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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"."
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!
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.
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!
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.
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