{"id":118171,"date":"2015-08-21T20:30:14","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T10:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=118171"},"modified":"2020-06-30T12:57:07","modified_gmt":"2020-06-30T02:57:07","slug":"lets-get-tough-on-the-tech-giants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2015\/08\/21\/lets-get-tough-on-the-tech-giants\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Get Tough On The Tech Giants"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>August 21, 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Dafyd Martindale<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the late 1980s I watched a video about the end of the world as we knew it.<\/p>\n

It was shown to a final year class of students at QUT, and it was all about the new digital technologies that were coming out of the world’s tech labs at that time: digital TV, digital phones and, of course, the Internet.<\/p>\n

The presenters talked about how much these new technologies were likely to change the world, and how much better they’d make it.<\/p>\n

And in a way, they were correct.<\/p>\n

Today – almost 30 years later – we now live in a highly connected world that’s light years removed from the 1980s. <\/strong><\/p>\n

We can look up news, the weather forecast and stock reports from anywhere we happen to be with a few clicks.<\/p>\n

We can pay our bills, search for real estate or jobs, check our bank accounts and do a myriad other things just as easily.<\/p>\n

While it’s still possible to live without any form of digital technology, life is becoming increasingly difficult for those who don’t.<\/p>\n

The internet, mobile phones and digital TVs have completely revolutionised how we interact with one another, and with the world at large.<\/p>\n

But at the end of what was otherwise a fascinating video about the great changes that were coming in the 1990s and 2000s, the presenters warned that the new Digital Age also had one big potential downside.<\/p>\n

That downside was that the networks that would be built to usher it in would also create the infrastructure for a Big Brother society.<\/strong><\/p>\n

All it would take to create George Orwell’s nightmarish vision of the future, they warned, would be a swing to a far Left or far Right government.<\/p>\n

If this happened, the Digital Age would give that government the tools to monitor every one of us every hour of the day.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for all of us this situation hasn’t occurred. Not in the last 30 years, anyway.<\/p>\n

It’s true that Australian governments of all political complexions certainly do use the Digital Age networks to monitor us to a limited extent these days.<\/p>\n

Police, for example, can track an individual’s location to within metres if the person of interest happens to be carrying a mobile phone and they know its number.<\/p>\n

Satellites constantly monitor what’s growing in our country and report marijuana plantations to ground-based authorities for destruction.<\/p>\n

Closed-circuit TV cameras keep watch over CBD shopping areas, main roads and a myriad other places day and night to monitor traffic and deter crime.<\/p>\n

And in Canberra, giant computers routinely crunch vast amounts of data gathered from different government agencies to detect welfare fraud and other crimes against the public purse.<\/p>\n

And, hopefully, our spy agencies are discretely snooping for terrorists.<\/p>\n

But so far our governments have not set up departments to peer at us in our lounge rooms as we watch our digital TVs; nor do they monitor all our phone calls or watch our online activities like hawks.<\/p>\n

Instead, the ability to do these things lies in the hands of giant foreign corporations such as Google, Facebook, Netflix and a few dozen others.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What’s concerning about this is that unlike governments, we didn’t elect these corporations and we can’t vote them out if we don’t like what they’re doing.<\/p>\n

We have no idea what sort of information they’re collecting about us or how they use it, beyond what these companies choose to reveal to the public.<\/p>\n

And since they’re artificial trans-national beings which owe no loyalty to any particular country or belief system, we have no good reason to trust them.<\/p>\n

The European Union has already begun to address the obvious threats the tech giants pose to everyday life and civil liberties by pushing through a number of law reforms over the last decade which have compelled these multi-national corporations to either toe the line or get out of Europe.<\/p>\n

These laws govern things such as privacy, data access and – just recently – the right “to be forgotten”.<\/p>\n

China, too – for markedly different reasons – has also told the multi-national tech giants they can either abide by China’s rules or get locked out of the Chinese market.<\/p>\n

But our own Australian Federal Government hasn’t taken the same approach, and I think it’s time they did.<\/p>\n

The chance of a Big Brother government ever coming into existence in Australia is worrying enough, true. But at the moment it’s just a fantasy.<\/p>\n

However Big Brother tech giants are operating with relative impunity in our country right now.<\/p>\n

And saying we’re too small or powerless to do anything about it just doesn’t wash.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Telling big corporations to shape up or ship out is something we’ve already done in many other areas that impact the lives of ordinary Australians.<\/p>\n

For example, multi-national manufacturers of everything from cars to foods to pharmaceuticals have to adhere to Australian standards if they want to sell their goods here.<\/p>\n

Multi-national financial institutions have to adhere to our banking laws, stock exchange rules, insurance standards and other similar legislation if they want to hawk their services on our shores.<\/p>\n

So we can’t see any good reason why we should let the titans of the Digital Age have the free rein they currently enjoy.<\/p>\n

Especially not when we find – as a recent Senate inquiry did – that apart from anything else they might be doing to us with their open-ended access to our data, they are also defrauding our country of billions of dollars in tax revenue each year.<\/p>\n