Pick up the ringing phone; there’s a pause on the line for 5 seconds, then noise, lots of background noise, as if… as if… as if there were 300 people sitting in an office in New Delhi all on the phone at the same time as a heavily accented voice asks “Is this Mister Andrew Convay? Its ok Mister Andrew (always) I’m not trying to sell you anything today, just ask you a few questions”.

And that’s how the world gets fucked up. That’s how little pieces of your life, your views, your habits and your preferred choice of newspaper get ‘out there’ into the public domain, forever and for every company who chooses to help build a comprehensive profile of you.

Without wishing to sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist, be careful what you say to whom, because information is power. And you end up with a situation in which a data analytical company get hold of the vast banks of information held by Facebook and you can influence an election in the ‘free-est’ democracy in the world. Ok, maybe this is just the post-digital version of ‘door-stepping’. Instead of walking round the freezing streets of Boise, Idaho, knocking on doors and talking to voters, sending electronic messages by a variety of methods does the same thing but much more quickly and easily to way more people than could be ‘door-stepped’ in 15 presidential campaigns.

As soon as I started searching for hotels in St Petersburg for our Russia trip, Facebook knew. And started offering me Russian stuff. All the travel sites suddenly started targeting Russian hotels at me in emails. ‘They’ know everything you ever google. Facebook keeps telling me now how many of my ‘friends’ have visited St Petersburg.

And the problem is always the same. Security measures can only be reactive. Someone has to commit the crime before anyone realises the crime can be committed. Then its playing catch-up to try and shore up the systems and prevent it happening again. Even though the know-how is already there for all to see.

But if the data held tells ‘them’ how many people are worried about gun control, or abortions or gay marriage, or Russians, that can all be used by politicians when they write their speeches. And they know these preferences by age, race, region, any variable you can imagine. And maybe that is just a better and more economical use of time than speaking to individuals on doorsteps, but when information is used on such an industrial scale and inevitably, very profitably, its US that’s getting screwed.

So the next time someone calls to ‘not sell you anything’ just tell them to fuck off. Because what they want from you, for nothing and free of charge, is the most valuable thing you have; your personal information.

And all this from someone who puts his every movement, bowel or otherwise, on a blog every day. I see no irony.

Happy Monday

A xxxx