Someone is always watching

I recently discovered that less than half of speculative telephone sales calls are blocked by the UK’s Telephone Preference Service. I have had to pay £30 to a commercial company to hopefully block the rest. Paying to preserve privacy seems harsh.

The issue or privacy is never far from the surface. In November 2013 Britain’s three security agency chiefs appeared before a Commons Select Committee to explain their wish to monitor and store email and phone traffic. In the summer of 2014 the UK government rushed through a bill to allow police and security services to continue to access data as to who calls or emails who and when (but not the content of those messages) as part of the armoury against terrorism.

Protests against such “a snooper’s charter” are loud but the need is strongly defended by security experts. “I always felt uncomfortable eavesdropping on private phone conversations or covertly watching people at home,” a former Chair of the Cobra intelligence group has said. “We never did it lightly,” he added, and concluded that to deny security services “the ability to match the technological advances of the criminals and terrorists they are up against is like allowing detectives fingerprint technology but forbidding them DNA. It is to condemn our security services to fight the last war.” ¹

In fact they don’t have the resources to do more than track a small number of people who are known to be a potential threat and have to ignore the billions of innocent messages flashing around the world every day. (Although there has been a more worrying “Big Brother” pilot scheme in China in which citizens of one city were individually trackable.²)

But as the co-founder of the Carphone Warehouse, Sir Charles Dunstone, has said, our anxiety is very selective. Large companies know more about us than we realise. “Everyone is up in arms about GCHQ looking in emails to see if someone is saying ‘semtex’ and ‘jihad’, but they are completely relaxed that Google reads all their emails and tries to sell them stuff based on the words they put in them.”³ To say nothing of the personal data about our tastes and finances that is collected and shared through store loyalty cards and finance institutions.  

There’s another inconsistency, too, in that many people choose to waive their privacy in reality TV shows, in films posted on YouTube and revelations written on Facebook and Twitter. Balanced against the human desire for privacy is a desire to be noticed by the world. Of course, we have some control over what we reveal voluntarily, but the exhibitionist or opinionated tendency seems often to outweigh common sense and personal decorum.

Like many, I personally dislike cold sales calls and spam email and targeted marketing which use social and commercial data to reach me. In many ways it’s more invidious than surveillance for security purposes yet rarely attracts similar opprobrium. We learn to ignore it as best we can, just as we rarely notice the ubiquitous security cameras on every street corner, the proven benefits of which are statistically very small.

Biblical angles on privacy

The debate sent me, as any debate does, back to the principles enshrined in the Bible which should at least inform (if not determine) a Christian response to a problem that obviously didn’t exist in the same way in the ancient world. And three things stand out.

First, individualism. While the Bible recognises that each person is accountable for their own actions, it knows nothing of the intense individualism of western society today. Herded as we are into close urban and suburban environments, we jealously guard our individuality against the impersonal nature of a mass society and react strongly to intrusion into our private space; I am a man not a number. Biblically, however, the emphasis is much more on the individual as a responsible and active member of a group (village, tribe) which itself is part of the wider community. It is the interests of the community that take priority and personal interest and conduct is subservient to them.

Secondly, fear. There is a strong climate of fear and suspicion within western society. We are anxious that others will harm us in some way. We suspect their motives. We no longer welcome strangers and “entertain angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2). It stems from a variety of causes but it reinforces our efforts to protect our own interests and to build a protective shell around us. Of course on rare occasions a corrupt person might take advantage of information about us, but that is not a reason to trust no-one but ourselves.

Thirdly, God. We can’t hide anything from God. The story of Adam and Eve kicks off a Bible-long theme that in the spiritual realm there is no privacy. God misses nothing. That’s not intended (generally) to instil fear although it can do when we consciously disobey basic commandments; rather it is a message of loving care. He watches, because he cares; he grieves when we go astray; he applauds our puny efforts to serve him and the world.

For me, meditating on that puts the current debate into a much wider perspective. I become more concerned about what God sees than what some human database records. Yes, Scripture warns us not to take advantage of each other, and some data gathering in the commercial world seems close to doing that and should rightly arouse social concern. But it also tells me not to fear what people might (and equally might not) do to me personally, because there is a bigger picture and a greater concern to focus on.

Think and talk

1.  Discuss the extent of both individualism and fear in your society, and how it affects our attitudes to other people, to government and to institutions.

2.  See how secrecy can’t exist in the spiritual realm: Psalm 90:8; Psalm 121; Psalm 139; Proverbs 15:3; Jeremiah 23:23-24. What comfort, encouragement and challenge do these passages bring?
3.  There are promises that at the end of time that all will be revealed. How do you feel about that? Luke 8:17; Romans 2:16; 1 Corinthians 14:25; Revelation 20:12.
4.  What effect might such awareness have on our lives? 2 Corinthians 4:2; Ephesians 4:17-5:2

References

1.  Colonel Richard Kemp, The Times, 7 April 2012.
2. See David Landrum, “From Big Brother to Big Society?”, The Bible in Transmission, Bible Society, Summer 2010.
3.  Interview in The Times, 30 November 2013