The system is your friend.

Your rulers love you.

They want you to be happy, within the rule of law.

You want them to be happy, too. Happiness is not mandatory, but it is recommended. Your actions will be monitored, and a record kept of your happiness level.

Thank you for listening. Your voluntary compliance in this matter will be included in your annual assessment.

Bentham‘s Panopticon: a prison where the inmates have to assume they are observed at all times. A means of controlling behaviour by surveillance. In practice, the Panopticon is a tar-baby. As prisoners test the limits, the wardens must assume that every action is potentially significant. Eventually, even inaction is suspicious, because the presumption on the part of the wardens has to be that all action or inaction may be purposive. Finally, the sheer weight of information to be examined requires more and more resources, until it’s hard to say who is imprisoning whom. The addition of computing power and expert systems does not solve the problem, because the computer must be overseen and made secure, the system must be checked.

Turns out the cost of total security is obsession.

Why should you care?

Well, there’s stuff going on. The British government proposes to monitor social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. This is in addition to creating a database of emails, phonecalls, and internet visits – which may be a violation of human rights law, but never mind that for now.

Suppose for a moment that we accept and eventually legislate the government’s plan about social networking sites. It’s not utterly outrageous to assert that serious terror attacks might be planned through Facebook or coördinated through Twitter. And it is genuinely the case that there are terrorists and they do want to do terrible things. Perhaps terror investigations need greater reach into our lives in order to prevent, say, a CBRN attack on a major city.

So, fine, monitor away. I’ll waive my privacy for the greater good.

But there must be a firewall.

If we’re accepting counter-terrorism as an exception in theory, then it must be an exception in fact. Having invoked counter-terror law, you may not then transfer information gleaned under that law to more mundane investigations. Having opened my laptop in order to be sure I’m not building a nuclear weapon, you may not then pass what you find there to the CPS because it turns out I have a picture of one of my disreputable friends snorting coke off the stomach of the Dowager Duchess of Lagavulin.

It’s actually not a bad principle; it would apart from anything else go some way to preventing the misuse of counter-terror legislation to spy on noisy children.

There’s a huge amount of information out there.

Your Oyster Card tracks you. So does your credit card. So will Pay Per Mile road pricing. Your health information is held in a database. Put it all together and there’s a pretty solid picture of a person. Speaking of which… let’s talk about Google Street View for a second. Superficially, there’s nothing to worry about here, but when you think a little bit, you realise it’s actually a serious issue for many people:

Since Street View launched in the UK on 19 March, PI has been contacted by many people identifiable via the service.

Among them were a woman who had moved house to escape a violent partner but who was recognisable outside her new home on Street View.

Well, now. If you’re going to have “Don’t be evil” on your escutcheon, you better fix that in a hurry.

Privacy & Lies

I’m not a knee-jerk privacy advocate. Perhaps it’s because my drug of choice is Italian red wine, my sexuality is mainstream enough, and I don’t hold any political views which are likely to get me arrested – at least, not very likely – but it does occur to me that a totally open society with no right to privacy wouldn’t necessarily be a disaster. If you could peep at anyone – if you could find out what your neighbour does with his weekends by cruising CCTV footage from the camera near his garden wall, or check out what Her Across The Road looks at online by accessing her records – perhaps we’d all get a little less censorious. And if you knew that your foot fetish was going to be common knowledge, maybe you’d be more forgiving of your brother-in-law’s fondness for bloodsports and the vicar’s dope habit. Perhaps privacy is a figleaf for hypocrisy, and we get the laws and false societal mores we derive from lies about what we claim to abhor because we think it’s what we have to say to be accepted.

I’d almost be willing to give it a whirl, as long as government was transparent too.

Government in the UK seems to regard itself as above transparency. The standard operating procedure is that there’s always a good reason why something should not be made public…

At the tribunal, Geoffrey Robertson, QC for the Guardian, which is pressing for the names to be made public, said it was “astonishing” that a “secrecy-obsessed” Ministry of Justice had been “covering up” misconduct by judges.

He said Jack Straw’s ministry was treating the public “like children” by keeping the names confidential.

We absolutely have to have access to the government’s decisionmaking process in order to know whether they’re doing their job appropriately – which may well be why they would rather we didn’t have it.

Carne Ross, who was a first secretary at the United Nations in New York for the Foreign Office until 2004, told MPs: “A lot of facts about the run-up to this war have yet to come to light which should come to light and which the public deserves to know.” There were also assessments by the joint intelligence committee which had not been disclosed, Ross told the Commons public administration select committee.

He told the inquiry that the intelligence made it “very clear” that Saddam Hussein did not pose a significant threat to the UK, as was being claimed at the time by ministers, and that tougher enforcement of sanctions could have brought his regime down.

In other words, we have to be surveilled to be sure of our good conduct, but government does not.

The interesting thing about this is the one favourite response to FoI requests is that information is ‘not held centrally’ and therefore would cost too much to assemble. Part of me says, well, then, bring on the databases… as long as I can see them, too.

