Protecting privacy - Inevitable intrusion

Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who leaked details of US government secret surveillance programmes, is in a very tight bind.

If, or more likely when, he finds himself held by US authorities he faces a very long time, if not life, in jail because he felt obliged to expose the extent of the electronic surveillance pursued by America in the name of the fight against terrorism or crime.

The scale of the project, and not just the American one, is startling but it would be foolish in the extreme to imagine such a regime is not in place; indeed it would be more startling if it had not been.

Our world has changed utterly, even in the last decade, and communications now facilitate activities that would simply not have been possible even when New York’s Twin Towers were attacked. Despite this huge, non-reversible change, we still cling to the idea of conventional privacy. Of course privacy is something we all cherish, but surely we must be aware that once we go online we step into a world without boundaries or restraint — and unless we are very careful expose ourselves in a way we might regret.