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Gator CPO at the Department of Homeland Security
pcidevel writes "D. Reed Freeman, the "Chief Privacy Officer" of Claria Networks (formerly Gator), the creators of the pervasive spyware package GAIN, has been appointed to the Department of Homeland Security's "Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee"."
He seems like the perfect choice for me for this administration. After all, he can do with technology what the government has been trying to do through legislation - making it easy for the government to spy on people.
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
If this is for real (and I do trust Salon) this falls into the O.M.F.G. category. Someone slap me.
I recently listened to a documentary on CBC radio about pervasive irony in today's world. It was an interesting program because they were suggesting that the political scene these days is like a living satire. It's just too weird... and this news about a spyware marketer being appointed to a privacy committee is just insane. I see four fingers!
the Administration thinks that keeping her out of the marketplace is the best thing they can do for data privacy. Or maybe this is a dream.
At least they're being up front about this. They back the companies that are screwing us out of our privacy over the consumers every chance they get. That's what they stand for.
As outrageous as this is, it's not nearly as bad as the prescription drug bill that prevents them from pushing the pharmaceutical companies for better prices.
I hope the story is big enough to be spun by the talk radio crowd. I'd love to hear how they'd defend it.
They hired a deputy CIO who did not have a degree. More accurately she had a degree from on a non accredited diploma mill check it out it looks like a church.
Normally I'd have no problems with a deputy CIO not having a degree but apparently the dept of homeland security did not check out their deputy CIO carefully enough and now they had to "put her on leave".
Now we find out they are putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
Something is seriously askew at this dept. How can we trust these guys to safeguard our country when they have shown such awful judgement?
evil is as evil does
Quite simple: Your privary rights with homeland security are about the same as you have with gator. Except that there is no way to uninstall Homeland security sort of total political shift. I am sure next year the easy wiretapping laws will include all PCs and that any company supplying an operating system or other sofware has to provide lawenforcement witha backdoor that does not require court orders to use. Thus: Spyware delivered by windowsupdate.
No shit. My first thought was "This is a joke, right?"
My second thought was "Unless they intend to load up every computer in the world with CIA approved spyware that is..."
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
The ugly fact is that it is not just this administration. At first glance it is. However, I would say that it is "Big ". Unfortunatly, this does not follow mere party lines (and one could say that the whole American way should go out the window due to political views).
People in political "power" are put there due to money and thier interests. Proponents with money back them up and therefore are what govens the collective "us".
The true out is not a revolution. The true out is indi-thought.
So to anyone who has been paying attention to conservative thought for the last couple years, an appointment like this makes perfect sense - it is intended to further erode privacy rights in the US. The belief that only the rich and powerful have a right to privacy has become a neo-con article of faith.
I will grant the right of Slaon to supply content under terms of their own choosing. I will grant that if we dislike those terms we are free to go elsewhere instead - as in fact I do.
However I do not enjoy registration pages, and see no reason I should be required to enjoy them. Nor do I see any reason why any of us should be required or even expected to approve of a business model that is based upon supplying personal information to spammers, mass-marketers and other spies.
The issue of "hyper rich media congolmerates" is a red herring. there are many sites that provide qualiy content without requiring registration. Others (the New York Times springs to mind) undoubtedly fall into that cateory and yet still collect such information. I do wonder why anyone would spread such FUD. I can only assume that given the topic of the OP, the shills and astroturfers are out in force today.
To summarise: I don't like registration screens, I am never going to like registration screens, and I shall continue to publicly disapprove of them as I see fit.
Maybe you should learn to deal with it.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Mail room, or something, at DHLS. Last place anyone would find him, it seems.
But (assuming the election weren't rigged), the American people voted this administration into power again. The American people chose for things like this to happen to them (all of these things have been crafted by the current administration, and I somehow doubt things would be going down the same, or half as badly, if the election had gone the other way - remember that none of these things are necessarily "inevitable", they're highly dependent on who is in power, there have been many similar 'low points' during the previous century and it is possible to come out of them if you're not so complacent that you just accept things as inevitable). I think most people are simply uninformed, and don't care that they're uninformed. Thus one must conclucde that the root cause of the problems here is that majority of the American public are not competent enough to choose their leaders properly.
In other words, he's a lawyer. Presumably, his job was to either keep them from getting sued, at which he failed, or sue anyone who libels them, which seems to have succeeded. At least Homeland Security has Sovereign Immunity to fall back on.
For instance... People with Philosophy degrees are often hired as "Ethicists" for corporations. Their job is to interpret ethics for the company. In some cases, this means keeping the company on the right side of the line. However, for some companies, it simply means finding ways to justify what the company wants to do to begin with. Guidance, or spin.
So, take a look at the Department of Homeland Security. Do you think this is the kind of honest-natured ministry that wants to make sure it does the right thing regarding our privacy? Or the kind of Orwellian agency that wants to have a way to say it respects privacy, and does whatever it wants?
Guidance, or spin?
This guy is there to help teach the feds how to lie to us about how much our privacy is respected in this country. All of the sudden, it makes sense.
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Here is what I sent mine...
/ gator/index.html?source=RSS on how D. Reed Freeman, the "Chief Privacy Officer" of Claria Networks (formerly Gator), the creators of the pervasive spyware package GAIN, has been appointed to the Department of Homeland Security's "Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee".
