I wrote this post in 2016, but apparently it was never posted. I have no idea why.

Canada has some of the highest, perhaps the highest, cell phone rates in the world. Getting a phone is fast and easy, as long as you have money.

Getting a cell phone in Iraq is quite another story. Phones are half the price (or less) than in Canada. But I had a phone, all I needed was a SIM card to give me a local number. The cost of the card and subsequent service is a pittance compared to Canadian rates. But it wasn’t easy to get the card.

Then again. I shouldn’t describe it as hard, just that there was a lot more paperwork involved. Photo ID of course. And fingerprinting.

I suspect there are security concerns that make the fingerprinting a requirement. News reports I have read say that cell phones have replaced walkie talkies on the battlefield, that they are being used by ISIS. I presume that in the course of battle, phones will occasionally be captured. Being able to find out who purchased the SIM card would appear to be useful intelligence.

As I have gotten older I have perhaps gotten more resigned to the inevitable loss of privacy that is part of our modern society. Now my thumbprint is part of the telephone company database in Iraq. It’s not like I hadn’t surrendered it upon entering the country. (The previous trip they didn’t take my thumb print but did a retinal scan.) While I can think of some nefarious uses to which such information can be put, I have decided not to sweat it. While even paranoids sometimes have enemies, I don’t tend to paranoia.

It is possible the police in Canada may have my fingerprints, though they are not supposed to. I have provided them on two occasions. The first was when I was employed by the RCMP. It was a standard requirement (and a good one I thought). When I left the force’s employ I requested that the prints be destroyed, and I was ensured that would happen. Do you think it did? The only way I could find out for sure is to commit a crime and deliberately leave fingerprint evidence to see what would happen. Somehow that seems a little extreme.

The second time was when my house was broken into. I provided my prints to the police for exclusionary purposes. Those too should not have been kept on file, but there is no way to find out for sure. I could ask, but would they tell me the truth? Of course they would – I’m not paranoid.

I lead a crime-free life, but it is the principle of information gathering that disturbs me when I stop to think of it. People who gather information about me rarely do so with my best interests at heart.

I use a web-based email provider. It’s free but that means there are advertisements. I am always amused at how quickly anything I have looked at on Amazon shows up for sale on the right hand side of my email screen. There was a good reason I didn’t buy the product at the time; I probably don’t need it now.

Amazon itself sends me regular reminders and suggestions based on my viewing and purchase history. The problem is, for a couple of years I shared my account with my son. He was in school and didn’t have a credit card, so he used my account. What he was interested in then bears little relationship to what I might buy now. But Amazon still thinks I want to purchase Ovid’s Metamorphoses and will do so it I just get some encouragement. That’s not gonna happen – I’m sure I can download a free digital copy since Ovid has been dead for almost 2,000 years. By now his copyright has run out.

From high mobile phone rates, to crime, to the loss of privacy in the 21st century, I never know quite where my mind is going to take me when I start one of these things. I had this half-formed idea of a rant against the phone companies, but that doesn’t seem where we have wound up.

Instead I am pondering privacy. Does it matter anymore? Is it good or bad that we live in an age where everyone can know pretty much everything about everyone else? I was born in another era, when there was a very definite boundary between public and private, even for celebrities. I think there has been a definite social shift, one that is continuing to move away from privacy.

I can’t figure out if this is a good thing. I do know though that I don’t like it.