Your country needs you, or at least your data

They have stolen your data?  Boo hoo.  Who knew?

Everyone knew.

If you thought your data was ever secure, then you probably live off grid, meaning you have a cabin in Montana or a zero hours contract in Eastleigh, either way, you eat roadkill, even if you do buy it from a shop called ‘Tennassee Fried Chicken’, and you find innovative ways to heat your home, such as chopping your own firewood or buying cloned keycards from a bloke in the pub.

If you are smart enough to read to the end of any privacy agreement, ever, related to the use of a free service remotely connected to anything featuring a silicone chip, then you are smart enough to stop reading two thirds of the way down, hit ‘decline’ and read a book instead.  Not on a Kindle.

If however, like billions of others, you see the words ‘yadda yadda yadda’ immediately after reading the word ‘heretofore’ and skip straight to pressing the button that states ‘I agree, I want to join a social network where I can view pictures of my ex, just to see how happy they are with their perfect home, and perfect kids and Jesus is that a Lexus they’re driving?’ then you should know that, at the very, very best, the senior leadership of North Korea are in an underground bunker, watching vast screens with your social media feed on it, laughing themselves stupid at your ongoing Twitter feud with ‘StarWarsH8ter’, in actuality a NK Bot run on a ZX Spectrum, 16k, which is still getting more likes and retweets than you.

I remember the first time I went online.  We plugged an external modem into the PC, loaded up Pipex Dial from a floppy, opened up the browser and…nothing, we had no idea what to do next until one of the group suggested ‘type www.playboy.com into that box there’.

The next thing that was said was ‘You realise GCHQ know we’re doing this’.  Nervous laughter.

But that was about right.  There has always been that awareness that, unlike traditional secure methods of communication such as purchasing porn from an out-of-town newsagents where the only reason you would bump into anyone you knew is that they were there buying porn too, or writing a letter, electronic communication has always been open to monitoring.

Back when newsgroups were a thing, there were essentially two types of newsgroup.  The first discussed kinky sex, the other discussed ‘Star Trek’.  I never worked out which had the higher quotient of virgins posting, but I firmly believe that whoever was in charge of internet monitoring back in the day is the world expert on two things, how to turn the spare room into a sex dungeon on a budget, and the definitive answer to just who the best Star Trek captain was.

Just what data is it on Facebook that people are so worried about being used?  I could understand it if it was something important, private and personal, like a picture of your genitalia or your browsing history, but apparently it’s just some fuckwit quiz outcome, basically the sort of thing that used to be on the back page of Cosmo (If you answered mostly A you are slightly slutty and think toddlers should be allowed to carry guns) or Jackie (If you answered mostly C then you and David Cassidy would enjoy smooching, and you detest free trade agreements).

Given that we have all basically made Mark Zuckerberg a Bond villain, I reckon the guy shows tremendous restraint.  He is the absolute ruler of a digital domain with over two billion citizens.  Imagine if you annoy him, your Facebook status could change from ‘Single but hopeful J’ to ‘I fuck babboons’.  And that’s best case scenario.  This is a guy who could change your status to ‘I like to get fucked by baboons.  I paint my ass red and let them go to town on me.  Then I don’t call them back.  Who’s the animal now?’.

You are, you ape fucking freak.

Essentially, don’t commit anything to a string of ones and zeros that you would not be happy to see stapled to a lamppost in your neighbourhood.