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Many years ago I wrote a column in which I suggested that one day we may need a license to access the internet.
From memory (I'm too lazy to look it up), this would date back to the era when MP Trevor Rogers was trying to crack down on porn access via the Net. I predicted that ultimately we may have to be registered and get some form of license before Net access was granted.
Of course that hasn't happened -- my crystal ball must have been a bit foggy that day.
However, in China, something even more worrying has happened.
The great firewall of China (apparently visible from space) obviously isn't considered to be sufficient so now they've opted to enforce visual face-recognition as a requirement for internet access.
Here's the story but it's on the Daily Mail so take it with a grain of salt.
Of course they'd never do anything like that in the Western world... would they?
Don't be so sure.
I'm pretty sure that governments are looking for ways to exert more control and surveillance on intenet use -- solely to catch those pesky terrorists of course.
Western governments and corporations have already been in the news quite regularly of late for (ab)using facial recognition technology to further their agendas or commercial interests so why wouldn't they follow in China's footsteps?
Remember, Australia has followed China by introducing its own government-run internet censorship system so this seems like the logical next step, doesn't it?
I'm sure our political overlords would reassure us that there was nothing nefarious behind such a move and remind us that "only those with something to hide have anything to fear".
The sad reality is that whilst China is brazenly overt with respect to the monitoring and control it exerts over its people's lives and freedoms, I think many Western nations are almost as bad... it's just that we're unaware of it. One only has to look at Ed Snowden's revelations to see just how naive we've been about such things.
Somehow I can't help but suspect that governments treat terrorism a bit like credit-card companies treat card-fraud.
Visa, Mastercard and such tell us that card fraud is the reason that credit card interest rates are so high -- yet they don't seem particularly interested in reducing levels of that fraud. It is, a convenient justification.
Likewise we're told that all these reductions in our rights and freedoms are being done in the name of "safety and security", so as to protect us against terrorists. So don't you suspect, just a little, that there's less reason to actually shut down the terrorists completely? Might eliminating terrorists remove the justification for all these abuses of our rights?
The future is looking like an increasingly dystopian place but let's face it, we have no choice. The future is where we just spend the rest of our lives so let's try to make the most of it.
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