the modern equivalent of George Orwell’s “Big
Brother is watching you” so-called telescreens. Orwell frighteningly
anticipated today’s flat-screen televisions (with built-in cameras and
microphones) … but we are installing these surveillance machines at our own
expense, no less! You need to be aware that anywhere at anytime you could be
under surveillance without knowing it, including if you attack a Tesla that is
parked and in Sentry mode. This last capability is a good thing, however, as
are CCTV cameras in 24/7 stores, for example.

At least Chinese citizens
know that their government is tracking them and their activities. At the other
end of the spectrum, we have the European Union with its stringent privacy
directives and severe penalties for nonadherence, which Google and Facebook are
discovering to their dismay.

Of course, this is
different from those who knowingly—and often proudly—distribute revealing and
potentially-damaging images of themselves and accompanying text, without
considering the ramifications if such revelations go public.

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These fears are expressed
movingly in a posthumous article by famed neurologist and author, Oliver Sachs,
with the title “The Machine Stops: The neurologist on steam engines,
smartphones, and fearing the future,” in The
New Yorker of February 8, 2019, where he writes:

“Everything is public
now, potentially: one’s thoughts, one’s photos, one’s movements, one’s
purchases. There is no privacy and apparently little desire for it in a world
devoted to non-stop use of social media.”

But that is not necessarily
the case for everyone. Just ask the U.K. lawmakers who are holding Mark
Zuckerberg in “contempt” for not appearing before them, as described by Isobel
Asher Hamilton in a February 18, 2019 article “Mark Zuckerberg humiliated by group
of lawmakers, who accuse Facebook’s CEO of spectacular leadership failure,”
which is
available at

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-humiliated-by-damian-collins-committee-2019-2 .

Might there still be some hope for
privacy advocates? It appears less and
less promising with each breach.