BUT…

People who have escaped from violent spouses, witnesses in court cases, former prisoners – innocent or guilty – need to be able to disappear. Health information should probably be private; insurance companies often hike premiums for gay men, for example, and employers, whatever they may say, would rather not have to pay for pregnant employees.

Finally, I suppose, it comes down to this:

There’s no especial virtue in government. People who work in the public sector are not more intelligent or more moral than people elsewhere. They make mistakes and they can be bribed.

Furthermore, the systems of government do not guarantee appropriate use of information. There is a tendency to frame laws broadly, which invites abuse.

Since databases will be – are being and have been – constructed, they must be managed openly. The basic principle of privacy must apply; just as police officers may not search your house or your office without cause, so the government must have cause – and indeed a warrant – to search your personal data. Exceptions for exigent circumstances are not impossible, but must be restricted to the circumstance; searching my computer for information on suicide bombings and then passing information on copyright infringements to other authorities is not acceptable: there’s no threat to Britain’s national security from me downloading an episode of The Daily Show. 

In other words, yes: it may be that we have to accept a measure of intrusion to deal with serious external risks. Maybe. But micro-level surveillance of our lives is not compatible with a free society.

And Google… Google needs to grow up and recognise what that it has acquired responsibilities along with immensity. If you are ubiquitous, and you provide customers with ubiquity, you have to accept responsibility for protecting those who need to be concealed. You can’t say “oh, sorry, we’ll fix that in 2.0″.

And look, you think this is mildly important now? Consider this:

“Surprisingly, just by looking at the brain data we could predict exactly where they were in the virtual reality room,” said Eleanor Maguire, project leader.

“In other words we could ‘read’ their spacial memories.”

But Dr Hassabis said it would be at least 10 years – and probably much longer – before the technique could be used in forensic investigations, for example to tell whether a suspect was lying about whether they had been at a crime scene.

Oh, yes. A whole ten years at least before you can expect to see courts requiring information directly from your brain. Feel cosy and warm? Good-o. The innocent, after all, have nothing to fear.

Privacy and demarcation are only going to get more important as technology takes us to new places. I wonder… Google Brain View?

We have to take care to stay informed about what is happening, and to object to, review, and modify the laws which our legislatures put in place when necessary. We have to be prepared to tell Google and other companies with this kind of reach that, yes, there are limits to where they may venture. We have to act like citizens in a participant democracy, and damn well make our governments respond like servants, not masters.

To be scared, apparently.

An article in The Times today quotes Jacqui Smith as saying that a biological or chemical attack on the UK is “more realistic” now because of the number of failed states. [more: 1, 2, 3]

Asked whether there was a greater threat of a CBRN attack that five years ago, Ms Smith said: “There is the potential, given the international situation, what we believe to be the aspirations of some international terrorists, that it could be.

“Failed states, conflict, technology – both in terms of the ability to use materials and the ability to learn about how materials are used – contribute to our concern about that as a threat, including what we know about what terrorists may have previously planned to do and may be planning to do.”

So what I find interesting about this is that phrase ‘more realistic’, as in:

“Contemporary terrorist organisations aspire to use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. Changing technology and the theft and smuggling of … materials make this aspiration more realistic than it may have been in the recent past,” 

which is the wording of the government’s Contest Two report.

“More realistic” implies to me that it hasn’t been terribly realistic until now. In fact, it seems to say that it still might not be all that likely. Compare and contrast…

Police and the emergency services have been secretly trained by the Army for a reprisal attack in the UK by al-Qa’ida terrorists using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

A Ministry of Defence report to MPs reveals that senior planners have privately accepted that Britain faces a “significant risk” of attack for supporting President Bush.

Righty. So “significant” but not actually “realistic”. (That’s from March 2002, by the way.)

Does that mean that there wasn’t a credible threat of a terror attack on UK soil using CBRNs, but now there is? Because if that’s so, then y’all at Number 10 should really hang your heads in shame. 

And what are all these failed states we’re suddenly talking about, by the way? Is it possible they’re states we’ve invaded or played with and put away in little bits?

For extra random, Jacqui also pointed out that this was not an excuse to be unpleasant about homosexuals.

Er… good-o. That hadn’t honestly occurred to me as the most likely outcome, to be honest, but I suppose I’m pleased anyway.

Now I’m just waiting to be told that there’s some pressing reason why everyone in the UK should wear an RFID chip or something; I mean, once everyone’s good and alarmed, it would be a waste not to try something like that. (Yes, I sound like one of those guys who thinks barcodes are Satan’s brand, don’t I? Oh, well.)

Elsewhere…

Brainsex.

(Ew.)

I scored 10/20. This means I have a brain which is perfectly balanced between being a girl-brain and a boy-brain. I’m not sure whether to be completely thrilled or mildly alarmed.

Keep It In Your Pants.

The UK is full.

(Do you ever get bored of this one? God knows, I do.)

“Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact.”

