Se7en (1995) — directed by David Fincher and starring Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt — warned us about the dangers of surveillance and KYC long before it became normal.
Back then, what Somerset describes would’ve sounded like blatant government overreach. Even illegal!
Today, we hand over our IDs to companies like Coinbase without a second thought — companies that have a track record of leaking user data. How did this become so commonplace? When did constant monitoring become acceptable?
Here’s the quote from Se7en (spoiler alert):
Somerset: See, for years the FBI’s been hooked into the library system, keeping records.
Mills: Mmhm. Assessing fines?
- No, monitoring reading habits. Look.
- What?
- Certain books are flagged. Books on, say, nuclear weapons and, well, Mein Kampf. Anyone who checks out a flagged book has his library records fed into the FBI’s computers then on.
- Wait, wait, wait, how is this legal?
- Oh, legal, illegal. These terms don’t apply.
- Oh.
- YouYou can’t use the information directly. It’s just a useful guide. It might sound silly, but you can’t get a library card… without, uh, an ID and a current phone bill, see?
- So they run a list.
- Precisely.
