Private lives

       The comedy of manners by Noel Coward, "Private Lives" was among his most popular productions, demonstrating that there can be no such thing as a truly private life,    And this view is being supported now as a high-pitched public discussion of a politician's relationship with a female sex worker is carried out.
         With modern surveillance techniques now being used by so many, from the government to large companies and individuals, no one can hope for a completely private life.   When I was in Russia in the old Soviet days it was generally agreed, though not talked about openly,that all your phone calls and room conversations would be heard and noted by KGB agents or simply hotel workers hired by them.  The only safe place to have a conversation about where you were going or what you were doing was on a crowded metro platform or somewhere outside at night.
    I remember my case being left prominently in the middle of the station platform where I was about to board a train to leave Moscow, instead of being in the luggage van, just to show me that they had searched it and my room before I left.  The KGB operators tried to take me off that train, until rejected by angry Norwegians who had been on the anti-nuclear weapons march I was covering.     All that has changed now ( or nearly all).  But, sad to say, we seem to have picked up some of the old Soviet spying habits.  No more privacy.  and what will that achieve?  Nothing, except to drive us all underground, including the politicians who govern us.