technology

Biographies are constructed from accumulations of recorded data derived from, for example, transactions with supermarket chains that ‘are collecting millions of pounds a year from selling data’.32 Financial organisations keep accounts of income and purchases, and governments and employers retain personal records. Internet directory services,33 contact agencies, electronic conference systems, and advertising agencies all seek personal data. On the World Wide Web people voluntarily publish autobiographical pages; writers are advised to include ‘a photo, something about their family, hometown, occupation, hobbies, etc.’34 and to embrace ‘more subtle forms of content that demonstrate your interests and outlook on life’; and some pages offer the ultimate hypertextual biography – where almost ‘every link . . . is to a person, place or thing that has had an impact on my life’. An expanding toolbox of query languages, crawlers and search engines helps find biographical material that matches elaborate keys which pass for signatures. One company professes to have ‘the most powerful on-line system available for developing background information on individuals’ which ‘instantly searches over 600 nationwide, regional, and local databases’,35 while another ‘taps into the Usenet global electronic bulletin board network’ and forms ‘user profiles of people who post messages’36

Sensors can collect biographical data covertly. Struggles for power provide motives for observation using technologies that bolster asymmetries in relationships. For example, a woman’s employer, motivated by ‘jealousy and rejection’, stole her password and monitored her voice mail.38 Infinity transmitters, installed in phones, monitor ‘conversations in the area’;39

systems detect and decode telephone codes ‘such as voice mail numbers’; 40 there are ‘hidden cameras in the clothes of researchers who roam the high street posing as ordinary consumers’;41

and on the Internet ‘a small piece of software’ can record data accesses and forward them to a third party.42 More intimately, medical technology reveals to others our hidden internal bodily processes; for example a portable locator can monitor ‘vital signs such as pulse rate and blood pressure’43 and when ‘someone wants to enter a high security area, Scentinel . . . obtains an odour profile and compares this with the profile in its memory’.44