Under The Radar: Conspiracy or Incompetency?

Our governments run shadowy networks that monitor the moves of every last citizen.  Even as you read this, data is being captured and stored for the future use of Big Brother.  Really.  If you want to live under the radar, the first thing you gotta do is ditch your internet habit... 

But wait, don't run screaming from your computer just yet!

It's all true.  Except the bits I'm making up. 

I am a believer in all manner of devious strategies of manipulation and mass-media brainwashing.  I'm a total cynic about many of our favourite institutions and supposedly benign influences.  And I love unpicking the discourses of advertising and closed cultures that require people to believe things that serve the ends of those in power.  I write about these sorts of things regularly. 

And obviously there are anti-terror task forces that do have all sorts of terrible powers. 

But I don't think we should get too caught up in the idea of a great big Conspiracy.  Honestly, we gotta get over all the glossy Hollywood drama of it all.  We are not living in an episode of 24 - though if we were remember we'd just be the blow-uppable extras in a thrilling sequence of explosions.  Kiefer Sutherland is not the embodiment of what we're up against here. 

Why do I say this?  Well, most of us have, I think, probably experienced the 'left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing' phenomenon when dealing with government bureaucracy.  Having worked in the NHS in the past, I can say with some authority that the idea that even your nurse, your doctor, your therapist and your social worker might have the foggiest idea what each other is doing for you half the time is being optimistic, let alone that a shadowy network is competently keeping tabs on us all.  Nae chance. 

(Though I suppose they might be keeping tabs on me, since I've written google-ranking blogposts about living under the radar... shit...).

Sophisticated surveillance isn't needed all that much for most of us.  All the hoops we have to jump through around ID and providing traceable address histories, its more for our credit scores than for the government.  

I think it's more likely that (unless you're out there planning some seriously bad shit, in which case I hope the anti-terror task forces find you), it's actually about a whole load of unrelated agencies covering their backs and making sure their boxes are ticked.   Because really there is no radar.  There's nothing but a wide-spread fear among various agencies of law suits, insurance claims, and litigation.  And these agencies pass this fear on to us, in the form of inconvenience, anxiety, and the steady erosion of freedoms.

So don't worry about living under the radar.   Unless, secretly, you really quite fancy meeting your end in a thrilling sequence of explosions.

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