Who knows where this obsession with big brother surveillance and reality television came from - lets not even try to tackle the absurdity of Gogglebox - all I keep thinking is the show Funniest Home Videos, although I know it goes back a lot longer. 

While visiting my brother Joey’s house in Newcastle last week, he told me a story of coming home a week before from work to find two teenage kids casually walking up his hill. In their hands were trinkets and bits and pieces. 

Behind the boys was an elderly man trying without success to chase after them. My brother  got out of the car and the teenagers immediately started running. 

The old man breathless called out that the boys were in his house, threatened him with a baseball bat and robbed him. 

Joey began chasing the boys and calling to the old man to call the police. He chased them up the road trying to get the attention of other neighbouring residents. Before long around 50 residents were on the street in true community watch style. They finally backed the teens into a corner where they were shouting profanities and throwing stones. 

Joey was the first to try to move closer to them to make sure they wouldn’t escape, when one of the boys took out his phone and started recording the scene. 

He yelled, ‘go ahead try to touch us,” holding the phone out so everyone could see he was videoing.  

The two jumped the fence and the residents chased them until the police arrived. 

I have to hand it to these boys, it was a smart move, I’m not sure I would respond so rationally in the same situation. 

Privacy is being reinvented within this realm of digital revolution, with it so are our laws and some would say sovereign rights. 

In March this year the Australian Senate passed new data retention laws that requires telecommunications and internet service providers to store their customers' metadata for at least two years. Information to be stored include data such as account holder names and addresses; date, time and duration of communications; the recipient of communications; and the location of equipment used for communications, including cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots.

This surveillance regime being constructed aims to tackle the war on terror and claimed to ‘keep us safe’, but will this have unintended consequences? 

Don’t get me wrong, there have been some great results that have come from data surveillance, paedophile networks, drug dealers, fraud and many others. 

Digital technology does help to hold us to account, but how can we put in place controls that prevent the corrupt use of this very powerful information within government? It seems as though metadata retention goes against the basic laws of human rights, without arbitrary interference with our privacy in terms of family, home or correspondence.

On the other hand, every parent knows their child behaves much better under their watchful eye. But how do we provide a space where people can be free to express themselves without fear of who might be watching?

Like any crack down, the people wanting to avoid authorities will find a way to do so. I can see a lucrative private encryption and retention avoidance industry as likely to eventually emerge as a result, leaving the average Joe Blow citizen who downloads the wrong thing for example under extreme scrutiny, the wrong thing yes, but without comparison to terrorism.    

Personally I find the constant posting on social media of motorist along the Barton Highway disturbing, many I know will disagree with me, as humans we make mistakes and by posting photos of cars or license plates online to shame someone in a small town aims to just humiliate and take away a little bit more of our privacy in this digital age. Leave our law enforcement to the people paid to do so, better yet, keep pushing our pollies to make the road safer. 

In the end, isn’t our Orwellian world of surveillance overreaching enough? I would hate for social media users to be a part of the systemic abuse of power.