I was chatting to the novelist Robert Harris last week about George Orwell's 1984 a book far ahead of its time in showing how technology can be used, as he put it, "to spy into all our lives".
But the most dangerous power now, he thinks, is not state power, as Orwell envisaged, but the power of corporations, and of individuals, to track us in all our daily movements.
In The Daily Telegraph last week, the journalist Celia Walden quoted a friend: "How many times have you wished you could stick a couple of electrodes to your husband's head?" Walden was amazed by the question.
Subscribe to MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
"I can honestly say," she replied, "I have not once fantasised about sticking electrodes to my husband's head." She had not the slightest desire to spy on him, she added. But at the pub table where she was sitting, she got little support.
"You've never GPS'd him to see if he's really where he says he is?" asked another friend. "Never used Find My iPhone to track him down?" "Never," said Walden, but she was in a minority.
In the past three years, there has been an alarming rise in "spying" software as more and more of us snoop on our partners, using "gadgets hidden in the house, trackers to follow the car on Google Maps and software to read texts and recover deleted emails".
The most basic spying software deals with location. Most mobiles are now equipped with GPS, making it easy for someone who knows your password to track you. Then there are apps, such as FindMy Kids or Family Tracker, designed to reassure "paranoid parents".
Some of these apps can operate at very long distances. "My girlfriend has incurred two penalty points for speeding," says a male acquaintance of Walden's, "so I'll use SecuraFone to monitor how fast she's driving. It also leaves a breadcrumb trail to tell me the route she's taken, so if ever she did want to cheat, she wouldn't stand a chance."
The spying apps on the market like Mobile Spy, StealthGenie and mCouple would not have surprised Orwell. "Overtime work and business trips often prevent you from seeing each other?" says the blurb on mCouple's website: "mCouple is a mobile tracker than can help you stay in touch 24/7!" Pay between £25 and £50 a month and "view every text message sent or received by your partner's device No secrets will standbetween you two."
No, nor much trust either, says Walden, although trust seems "as outmoded a concept as the private eye in a trilby hat" to judge from the testimonials of people who have used Essex-based D-Tec Private Investigations: its customers are women checking up on men, and, increasingly, men checking up on women.
"Whereas before it was lipstick on the collar or a receipt in your husband's suit pocket, we now have the ability to find out everything at the push of a view button," says D-Tec's director, Jo Clarke.
Be careful what you wish for, is my reaction. Part of the reason surveillance is on the rise is because it's possible. But the gadgets and apps we now can buy don't just reflect distrust. They breed it.
Tabloid money: what Red Ed Miliband would deliver for Britain
"Red Ed' Miliband says he wants to do to Britain what socialist President Franois Hollande has done to France," says Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun. So what French lessons will Labour put into practice if elected next year? "Blunt-speaking John Lewis boss Andy Street has the answer."
He thinks France is "finished, sclerotic, hopeless, downbeat". He says he's delighted to board the train in Paris and head for London's St Pancras. As for France itself: "I have never been to a country more ill at ease.
Nothing works, and, worse, nobody cares." Between embarrassing love affairs, writes Kavanagh, "President Hollande has found time to raise taxes, boost state spending and restore the35-hour week.
But while Hollande, an unlikely playboy, is screwing France, he is doing Britain a favour. He is giving us a bird's-eye view of what a Miliband Labour government would look like in power."
"With four days of very public celebrations in Venice, a bill for £8m and six changes of frock for the bride, the Clooneys' wedding was hardly a private affair," says Amanda Platell in the Daily Mail.
"Day after day we were treated to pictures of the loved-up couple cruising along the canals in boats or parading in their finery around palazzos No one begrudges the Clooneys parading their joy to the world. Yet isn't there a whiff of hypocrisy here? After all, Clooney is someone who in an interview complained that it is almost impossible to have any privacy' nowadays' Remember their behaviour in Venice the next time he complains about Press intrusion".
-
8 of the best properties for sale near ski slopesThe best properties for sale near ski slopes – from a luxury cabin in Geilo, one of Norway’s premier ski resorts, to a large chalet in Valais, Switzerland
-
Cash hoarders take total UK savings to £2 trillion – why aren’t we investing?Investment-shy Brits are hoarding huge amounts of cash in their savings accounts. We look at the case for saving versus investing.
