I’ll admit I’m an old fashioned girl at heart – I’m a strong advocate for letter- writing, rambling gossip sessions on the landline and face-to-face coffee time – I was the last of my friends to get a cellphone and the last to join Facebook. From what I recall I don’ t remember reading the user agreement when I purchased my first SIM from Vodafone nor the terms and conditions when I joined Facebook. Perhaps it was because this said text looked uninviting – long-winded, miniscule in font and capital letter type that looked more like texture than words and spaces. As time has passed and there have been many more sites to join and be a part of – YouTube, iTunes, Trade Me, eBay, Instagram and LinkedIn to name just a few – I can still say, that I have not read, in full, the terms and conditions. Just like you, like most of us, without hesitation I have clicked yes to ‘I agree’.
I’ll admit I’m an old fashioned girl at heart – I’m a strong advocate for letter- writing, rambling gossip sessions on the landline and face-to-face coffee time – I was the last of my friends to get a cellphone and the last to join Facebook. From what I recall I don’ t remember reading the user agreement when I purchased my first SIM from Vodafone nor the terms and conditions when I joined Facebook. Perhaps it was because this said text looked uninviting – long-winded, miniscule in font and capital letter type that looked more like texture than words and spaces. As time has passed and there have been many more sites to join and be a part of – YouTube, iTunes, Trade Me, eBay, Instagram and LinkedIn to name just a few – I can still say, that I have not read, in full, the terms and conditions. Just like you, like most of us, without hesitation I have clicked yes to ‘I agree’.
‘Did you know that if you were to read everything that you agree to it would take one full month of work out of every year, that’s 180 hours every year’, so Cullen Hoback will tell you in his MUST SEE film Terms and Conditions May Apply.
Every time we use the Internet, a communication link or an app we agree to some very long terms and conditions. So, what’s the big deal about these said user agreements, terms and conditions and privacy policies? What does it mean for the majority of us who consider ourselves squeaky clean law-abiding citizens? How can our private information be used, how has it been used and what for? And, really, how bad can it be?
Terms and Conditions exposes a digital age where we are under constant surveillance, every move we make we are being watched and tracked. In an introduction to this idea, Hoback illustrates by way of two scenarios, both are worlds apart,
it’s the story of the average Joe who takes a routine trip to the doctor. The ‘real world’ is life as we know it vs. the reality of a ‘digital world’, where we see the poor guy is bombarded with products and advertising left right and center with the medicines he needs – which in his case you’d rather was left private - cue cringe – and the food that will be his dinner. By the end he’s marked as ‘high risk’ by the health insurance company and slapped with a huge bill. Surprisingly, he hasn’t uttered a single word the whole time and yet his needs are, well, seemingly public knowledge. Oh yes, “they know everything about us now” Ondi Timoner, filmmaker of exposé documentary We Live in Public (2009) proclaims in the film.
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“Anything that has been digitised is not private and that is terrifying,” says singer-songwriter Moby in Terms and Conditions May Apply.
Hoback walks us through the history of how we have come to this point in time and apparently what’s to blame are those terms and conditions we have so willingly, yet blindly signed our life away to. Over the last several years the privacy policies of the likes of Google and Facebook have allowed for the use and sale of our private information to third parties. For Google there’s value to the data we’re providing them with, for example cookies record our online searches, that information is then shared. A spokesperson for the world’s most used search engine estimates 1500 points of data is held on the average American citizen from their online purchases to hobby searches, even including their psychological outlook. He makes the comment that there are people who have built extremely lucrative businesses based on sharing this info.
Accused of secretly monitoring the public, the film blows the whistle on Facebook who are said to have close ties with the CIA and FBI. To our own detriment we are a big sucker to Facebook’s target advertising. LinkedIn comes under fire – in their terms and conditions we give consent to use of our ideas, in any other forum it would be considered an intellectual copyright issue. Another example, shows the users of Instagram backlash when updated t & c’s gave the website the right to sell posted photographs ‘without compensation, for use in advertising.’ Hoback informs us, that ‘according to research by the Wall Street Journal consumers lose 250 billion dollars each year due to what’s hidden in fine print.’
And this is perhaps only the minor stuff we need worry about, Terms and Conditions highlights the significance of the Patriot Act, 2001. This law is said to have affected widespread change. After the 9/11 World Trade collapse, automated systems were set in place to record every email, Internet activity and cellphone call that was made.
By the end of the film we come to see that privacy was never really alive to begin with, especially with respect to electronically stored information. As one commentator puts it “we’re smitten with the Internet, we want this technology to grow and we don’t want anything to reign on our parade. We have woken up to privacy concerns just a little too late”. In this very colourful, short but not so sweet 60-minute documentary we come to see the age old, ‘big brother is always watching’ has never been truer than now.