The quest for personal privacy is being lost in the name of security

Readers of science fiction novels might be familiar with the work of Canadian Robert J Sawyer. In his trilogy, The Neanderthal Parallax, he describes a parallel earth where the Neanderthal species rules. Every member of society wears an implant that tracks and records his or her every move. The result is an almost completely crime-free world.

But, there's no concept of personal privacy.

Over recent months, we've learned that the United States, through the NSA, has undertaken mass surveillance on a scale that few imagined. There are two significant lessons we can learn from this. Firstly, the idea that we can do anything online and expect privacy is false. A well-resourced and motivated organisation can snoop on almost anything they want.

Secondly, despite all the resources and motivation, the NSA lost control of what they believed to be critical sensitive data.

Last December it was revealed that retailers Target and Neiman Marcus suffered significant system breaches and lost in excess of 100 million pieces of customer data that could be used for credit card fraud and identity theft.

Last June, Adrian Ernest Bayley was found guilty of the murder of Jill Meagher. Some of the critical evidence used in that conviction was video camera footage that placed him at the scene of the crime.

Violent crime rates in large cities such as New York are falling, with a main reason cited as the widespread use of security cameras.

In the last week, the Australian Attorney General George Brandis has reignited the debate over mandatory collection of web browsing history for ALL Australians and giving police the authority to compel people to unlock encrypted data.

In short, there are compelling reasons for using widespread monitoring and recording as a deterrent to criminal activity. But the cost is that the activities of innocent people are being recorded and analysed JUST IN CASE.

Neither of the major parties has seriously investigated or considered whether this sort of surveillance, data monitoring and analysis actually has any benefit. If someone could point us to some compelling evidence that the surveillance of the NSA, as an example, has actually stopped a single criminal act we'd like to see it.

The best we've been able to find is a few vague references to the possibility that some incidents were prevented.

One problem with mass collection of data is that there's no guarantee that it can be protected from unauthorised access. The recent Target hack proved that even well-resourced organisations can make mistakes and be infiltrated.

Australian Privacy Principle 3, which supports the recently-amended Privacy Act says that entities "must not collect personal information (other than sensitive information) unless the information is reasonably necessary for, or directly related to, one or more of the entity's functions or activities".

This applies to "APP entities" - organisations that are subject to the Australian Privacy Principles.

Under the proposal suggested by Minister Brandis, every Australian's browsing history will be held for two years. The Northern Territory and Victorian police forces suggest that retaining internet browsing records are as important as retaining phone records.

In a recent conversation with a security equipment vendor we discussed how most people are largely oblivious to the level of surveillance we are already under and have acquiesced our rights with barely a whimper.

Walk down a main street in a large city and chances are that cameras are tracking your movements. Enter almost any store or shopping centre and the same is true. Electronic tollgates on our roads and smartcard public transport ticketing provides evidence of our movements. Smart meters provide a detailed view of our household habits through energy consumption.

We store masses of personal information publicly through social networks, on exercise websites and by using activity trackers.

Perhaps all of this has made us completely blasand we no longer, as a society care, that our personal information can be accessed and tracked.

Trying to secure your actions and personal data is not very easy. Technically adept people with some spare money can use VPN services to secure their web activity but it's not particular easy to set up and run.

You can encrypt your hard drive (pretty easy) and use SSL for all the apps that support it such as email, video conferencing and other communications.

But even these measures could be countermanded by the proposals currently being considered by the government.

Are the latest proposals coming from the Federal government, that web surfing history be retained and that we should be compelled to handover encryption keys, reasonable? Is there already so much surveillance possible that the war for personal privacy is already lost?