Reading Radar

A couple episodes ago on the podcast I played a song by Antiqcool called “My Avatar.” One of the lines of the song is something to the effect of “It’s easy to get lost without a trace in cyberspace” or something like that. I don’t recall the exact words, but they were close to that.

The reality of the matter is that getting lost in cyberspace isn’t easy. It takes work, and it’s undoubtedly getting harder all the time as more powerful monitoring systems are set up by those with a vested interest in knowing who you are and what you’re doing.

Everything you do in cyberspace is able to be traced rather easily. For sure in second life, your IP is logged and it’s easy to correlate all your accounts back to you. While the Lindens can probably be trusted as well as anyone not to give out this kind of information, you can gain someone’s IP address rather easily in second life if you know how with a small amount of unwitting participation on their part.

Just as you can keep track of what your own computer is doing in terms of inbound and outbound connections, others can too. The strengths of a lot of how the internet works are also some of its weaknesses as far as privacy goes.

If you ever like considering such topics, you might enjoy reading “Little Brother” by Cory Doctorow. It’s aimed at teens, but it’s not a bad read for adults either. I found some of the situations a little hard to believe, namely the outcome of the book. You’ll know what I mean when you read it, but it has to do with a state standing up to the Dept. of Homeland Security. Most of the technology in the book is plausible, if not currently available, and it’s not hard to imagine that a reaction to another terrorist event in the country would result in even more monitoring of US citizens than already exists.

In my opinion, it’s extremely important to never take what the government says about homeland security and surveillance of its citizens at face value. Whatever the motives or the consequences of these actions, well meaning people screw up and people who aren’t so well meaning gain power that they wield inappropriately. At the very least, people need to pay attention and decide for themselves what level of privacy they are willing to sacrifice for attempts at security. Note that I say attempts at security, as one thing I definitely did agree with in this book is that we really aren’t all that much safer now, but we have lost a great deal of privacy to get to roughly the same point.

So have fun out there in cyberspace! And remember, if you’ve come visited me in SL, I just might have your IP address, so be nice. It’s certainly possible to have a little fun with an IP address and the type of lax security measures most people implement at home. Not that I would advocate such games.