The question to ask in these scenarios however is the subject of Lyon's next exploration. Looking into the laws that govern surveillance, Lyon notes only one real conclusion. The laws protecting privacy and limiting information gathering and sharing in the US and abroad have one thing in common, they're all weak. Exploring laws in countries such as Australia, the US, and Canada, Lyon shows that there are relatively few laws on the books that protect against corporations sharing of information. Now whether or not this is a planned set of actions in order to also protect the government's right to share information I can't say, though I wouldn't be surprised. The essential problem with this however is that, while the sharing of information can be harmful when it's limited to data and names, when you start to mix in more modern technologies such as facial matching and cross-records searches of a person's entire life, their life and who they've always been comes to take over the process. Essentially, their life becomes the property of the government, and as Lyon notes several times, privacy in this sense becomes property.
But what general conclusions does Lyon come to draw? Firstly he states that it is undeniable that the field, range, and capacity of surveillance is expanding exponentially with every year. There is more that can be recorded each year, and with the advancement of technology there are every day more ways to gather it. This also leads into his second conclusion, which is that technology is making the ability to watch and enable a "Big Brother" society a far more realizable and possible future. Technology is increasing the range of surveillance, and maximizing it's capacity 10-fold. However, it is his final conclusion that is possibly the most significant. Thirdly, Lyon concludes, is that the sharing of information is fundamentally changing the way people interact. People are becoming data cards, nothing more than the information they make available to everyone. Though Lyon wrote this in 1994, this holds more truth now than anything else. Between Facebook, social dating sites, or even online colleges and application, people are now more than ever just a collection of words on a computer. Disregarding the social connotations of this, what can we say it says about privacy? In my opinion it makes privacy a very internal thing, and only the information we choose not to share at this point, is what can be considered private. Anything else in this day and age, well that may as well be public property.
But what general conclusions does Lyon come to draw? Firstly he states that it is undeniable that the field, range, and capacity of surveillance is expanding exponentially with every year. There is more that can be recorded each year, and with the advancement of technology there are every day more ways to gather it. This also leads into his second conclusion, which is that technology is making the ability to watch and enable a "Big Brother" society a far more realizable and possible future. Technology is increasing the range of surveillance, and maximizing it's capacity 10-fold. However, it is his final conclusion that is possibly the most significant. Thirdly, Lyon concludes, is that the sharing of information is fundamentally changing the way people interact. People are becoming data cards, nothing more than the information they make available to everyone. Though Lyon wrote this in 1994, this holds more truth now than anything else. Between Facebook, social dating sites, or even online colleges and application, people are now more than ever just a collection of words on a computer. Disregarding the social connotations of this, what can we say it says about privacy? In my opinion it makes privacy a very internal thing, and only the information we choose not to share at this point, is what can be considered private. Anything else in this day and age, well that may as well be public property.