Dear Congressman Pearce;
I came across the article at http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2005/02/23
I find this of extreme concern for the security of the citizens of our country. It is also a concern that the 'privacy officer' for the DHS is a former minion of Doubleclick which is also a spyware company. This is like appointing David Duke to a committee on minority rights, Mike Tyson appointed to a committee on womans right, Michael Jackson appointed to a committee on childrens rights, or the proverbial fox being in charge of the henhouse. Can we now expect DHS to craft sofware that installs itself on our machines without or knowledge? Can we expect our data privacy to be safe from unlawfull government search? This is a real and present concern. The last thing the citizenry needs is for people with a known track record of being involved in privacy violations to be in such positions. The very fact that these people are where they are now within the DHS points to the process being broken, and perhaps it can also be said that the DHS has been infiltrated by persons without the citizens best interests in mind. In advance, your attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
The 2nd amendment was intended to provide arms for State Militia. The States had the right to leave the Union and they had the right have State run armies to protect us from the Federal Government. Lincoln's illegal war changed that.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Just wanted to add that I think you're absolutely right. Why don't we ask the folks at Waco or Ruby Ridge how their "resistance" to what they perceived as a tyrannical government worked out? In order for a revolution to succeed, you'd need to organize folks en-masse, and that won't happen, because the government-controlled media channels will portray your movement as a fanatical religious organization, or a group of terrorists. Why would Suzy Soccer Mom point her Glock at the government when CNN is telling her that a bunch of "freedom-hating gun nuts in Texas" are fighting the BATF? She won't. No one will.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
It's funny. Geeks will donate $300,000 to advertise thier web browser... But they can't organize a lobbying group to represent them in washington. Sure, the EFF tries to do good things, but mostly after there is a problem. The FSF only tries to stay afloat and stop GPL violators. Where is the free software political action in America? The money is there.
There are definitely people who take stuff like this site for granted. Everything has to be paid for somehow and ad supported is one way to do this if people don't want to pay a subscription fee. However, there is a very large difference between an ad at the top (though I would much rather they used the even less obtrusive google ads, which I actually don't block) and popup ads which not only infect your computer (or result from infections) and are a huge annoyance.
Or help bugmenot work, create a new login/password combination, and submit it to bugmenot. Damn, people expect everything for free...
Americans on average are the stupidest population center on this planet.
;)
The following countries have lower average IQs than that of the US (which is 98):
Canada 97 Czech Republic 97 Finland 97 Spain 97 Argentina 96 Russia 96 Slovakia 96 Uruguay 96 Portugal 95 Slovenia 95 Israel 94 Romania 94 Bulgaria 93 Ireland 93 Greece 92 Malaysia 92 Thailand 91 Croatia 90 Peru 90 Turkey 90 Colombia 89 Indonesia 89 Suriname 89 Brazil 87 Iraq 87 Mexico 87 Samoa (Western) 87 Tonga 87 Lebanon 86 Philippines 86 Cuba 85 Morocco 85 Fiji 84 Iran 84 Marshall Islands 84 Puerto Rico 84 Egypt 83 India 81 Ecuador 80 Guatemala 79 Barbados 78 Nepal 78 Qatar 78 Zambia 77 Congo (Brazz) 73 Uganda 73 Jamaica 72 Kenya 72 South Africa 72 Sudan 72 Tanzania 72 Ghana 71 Nigeria 67 Guinea 66 Zimbabwe 66 Congo (Zaire) 65 Sierra Leone 64 Ethiopia 63 Equatorial Guinea 59
You can also see from mathematics tests that the US is not the stupidest population, but above the international average for mathematics achievement as well.
Of course, the US may still be stupid, but it isn't like there are a lot of people less stupid outside of the US.
Some European countries may have higher IQs and Math scores than the US, but they have real problems in understading basic economics
These guys aren't liberal, they're not politicians, and nobody really knows what the majority of the population agrees with, so don't spout of as if you do.
Notice that agreement from the majority of the voting population is not the same as the population in general. Besides that, it is far more respectful to have your own opinions and actually base them on facts, even if they have been known for a while, than to preach your blinded, pseudo-conservative, distracted, herd mentality.
silly ac. To suggest that past events have no affect on the future...
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Before I start, for reference, my IQ has never tested below 150 (and that includes some weird American tests where I had to work with bronze-age units like quarts and ounces).
Where did these numbers come from? Do you have any idea how many people you have to test to be able to determine something to with statistical reliability to 1%? Or the costs of finding a random sample in half the countries in that list?
IQ as a measurement isn't nearly valuable enough to visit Sierra Leone, never mind correctly test 1000 evenly distributed people there. So even if there was some attempt to test thoroughly, I doubt it was honest.
By the way, who beat you guys? (I'm assuming you're American) Should we assume it's all of the hundred-odd countries not on the list?
DRM "security" initiatives, anti-reverse engineering laws, click-through-EULAs being a legal contract, and other bits of centralized control over your computer might make it so that you can't legally discuss what your own computer reports about you. The recent moves to limit freedom of information by conservatives make the possibility of tuning into the "global hacker scene" to stay informed about PC internals illegal too.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]