On 10/17/2015 10:55 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| With near-total surveillance
| between business and gov't we're getting into unknown
| territory. We're inadvertently redefining human rights.
|
| Sure! And, besides grumbling, wat do you suggest folks do about
| this? And, what portion of their lifestyle should they sacrifice
| to take on this effort??

I'm only suggesting making an effort to deal with it,
which you seem to be doing yourself. We can't completely
protect email, but we can avoid free webmail that redefines
our own files as their property.

Again, people don't place any VALUE on those things! OTOH,
they seem to place value on being ABLE to pay $4 for a cup
of coffee, etc.

I.e., you can't force people to adopt a particular set of values
(even if it is entirely obvious to you -- or me!)

CVS now sells customer data to drug companies. What
to do about that? I can go to other drug stores. But is
Walgreens any better? I don't know. In any case, I can
keep track of it and vote with both my votes and my wallet.
If most people even just disabled 3rd-party cookies it
would be a crisis for online advertisers.

There's far too much of an incentive for advertisers to
QUICKLY work around such a change in use. Instead of
dropping a cookie on your machine, they'd reference
another "nocookie" domain that bore the cost of tracking you!
A line or two in an included file for each web page...

Partly this is to discourage the practices and partly
it's to help prevent them from getting worse. If people
accept that Google owns their email then Google will own
their email. It doesn't have to be that way.

You're fighting human nature. People are lazy. And, suckers
for anything that *seems* "free". "Buy" music -- and then
pay someone to serve those files *back* to you?? :

I once had a Jewish friend whose entire extended
family was lost in WW2. Only his parents got out. I
once asked him why the Jews didn't leave Germany,
despite the restrictions, abuse, forced wearing of
Star of David.... The treatment kept getting worse,
yet most of them just stayed. He said that's a common
question that Jews ask among themselves. I suppose
probably it was just another case of the slow-boiling frog:
The water doesn't seem *too* hot yet, and it's a
lot of hassle to jump out.

Exactly.

I had a friend who claimed he "had nothing to hide".
To which, I replied, "I notice your bank statements still
come in an *envelope* (surely a POSTCARD would be cheaper for
his financial institution!)"

I think the Star of David emblems are a pretty good
analogy to current issues. (At the risk of melodrama,
perhaps. One could easily accept them with excuses.
Who cares? What are we going to do? Move to France?
That would be one big headache. And aren't we Jews,
anyway? So what harm is there in wearing these
emblems? But the requirement itself was a humiliation
and a step in the systematic abuse of the citizenry.

Here, you must be able to provide proof of citizenship
(or, the legal authority to be here) on demand. Of
course, us while folk figure that;s not a problem
as no one's likely to demand it of *us*...

I wonder how people have even allowed things to
go as far as they have, with email being spied on
while geographic location and activities are tracked.

The Patriot Act went a long way to convincing people
that they *need* to be spied on. "We're keeping you
safe! Besides, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO HIDE???"

There's very little privacy protection at present. The
only example I'm aware of is the Video Privacy Protection
Act, which resulted from Robert Bork's video rental history
being leaked to the press.

This is primarily a problem in the US -- where business
interests always trump personal liberties. I wonder what it
would be like if these same businesses were willing to sell
this information to The Voting Public? E.g., which movies
my Congressman watches? Which books he reads? Which cell
phone towers are carrying his calls "after hours" (and if
those are the correct towers given his alleged home address)?
What sorts of clothing items he purchases? Any mail order
deliveries (in brown paper boxes)? etc.

Stop being predictable and the value of that data rapidly
diminishes. Yet, the cost of collecting and maintaining
it never does!

Once folks *have* some data, there is a strong incentive
to try to hold onto it -- even if it no longer appears to
be relevant. The thinking being "I've already got this.
If I discard it, I may never be able to collect *it*,
again! Best buy more disk space (and more staff) just
in case it *has* value!"

My automation system has a "long memory" so it can make
deductions based on past observations. Memory is cheap
($100 per installed TB is peanuts!). So, why *not*
remember everything the occupants/users did yesterday?
And, the day before? Why *not* recall what the *local*
(i.e., on this plot of land!) weather was last year at
this time? And, what the *reported* weather (for this
part of town) was at that same time?

Surely all of these "bits" might be of help in determining what
the user might want to do today. Or, what the weather will
*really* be -- regardless of what the local forecaster
claims "at the airport".

Each time I think of businesses, guberments, etc. mindlessly
collecting everything they can get their hands on, I think about
how quickly this pile grows. And, the costs of keeping it as
well as digging through it. When does the pile of data collapse
under its own weight? (again, not wanting to discard ANY of it!)

Ask google what the search results for "foobiggle" *were*
three weeks ago and they'll look at you funny -- "Who cares!
We're concerned with the results for *today* (or tomorrow)"