Zinedine Zidane, Ken Lay, and Big Brother

People are very concerned that the spread of technology means that we don't have any privacy. Obviously, there's some truth to this. On the other hand, with "somebody watching," or tracking your digital footprints, it's more and more difficult to get away with cheating. Perhaps this will make people actually act more ethically. If you're not doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to hide, perhaps.

If "a liar should have a good memory" then if you're telling the truth, you never need to worry about remembering anything.

Two cases in point.

Today's World Cup Final between France and Italy. For those of you who didn't see it or don't follow it, France's team captain and star player (3 time world player of the year) is named Zinedine Zidane. At one point during the overtime period of the game, he lost his cool and reacted to some words of an Italian player by headbutting the guy in the chest. It was pretty flagrant and resulted in a red card, compelling him to leave the game, forcing his team to play with only 10 players for the remaining time, and preventing him from participating in the deciding penalty kick process for the championship.

It was a shame on many levels as Zidane had announced previously that he would retire after the World Cup and, following some early round dramatics as well as a decision in the championship game to play injured, a victory would have cemented his status as one of the greats of all time.

He may and probably will be remembered as one of the greats, however, his record is now marred by a most unsportsmanlike act on the game's biggest stage. And, coming back to the point of this posting, what he did happened well away from the ball. I don't know all of the details now, but there's some evidence to suggest that because one of the bazillion cameras in the stadium was trained on him (probably for the entire game) did catch it, and it was replayed on the TV in the stadium, the referees ultimately saw it on the TV and then decided to eject him. It's possible that in another era with fewer cameras and TV's, he would have gotten away with it.

2nd case in point is the recent death of Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron. For more on that, see Peggy Noonan's Op-Ed in the WSJ from last week. She describes the fact that in this era, it's impossible to hide from scandal.

Bottom line: We're human, we're going to make mistake and since someone is always we're watching, you're going to have to deal with it. But maybe knowing that Big Brother is watching could make you think twice about making preventable mistakes.