I have just decided to kill off my Twitter account because they, like ATT, Amazon and Yahoo have become the government's bitch.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/may/29/twitter-anonymous-user-legal-battle
For those of you who think that this is not such a big deal, keep in mind that every single thing we do (in the UK) is being monitored:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/02/westminster-cctv-system-privacy
Photography is a crime:
http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/1644048/jail-photographing-police
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7888301.stm
And b-list footballers can get a court order to gag the press:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/23/ryan-giggs-injunction-mp
We are well past the Slippery Slope stage and well into Worse Case Scenario territory. I realize that this is all a matter of perspective. At least we don't have a Great Firewall of China and mobile execution vans but we can be put in jail for exposing military malfeasance like civilians being ripped apart by machine guns from a chopper.
Deleting my Twitter account and refusing to do business with Amazon doesn't damage those companies in the least- they never even knew I existed in the first place. I can't change the world but I can change my behavior so that I avoid companies with whom I have moral misgivings.
Or can I? In an interconnected multinational world it is nearly impossible to be free from complicity in corporate crimes and nearly every element of our lifestyle makes the world a slightly worse place for everyone. Let's take a few examples:
Within swiping distance are laptops and an MP3 player from the hip and friendly IT company, Apple, who just so happen to treat their factory workers "like machines."
At the foot of the sofa sits an old CRT TV that, when it finally blows its tube is going to land like a small toxic bomb on those poor wretches who have to dispose of it.
There are two dead-tree editions of newspapers lying on the floor and over a hundred books on the shelf; nearly all could be replaced by a Kindle but as stated before, I will never do business with Amazon again.
Half the income that keeps our flat ticking over and us squarely in the middle class comes from a company whose dominance of the commodities markets keep profits and prices high and whose recent history involves dealings with apartheid South Africa and circumventing oil embargoes with to Iraq.
The other half of our income pie comes courtesy of the lowest form of corporate slime: advertising and PR. While we might not actually run hell, we'll make sure it looks good in the media.
Between the two of us we will probably take 19 short and long haul flights this year- down from past years when I alone would rack-up 40-50.
While I'm on this roll of true confessions I should mentions that our fridge is leaking coolant, we wantonly use an electric kettle for our tea and just yesterday I used the oven to reheat a single slice of pizza because we do not have a microwave. Our windows aren't double paned, (from where I sit I can see the tissue paper my partner stuck between the cracks in the windowsill) and despite the fact that I have a perfectly good bicycle, I still take the tube to work.
Given all this it is truly laughable that I am professing to take a stand against the moral turpitude of Twitter. I profess to abhor hypocrisy and yet here I am, throwing stones in my own house of glass.
It doesn't make what Twitter has done any less reprehensible and deleting my account is still the Right Thing To Do. However, until I decide to move off the grid, ditch my job and volunteer full-time for Amnesty International, my collective sins are no worse than theirs. It is, of course, a hell of a lot easier to click a link that says "delete account" than one labeled "change your entire life". But, one energy saving bulb at a time, that is what I am trying to do.
