Sir John Sawers has been ‘outed’ by his wife on Facebook, the social networking website, as a normal man, who appears to enjoy the company of his friends and family, including the occasional game of beach Frisbee. This has caused something of a hue and cry in the UK and aroused some amused interest on the internet. But why should anyone care about any of the personal and family details on Lady Shelley Sawers’ Facebook page or indeed about the good gentleman’s choice of swimwear?
Well, it just happens that Sir John is currently Britain’s Ambassador to the United Nations and will become head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, in November. One therefore does not really expect the UK’s new chief spook, who will, like his predecessors, be known by the code-name ‘C’ (taken from the last name of its first director, Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming, who often signed correspondence with the initial ‘C,’ but which according to spy lore has also been equated with ‘Chief’ or ‘Control’), to have his cover blown on Facebook, along with details of his relatives, friends, home address and favoured holiday spots, for all to see.
Running this story on its front page last Sunday, along with pictures downloaded from Facebook, the British tabloid Mail on Sunday thundered that this was “an extraordinary security lapse” and that the information “could potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists.” The revelations were quickly taken up by other media, but once alerted, the British authorities moved to sanitise Mrs Sawers’ Facebook page and the offending details and photographs were removed.
Presumably, Lady Shelley received a slap on the wrists and a stern lecture not only on national and personal security, but also on digital security and the lack of privacy protection on her page and the need for better judgment regarding her posts.
In a quick reaction, in order to defuse criticism by those who would make political hay of this security indiscretion – some would say blunder – the British government put its Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, on television to assert that no damage had been done, it was “not a state secret that [the head of MI6] wears Speedo swimming trunks” and to urge people to “grow up.” In other words, this was all part and parcel of living in an open society.
To be fair, putting aside personal and official embarrassment and the sniggers of the tabloids and of those who sit in glasshouses wearing more or less than a pair of swimming trunks, there was truly nothing sensational in the details so cheerfully revealed by Lady Shelley.
Except of course, that the workings of MI6 have for years been shrouded in secrecy – the British government did not even officially acknowledge the existence of SIS until 1994. And spy capers have of course been mythologized in fiction by such masters of the genre as John Le Carré and Len Deighton, not to mention the hyperbolic fantasies of the James Bond films, in which the ‘C’ personage is rather more mysteriously know as ‘M.’
With the end of the Cold War, however, and the subsequent movement towards more open government in western democracies, there is a growing tendency to regard ‘C’ as a public figure, much like the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). But although the Cold War is over, Britain is embroiled in the so-called ‘war on terror’ and has for many years been the target of murderous terrorist attacks. Thus, Mrs Sawers’ slip could justifiably be described as having compromised her family’s security to some degree, although the whole affair seems to have been a storm in a teacup stirred up by the media.
In the greater scheme of things, the issue really does not matter to most people and will soon be forgotten. But on another level, it does point to the power of the internet and the increasing voyeuristic interest people have in the lives of others, fuelled by the cult of celebrity, reality TV, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the like. Now, technology and the internet have permitted ordinary people to rub shoulders with the rich and famous in cyberspace and to open their own lives to the world.
Many Guyanese have flocked to Facebook, which is hardly surprising given the far-flung locations of our people and the virtual nation we have become. But apart from the natural desire to share news of friends and family and keep track of each other in a faster moving world, there is always room for an element of unhealthy curiosity about the lives of others, matched of course by the willingness of some to put too much of their lives on public display.
The main lesson to be drawn from incidents such as the Sawers’ one is that if you value your privacy, you should not use social networking sites. Otherwise, everything you post or is posted about you is fair game.
