Analysis of Information Privacy in Black Mirror: National Anthem:
Information privacy is very relevant to Black Mirror: National Anthem. Much of the episode is spent by the government trying to track down the poster of the video, which shows the extent or lack of privacy when it comes to internet traffic.
Much of the tracking the government did would not have been possible with more privacy on the internet. In the episode, one way the government was able to get a location was by looking for the specific location where the video was uploaded. While the kidnapper took some precautions to make it harder to find, the government was still able to get a location. The location was found through the specific size file uploaded at the specific time, which was tracked by the internet service provider (ISP). If there was more privacy, and as much metadata was not being tracked, then the government would not have been able to find a location for the upload.
Privacy also worked the other way, where the poster of the video was able to track the government. While there weren’t specifics shown, the poster was able to send information to the government to remind them of the terms set in the video, indicating that he had a way of tracking what the government was doing. So even the government, that should be creating regulations for privacy, are subject to the lack of privacy that comes with the internet.
The lack of privacy was also shown through the initial video getting deleted off YouTube but still spreading through other social media platforms. Generally, it is very hard to truly delete something off the internet, and this shows that quite well. The video was only up for a short amount of time, and even through the government attempting to restrict the distribution of the video after it being take down, the topic still made national news. A video briefly being online and still making it to national news, shows that privacy on the internet is very limited and it is very hard to control where information goes on the internet.