Inside Looking Out: Looking out from the fish bowl

A few nights ago after dinner, I looked across the kitchen at our fishbowl where Buddy the betta lives.

He was lying on the bottom of the bowl at rest, getting ready for his next ascent to the top.

I thought that Buddy must be satisfied to swim up and down his bowl several times a day. When he swims to the top with his deep blue fins rippling like a wind-driven sail on top of a boat, he shows off his brilliant colors.

We all live in a fishbowl, so to speak.

Just like Buddy, everyone can see us flap our fins. Our privacy has gone public. I can go online and see aerial satellite pictures of my house. I wonder if the camera from up there can zoom right into my windows and record my version of reality TV.

Anyone can find my personal and employment history on a computer. I sign privacy papers in doctors’ offices to protect my medical records and then I read in the newspaper that experienced hackers can easily get into my health or financial records.

Don’t think you’re the only one who can use your credit card, either.

Someone in Indiana, a state I’ve never visited, is sitting in his living room watching a 52-inch television that he fraudulently purchased with my credit card numbers. The same guy enjoys an outdoor barbecue while relaxing on his new patio furniture he also bought with my Visa card. I paid nearly two thousand dollars for the same things he got for free.

Privacy and security go together like oil and water.

According to the Pew Research Center, 70 percent of Americans wanted our government to beef up security after the 9/11 attack. That included monitoring our phone conversations and private emails. Now, however, less than 30 percent approve of the government peeking behind our closed doors at our personal business.

Earlier this year, the government ordered Apple to help the FBI unlock an iPhone that held suspicious information about a terrorist attack in California. Apple contested the order to try to protect everyone’s private information on their iPhones from government intervention.

This raises the question as to how far we want technology firms to protect our privacy from law enforcement demands. It seems that we want enforced national security, but when it comes to our private lives, we say stay away.

Unlike the time when I grew up, information is easily accessible today. Sometimes we choose our political candidates not based upon what they will do in the board room, but who they sleep with in the bedroom. History might have turned out quite differently in that respect. No one knew in the 1960s about the womanizing that might have kept John F. Kennedy out of the White House or prevented Martin Luther King from leading a historical civil rights movement.

I have been asked if I lost my adoration for baseball icon Mickey Mantle once the media had broadcast that he was an adulterer and an alcoholic.

“He was my hero, not my role model,” I replied. “If he was playing the game today, I’d still root for him to hit a home run, but I wouldn’t want my son to be like him off the field.”

If someone can add benefits to my life, I’d rather not know about his dirty laundry.

Despite what we may think, every time we use our computers, we are providing data about ourselves that can be accessed by agencies and hackers.

Over 1 billion people use Facebook a month. When we sign “terms and conditions” contracts, we think we are protecting our privacy, yet whatever we say on Facebook and whichever websites we visit, or how many emails we send and receive, that data is being stored and can be reviewed upon demand.

When I look at Buddy the betta fish swimming around in his little transparent world, I wonder if he knows that we can see what he does every day.

Let’s be real. All of us are voyeurs. That’s why we buy fish like Buddy so we can watch what he’s doing. It’s the same with people. If our neighbors lived in glass houses, we’d peek through their windows, too.

Might as well smile and put on a show, everyone. Somebody out there right now is looking into your fishbowl.

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.