The vast majority of people are now ‘digital citizens’. There are many definitions of what being a digital citizen means, but the Badger thinks the term simply describes anyone who regularly uses the internet, online services, and IT to engage with social society, business, work, politics, and government. Becoming a digital citizen, in the Badger’s view, starts when any individual acquires an email address and then shares information online, uses e-commerce to buy merchandise, uses any other online service, or simply browses the internet. Everyone reading this is a digital citizen.
The Badger’s been a digital citizen for more years than he cares to admit to, but over the last decade he’s become circumspect and increasingly alarmed by the deterioration in responsible use of online technology and the internet by individuals and organisations. Yesterday the Badger helped an elderly neighbour carry their shopping bags the last few metres to their doorstep and was invited in for a quick cup of tea as a thank you. During the ensuing conversation, the Badger’s neighbour, a sharp 85-year-old ex-civil servant, mentioned they were a digital agnostic who strongly believed that the digital world has produced a surveillance society. They have a point, especially when you consider the following.
Supermarkets know what we purchase and when from our online transactions and use of debit and loyalty cards. They use this data for their business and to market products to us via, for example, voucher and loyalty point schemes. They don’t sell the data to others, but its theft by bad actors via security breaches can never be ruled out. The same is true for other retail companies. And then there’s the online giants like Amazon, Google, and Meta et al who capture so much data about our interests, behaviours, and habits that they often know more about a person than the person knows about themselves. All of this coupled with the fact that energy, transport, banking, central and local government functions are now also ‘online first’, just reinforces the fact that the data describing our personal lives is in the digital ether and can be used for purposes which are invisible to most people.
Putting this together holistically with the fact that the UK has one of the highest densities of CCTV cameras amongst Western countries, with approximately 1 camera for every 13 people, it’s difficult to deny that the digital world has produced a surveillance society in barely 25 years. The price for being a digital citizen is thus personal acceptance of more and more surveillance. But here’s an interesting thought to end this musing with. Digital citizens are not just victims of surveillance, they are perpetrators too! Anyone who has checked out others using social media or internet searches has essentially engaged in surveillance. The digital world has thus made us all spies…