That’s undeniable – but, er, how on Earth are we going to reduce our population by thirty million people in any reasonable time-frame? If we need to cut emissions – and yes, yes, YES, we do [reasons to stop arguing about it] – then we have to do it by living more sustainably and by taking steps like, oh, hmm, I don’t know… wait, I do: not building the third runway at Heathrow and not pretending (for the sake of middle class weekend breaks) that cheap flights are environmentally friendly.

Truth is, we can’t sustain “business as usual”. We’re going to have the change how we live. 

But it’s so much easier to say: oh, noes! We haz too manies! (Quick. Close the borders.) ‘Cos you get votes for that.

A lonely figure, coat flapping, scribbling frantically in a notebook on a precipitous clifftop, ignoring the rain and the wind, possessed and animated by the creative spirit…

Or on the bus, clamped into the corner seat and muttering like a madman, poetry and prose spilling out into the page…

Or in the middle of the night, leaping from the bed to scribe in the gloaming or the gloom: I must just get this down…

Iconic writer behaviour – and it does happen. In fact, I think it counts as one of the subsidiary (but vital) writing skills to know when you actually need to do it and when it’s just a way of annoying your family and escaping the washing up. Living with a writer isn’t always easy; you owe it to those around you to learn when to use your creative license to behave like a lunatic, and when to let it go.

That’s by the by. The point is: the end product of all these moments is a pile of notebooks, and if you’re like me, they’re just the beginning of the problem… because there are times when you don’t have a notebook. Half of my writing has always been done on the back of till receipts, napkins, paper place-mats and utility bills. It has been written in pencil, pen, crayon, and even eyeliner. It has been written on ferries, at balls, in pubs, on planes, at clubs, on my honeymoon (at Clare’s urging and with her enthusiastic connivance) and yes, in the middle of the night.

I also have a habit of writing on my left arm – note carefully, not just the back of my hand, but all the way around the wrist and up until about two inches from the elbow. The benefit of this last method is that it has to be transcribed as soon as you get the chance or it fades, so it goes onto the computer directly. The other stuff… piles up.

All of which leaves a great pile of stuff, both handwritten and digital, waiting for review.

And beyond the occasional flashes of inspiration, there’s also the moment when I deliberately discard the computer and use a pen. My handwriting is pretty awful, so I do it as little as I can, but there’s a different atmosphere and mood to scribbling with a pen or even a pencil on blank paper compared with working on a keyboard. I read somewhere that you actually use different bits of your brain, and use them to make different brainwaves.

So when I need to plot the big picture, for example, or when I want to interrogate myself about something which isn’t necessarily working, I end up using pen and paper to do it. That goes into the notebook, too.

Because there’s freewheeling implied in the process, the end result usually includes at least one idea for a completely different story, and a lot of doodling.

Incidentally, doodling is par for the course. I saw some of Pushkin’s manuscripts in a museum in Russia a while ago, and around the edges were drawn – exquisitely, I might add – erotic sketches of women playing billiards in the nude and randy satyrs chasing nymphs.

The question is, what then?

Well, okay. For some stuff it’s easy. If I’ve just written a great swathe of text about Gonzo and Jim Hepsobah, that gets typed up and re-written and it goes into the book. Or doesn’t. It gets dealt with. And then there’s the plotting scribbles, the great enthusiastic arrows and detailed flow-charts and the rest. Most of those I absorb or discard and never need to see again. They were a physical thought process, not a reminder or a note. They were about coming to the conclusion, not about noting anything for future reference. I was thinking with my hands. 

But sprinkled through them is gold-dust. Tiny character notes; wayward notions about what might have worked if I hadn’t already done x, and then it turns out that x has to be cut for another reason and lo and behold I need that other plan. And ideas, my God. Treasure trove ideas for other things. Stories about Marlon Agonistes, the main character in my story for The Verb a few weeks ago – I must see about getting that into something or putting it online here. My next novel, or the one after that. The genesis of the piece I’m praying will go into Granta later this year.

So what do you do with your notebooks?

Keep them for ever. Put them in a pile. They are your bank account, to draw on at need. Embrace the fact that you are not the kind of person who can catalogue them and file the bits of random paper which say things like:

Before I tell you about Royden, I should probably mention that I murdered him. 

Or:

Crazy guy, crimson shirt => => terribly afraid of nudity. Why? Evil tattoo? Disease/disfigurement?

You may or may not remember why that was important. It may mean nothing to you today. But it might trip you off tomorrow, set you going down some strange track which resembles or doesn’t remotely touch on the thing you were originally thinking about.

Going through them looking for something in particular is painfully frustrating, but leafing through the weird outpourings of your own brain will always give you something. Don’t fight it. Follow it. The worst that happens is that you burn an hour daydreaming about wonderful notions which don’t deal with whatever you wanted to work on. That’s part of your job. And it may unlock something in your head you didn’t know needed it.

Notebooks are your mind’s footprints. They’re your holiday album from writer-world.

Keep ‘em. And cherish the fact that they’re disorganised and nutso and you can’t find what you’re looking for. If you could, you’d be a different person.