Spying/Life-giving?

Rocky and I have turned into intrepid marathon viewers of recorded TV series. We like those series that may very well be off the air now, but ran successfully for several years. At their time of currency we did not watch for any number of reasons. As we get older we don’t want current shows because we are avoiding incessant advertising.

Yes, the marathon reruns are our own to program. We get the Netflix spooling download and watch at our convenience. Sometimes 6 shows in a row; other times only one or two. All without ads. All with continuity of plot well and fully played, connected. It makes sense this way. One wonders how the plots could possibly be understood with ad breaks?

So we've plodded our way through these shows in the past two years: Grey’s Anatomy; Bones; Crossing Jordan; House; Blue Bloods; Numbers; Modern Family; and others. You see some of the trajectory or theme here – mysteries, who-dun-its, medical mysteries. Currently we are well into the fourth season of CSI-New York.

One reality we have noticed is the speed the actors demonstrate in solving the current mystery. They think on their feet very quickly. They reference computer systems for data bases and consider possibilities and eliminate the unlikely options quickly. They have massive data archives at their fingertips. Technology on steroids is working for them! Only at times of heightened drama do they experience tech failures or temporary break downs. It fits into their plot, don't you know?

How unlike my real life! I can’t get the phone to finish making the connection. The battery dies in mid conversation. The data base fails to respond or demonstrates enormous gaps of information not yet entered to the system. That’s how technology interacts with my life. Not perfectly as in the TV shows. This is my drama!

And then there is the other issue unspoken – data gathering to fill the data bases in the first place.

All the history in the world has not yet been coded and entered to computer data bases. A lot has been, but not all. And not likely to be either. That is a reality we must accept and deal with.

Meanwhile data archives are building – license plates, GPS signals of our whereabouts from cell phones and accident recorders in our automobiles, public traffic cameras, crime surveillance cameras, private security cameras, networks of video data collected and shared. Then too we have the National Security Agency’s (NSA) and military data collectors in so many fine points of our daily lives. We do not know the extent of these data collections and interactions with other systems.

On TV they are instant, knowable and addressable. The detective keys in queries, shifts some assumptions and instantly knows the fact that was once elusive. He now knows the missing piece that solves the mystery.

If we are fans of mystery shows and police crime fighting shows, then we understand the need for the public sector to know the private sector data.

But a public policy issue is deeply embedded in this discussion. Who has the right to gather this data? For what end? How private must the data be maintained and not shared in order to protect the innocent? How costly is this gathering of bits and pieces of our lives? How valuable is this information? How useful is it for the common good of society? And what is its cost on the privacy of the people?

What balance is maintained in such matters? How do we protect and serve the masses while protecting and serving the individual?

A big question. No easy answer.

Public policy is like that. The common good weighed in the balance with private good. How do we decide? And at what cost?

It is easy for a pundit to deliver a sound bite here. For the more serious minded, it is not easy to utter a single word. Perhaps the latter is what we should be listening to.

January 29, 2015