Surveillance — How far is it going?

British satirical and investigative journalism magazine Private Eye reported last week that one of the responsibilities of GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) is to secure Britain’s vast “smart energy metering” programme. The magazine was more concerned with “the incompetence of the main players”, and therefore what a nightmare this was likely to be. It led me to wonder, however, why on earth an intelligence and national security organisation is getting involved in finding out how much gas and electricity we use, and why it matters to them. Surely their time would be better spent trying to prevent terrorism and protect us from spies, which is what I thought their purpose was.

Is it possible that these new meters contain some kind of listening device? A few weeks ago Amazon admitted that its staff sometimes listen in to conversations overheard by its Alexa Echo assistant devices, although obviously not for purposes of snooping, heaven forbid. I don’t think that it’s a secret, however, that Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, works closely with American Intelligence agencies. On August 10, 2017 he tweeted “A pleasure to host #SecDef James Mattis at Amazon HQ in Seattle today”. I wonder what they talked about.

At least in Orwell’s 1984 the surveillance telescreens were visible, and everyone knew what they were doing.

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