The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
I love technology, but sometimes it scares me to think about what it makes possible. IÕve seen more scare tactics lately, like ads for tiny cameras that you can set throughout your house so that you can monitor your baby-sitter (or spouse) by watching the feed on your computer. I get it. I understand that people are afraid and looking out for those around them. With the financial world in turmoil right now, people are looking for new ways to use technology. But I worry about the power that it gives sometimes. This week, the news came out from a Canadian research group that the nation of China is monitoring the use of Skype inside the country. China is a nation that is heavily firewalled. Inside the country, there are thousands of websites that are simply blocked. But this is the first evidence that Skype is actively co-operating with the Chinese government. But other companies are also doing this. Microsoft and Google have both admitted in the past that they are actively involved with the Chinese government, filtering searches and limiting peopleÕs access to information. Many people have been upset about this, asking how companies like Google, whoÕs unofficial motto is: ÒdonÕt be evil,Ó can be involved. The companies on the other hand simply respond by saying that if they want to do business there, they need to respond to the needs of the government. The other innovation that was announced this week came from Ford. They announced a system called MyKey. This package will allow a set of parental controls to be installed on cars by parents, limiting their top speed, allowing parents to track their car, limiting the volume of the stereo and setting off alarms if the seatbelts are not used. Against the Chinese government monitoring Skype, this seems like a good idea. It is based on sound research as most teen accidents are caused by excessive speed, too many distractions and injuries caused by not wearing seatbelts. Ford has announced that this system will first come out on the Focus in 2010 and will spread to other vehicles over the next few years as they are updated. Is this a good idea? Probably. It is based on sound research and will also probably be good marketing for them as many parents who are concerned about their kids will look at this closely when buying a new vehicle. But this is also a dangerous, slippery slope for companies to be working along. Microsoft, Skype and Google have already shown that filtering information and monitoring information is completely possible. The government of the UK has recently announced a program that will allow them to monitor every email and instant message that is passed across its nation. This is scary to me. I read in a newspaper in Texas this summer that every single department of the government in the United States is involved in the monitoring of its citizens in some way. Whether that is watching bank transactions or the books that are checked out of a library, the monitoring of citizens is now just part of how business is done South of the border. What about here in Canada? So far, things here have been very quiet on these topics. The government has said very little about the monitoring of our communications streams. Do they read our email? Do they filter our email, reading it based on certain key words and topics? No one is saying. The Canadian government has recently announced a new strategy to protect the country from cyberattacks, but they have not said anything about monitoring our traffic. These issues are serious for our time and our something that we need to be aware of and questioning. Freedoms have been lost in many parts of the world and in Canada, the monitoring of all that we say online is certainly possible. Are these things important enough to you to ask questions about? ([email protected])
