At the height of the ‘warrantless wiretapping’ scandal of 2006 – George W. Bush had authorised the National Security Agency to monitor overseas phone calls involving suspected al-Qaida operatives, but it transpired that the surveillance extended to all electronic communication and web activity, foreign and domestic – Sherry Turkle went to a party celebrating the Webby Awards. An unnamed ‘Web luminary’ explained why he wasn’t concerned about privacy and state spying. On the internet, he told Turkle, ‘someone might always be watching, so it doesn’t matter if, from time to time, someone actually is.’ In other words, never do or say something you wouldn’t want others, including the government, to know about: you’re safe ‘as long as you are not doing anything wrong’. ‘All around us at the cocktail party,’ Turkle recalls, ‘there were nods of assent.’

LRB 23 February 2012 | PDF Download