by Igbokwe Ifeanyi

Everyday billions of people use their laptops, mobile devices and phones most of which is connected to the internet without knowing who is watching, listening to all their calls and tracking them or how much information concerning them is out there in hands that are not particularly friendly.

In early 2012 Google revised it privacy policy.  It was one of those little things that people hardly take time to go through but suddenly it left in its wake controversial dust clouds that took quite some time to settle. People could understand that Google needed to keep track of the service usage of their millions of users worldwide but users could not bring themselves to agree that Google could go as far as keeping track of their location at all times, their phone contacts, record of missed and received calls many other activities they considered ‘private’. They could not understand why Google would need to keep a record of every single little information concerning them that it could lay its hands on.

Everyday billions of people use their laptops, mobile devices and phones most of which is connected to the internet without knowing who is watching, listening to all their calls and tracking them or how much information concerning them is out there in hands that are not particularly friendly. We send e-mails, make calls, receive SMSs, make payments online and chat on social media with little thought to how records of it all are accessed by so many people that are not particularly ‘friendly’.

Some months back, Edward Snowden, a CIA contractor-gone-rogue told the world how that the United States government is monitoring and keeping records of individuals’ internet usages and calls not just in the US alone but globally and trouble started. For some, they could not be more shocked while for others it was no news. Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Facebook, Microsoft and a host of others legally do the same thing not to mention innumerable other independent population monitoring outfits that have become major forces in international politics and terrorism.

With CCTV cameras everywhere; in the streets, in the shopping malls, banks, public conveniences, in your phone, on your laptop computers, tablets and the likes, how do you know who is watching? How would you know that the microphone of the very phone you take with you everywhere you go does not transmit all you have said and betrayed your location?

Before we begin to think this only concerns everybody else but us, let me bring it home. If for example you use a Samsung Galaxy tab or a Techno android-based phone on the MTN network, a GIS expert with administration access can not only give your location at any point in time but replay all the calls you have made to your hearing, not to mention the SMSs sent and websites visited at request. MTN is not the only one that has access to this data, NCC, Secret Service, Google, CIA, FBI and many many more unknown people.

I have often caught myself wondering if the days we used Nokia 3310 and the likes, only able to call and send SMSs were better. With the necessity and affinity for internet growing more than exponentially I often find myself wondering if in the next decade the concept of privacy would mean anything at all.

Before now, if the police needed to monitor your apartment, they would need a search warrant to physically approach you and when that happens you become more careful and watchful, but today, the very phone you use would gladly do a good job in betraying you without your knowledge.

Today many young people have many e-mails, SMS’s, recorded calls and browsing history that would automatically force them to back down from running for any public office should opposition lay hands on them. Now that information technology is taking giant strides measured in millions of light years and political battles are becoming fiercer and dirtier than can ever be imagined, many currently serving office holders and potential office holders would have their dreams shamefully cut off immaturely simply because someone in opposition has laid his hand on their dirtiest of their underwear and washed it in public.

Whether we like it or not, at one point or the other we would need to use the internet, make and receive calls or send SMSs. Those in themselves are not wrong but here’s the one question that must be deeply considered in the midst of all these: ‘will there come a point in time where we would have given out so much of ourselves to unknown hands that we eventually lose our freedom to exist?’ especially now that the federal government is really bent on censoring internet usage of everyone.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.