



I. How Did We Get Here?





II. Both Romney and Obama Support Spying on Citizens




[Image Source: Djibnet]




Source: GOP

Comments     Threshold


Modern privacy
By Ringold on 9/13/2012 8:24:05 PM , Rating: 5
The news is disappointing, but brings to mind a wider matter that I always think of when things like this come up in recent years.

Look at Facebook; many people post precise details of their lives, and no matter the privacy settings you put, FB knows it all. It knows whose pictures you look at the most, where you are during most parts of the day, what you say to your closest friends via chat and messages, etc.

Then credit card companies and banks. If you're like me and don't like messing with cash, they know everything you buy, when and where you bought it, and based on your history, might even know when you're going to buy it again.

And Gmail. Thanks to receipts, notices, etc., Gmail, Hotmail, etc., they may all know all of the above.

And all of the above, with few exceptions, are happy to milk that private data to push ads to you or attempt to up-sell services. In and of itself, that's benign, a price everybody using the services for free deep down understands is why its "free." But all that is just a hack away, or a government phone call away, too.

So, what is "privacy" in 2012? Does it exist? I don't think so, not outside the rare use of a small number of semi-anonymous communication systems (certain e-mail providers, etc). 95% of us have sold it away for cheap services, 4% are luddites, 1% live in the mountains with 10,000 rounds of ammo and enough dried food to last a decade. Not that I like it, I just think its a cost built in to an information age. Best we can do I think is to keep the government in the dark well enough that it still fears the people, and this bill doesn't do that at all.

Last second ninja edit: Could pass data privacy laws that require deletion of pretty much all transactions online after, say, a week. Historians would lose out, economists, and legitimate law enforcement requests would too. Could swing the door wide open for corporate fraud.

RE: Modern privacy
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 9/14/2012 3:34:15 AM , Rating: 1
There is no such thing as privacy in the modern world. People gave it away to corporations a long time ago. The government is just playing catch up these days.

RE: Modern privacy

RE: Modern privacy
By Paj on 9/14/2012 7:03:11 AM , Rating: 2
This is exactly the kind of 'big government' I don't like.

RE: Modern privacy


