Privacy Under Pressure; Postcode Profiling: Winners and Losers – radio review Jul 19th 2013, 06:00
Every move we make online is being tracked, but don't worry – no one's interested, except the supermarkets
• Privacy Under Pressure
• Postcode Profiling
An Orwellian flavour persisted on Radio 4 this week with two documentaries studying the people studying our personal data online. The first, Privacy Under Pressure, presented by Steve Hewlett, was intended as one of those hard-hitting shock reveals. The kind that is trailed with the sort of soundbites where someone, nonchalant and a bit smug, will say: "Mobile phones? They're just tracking devices that let us make calls." And while you've got to admire Hewlett for reminding us that Google, Facebook and the multiple apps we download to regiment everything from our sleep to our shopping are monitoring and assembling data banks on us, is anyone still surprised?
Who you are, what you do, where you're doing it – that every single search or move you make online is being tracked online is pretty overwhelming, sure. But not quite as overwhelming, perhaps, as the narcissism in believing that anyone beyond, say, Asda, gives a damn. For the vast majority of us, the files of information on us are more valuable to business than the state. Which is where Aasmah Mir's look at Postcode Profiling: Winners and Losers came in.
According to Big Data, much in the way we vote, consume, think and behave can be determined by where we live. Put aside the cries of "not me, I'm an individual!" (yes, even you), and it's a fairly bonkers indictment of the Black Mirror-styled culture we've created. Because it is, as Hewlett establishes, often of our own making: we share, like, tweet, reveal our personalities online with little prompting. And as Mir proves, living in a place like Chorlesworth (the most affluent place in Britain) versus Queensway, Wrexham (the most deprived) will determine whether we'll be Waitrose shoppers or bombarded with junk mail for payday loans.
Much of this is common sense. But even post Snowden-gate and decades of Hollywood films convincing us we're all living in one big Will Smith blockbuster, there is still something creepy about listening to the "experts" (read: nefarious data analysts) on both shows reducing our lives to predictable stats that, in the main, simply translate to purchasing power. It's a batty state.
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