Data Miners Moving to Offshore Data Havens

schwit1 writes "Washington Post has an article about former TIA personnel moving their data mining operations offshore (Bahamas) to escape U.S. privacy rules, and to make a buck. I'm waiting for somebody to publish the private data (financial, medical, legal) of federal officials and their families on an open internet web server out of the Bahamas. Is this what it will take for the US to enact stringent privacy rules?"

Comments

Quick Mr. President!

[Mobster]

How about invade the Bahamas?

But seriously, I think the scenero in the original post is probably the only way it's gonna work.

I'm annoyed on the internet!

[Big Mark]

Data mining and espescially subversive data collection is the kind of thing that makes me angry because it pisses me off to an incredible degree and there's absolutely fucking NOTHING I can do about it. I know 1984 and Brave New World references are terribly cliché and oft-abused but man, Big Brother is alive and well and distributing Soma in the form of privacy policies.

o wait getting on the "do not call" list will solve ALL my problems!!!

Re:WIR sind das Volk -- WE are the October surpris

[Doc Ruby]

That is the plain truth. When we look at the history of fascism rooted in Mussolini's invention (he coined the term), it all becomes clear. "Corporations" are an artificial "body", created by the government to protect people from liability (accountability) for their actions. "Fascists" are artificial faces for those bodies, government created by those corporations to protect it from accountability for its actions. That surreal voodoo quality of corporatism/fascism is a perfect complement to media environments, where these representations can interact without any physical limitations. Thats why fascism has boomed when new media have boomed, so long as corporations and government are the primary organizers of their mediation.

This time fascism is rising largely on the strength of cable TV, fanned by a resurrection of radio as rightwing talk - the original fascist format. As Internet use grows more centralized, through technology or mere "Top 40" style habit, it too will become a fascist tool for corporate powermongers. That's why "the powers that be" hate P2P tech, have been slow to roll out mobile networking platforms in the US, and are destroying the "fair use" copyrights that sustain innovation. Decentralization, P2P, DIY - those are the simple, powerful enemies of fascism. In the 2004 election we will have a chance to derail the Republican replay of Hitler's destruction of the German republic in the 1930s, following *his* appointment as Chancellor and legal dismantling of their democracy. But unless we continue to develop communications that connect people directly, without corporate mediation, a corporate Internet will incubate a fascism so powerful that it cannot be opposed. And without counterpowers like the 1940s US and Russia, transnational fascism will triumph, a corporate "boot stepping on a human face - forever".