Post Apocalypse

There are some very embarrassing photos of me on Facebook... Well OK, perhaps not that embarrassing. My grandson and I were watering the garden just before I got ready for a night shift. I was unshaven and unflatteringly attired in my bright pink T shirt and blue shorts. Photos were taken and uploaded onto Facebook almost instantaneously. The first I heard of it was when I was told that my sister-in-law had commented on my legs. I playfully objected at this public display of my sartorial inelegance but I didn't really mind.

I used to be on Farcebook but I suspended my account because I became fed up reading, in elaborate detail, what my work colleague's children had eaten for breakfast and similar banalities. The only drawback with this is that you can't see what other people are putting on Farcebook about you. I am probably on it hundreds of time via people I know and as a background person in a stranger's videos or photos. In the old days when you took a photo with friends or family and there was a random, unknown person lurking in the background it used to stay in a drawer. Now, if you are that random person, you are likely to be plastered on somebodies social networking account which could be awkward if you had blagged a sickie from work that day and it gets discovered. It's a small world after all.

To take this a step further, imagine a situation where I am the object of desire for a teenage nymphomaniac stalker. It's difficult to believe I know but stick with it. She follows me round taking hundreds of compromising photos which she uploads to her website to show the world how buff I am. She could break into my house and secrete a camera into the potpourri holder in the bathroom to film me in my most private moments. Then she could put it into the public domain without me being any the wiser.

You can't delete a Farcebook account, you can only suspend it in cryogenic sleep waiting for it to be reactivated sometime in the future. Everything that goes on the Internet is there forever, just like the space junk orbiting the planet in endless cycles waiting for someone with the will and technological know-how to recover it. I once had an incident where a girlfriend discovered some letters I had exchanged with a previous girlfriend which I had kept for old time's sake. My new girlfriend completely over-reacted and a horrendous row followed but we managed to sort it out. At least I had control over those letters and what happened to them.

Perhaps there will come a time in the future when I am called to account for the fact that I was at a party twenty years previously with someone who became a radicalised suicide bomber. Alternatively, an employee may find their promotion blocked or even be sacked because of something said fifteen years ago at a student union rally. Maybe in the future people will be sued for postings they did years ago because they didn't ask the subjects permission and the subject has subsequently suffered because of it. Imagine a contemporary Ronnie Biggs character suing for loss of freedom because the authorities believe he is in Argentina but somebody's Farcebook clearly shows him partying in Rio leading to his arrest. Permission given? Not likely.

There has been much talk by the civil liberties campaigners about CCTV in our towns' high streets. No one is interested in the thousands of faces passing the cameras everyday unless you are actually doing something wrong such as stealing a bike. It seems to me that the civil liberties brigade are barking up the wrong tree, or possibly post.