Today’s headlines show five Chinese government hackers on a FBI wanted list. Some of them are in military uniforms. The alleged crime is hacking into our corporations to gain an advantage in trade negotiations as well as finding out advances in our technology and manufacturing. Yesterday’s headlines had the capture of the French hedge fund trader who lost billions for his company.
Exposure is bringing out of the woodwork the cast of characters who have been living in the dark secret places of society. We have videos and television shows of companies behaving badly. The BP use of chemicals to break up the oil spill without any protection for the cleanup crews. The massive amounts of chemicals now on the ocean floor killing off the ocean as a result of the clean up and oil spill. The newest show VICE exposes global harm, including governments’ waste in overseas contracts, women’s rights and various conditions hard to stomach. Exposure has brought out the Snowden controversy and discovery of abuses by the NSA and its’ secret courts.
This is exposure season and it is long lasting and will go deeper. You can expect another 10 years of some eye-popping headlines as we lose our innocence or denial of how systems have been working. We will experience exposure of the military and its waste and protections, religious affiliations and their protection as non-profits, medical fraud and waste and on and on in every system in America. Don’t be shocked. We have waited a long time for this period and you can credit it to our 240 year cycle of the Pluto effect. It is a world wide clean up and discovery. It is not pretty and it can make you downright cynical but it is necessary.
The flip side of this exposure is the right to privacy. We will dance with these two sides of the coin for a long time. Case in point, the Donald Sterling scandal with the NBA and his right to say what he wants in his private chamber. Do we have the “right to be forgotten” by Google if we wish to erase some old damaging information about ourselves or do we stay in debtor’s prison all of our current lives–maybe future ones too? The European Union has recently decided that Google must allow its citizens the right to be forgotten if they request it. Not yet true in America. We don’t seem to mind (yet) if we let the world know about our past mistakes or lies about us on the internet. At least, we have not insisted in the courts that they be removed.
You can expect the right to privacy and the exposure issue to stay on the front burner for a long time? Do you really want a post you created when you were an immature, emotional 15 year old to still be able to be read by a corporation you would like to work for when you are 35 years old? How about 50 years old? Do we have the right to our own information? Apparently not and so far, in the United States, its not a big deal–yet!
I agree Gail, and I want more of this to show up. Let’s clean up the bad stuff and hear about the good stuff, and do something about more and more of the good..