Slashdot Mirror
Who Cares If Privacy Is Slipping Away?
IAmTheDave writes, "This morning MSNBC's home page is topped by the opening story in a series, Privacy Under Attack, But Does Anybody Care? Privacy rights have been debated to death here on Slashdot, but this article attempts to understand people's ambivalence towards the decline of privacy. The article discusses how over 60 percent of Americans — while somewhat unable to quantify what exactly privacy is and what's being lost — feel a pessimism about privacy rights and their erosion. However, a meager 6-7% polled have actually taken any steps to help preserve their privacy. The article's call to action: '...everyone has secrets they don't want everyone else to know, and it's never too late to begin a discussion about how Americans' right to privacy can be protected.'"
They want to know everything but everything about me? OK, fine.
As long as I get to know everything but everything about George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condy Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and Pat Robertson. Specifically, I'd like to know their exact whereabouts at all times, what their bank account and social security #'s are. I'd also really like to know where their kids go to school and what their medical histories are.
Oh, wait. You're not ready to share that information with the rest of us? Then you can butt the hell out of my information. Anything less will be settled with guns.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I'm all for lack of privacy, as long as it applies equally to everyone, starting with our political leaders, judges, and police officers and so on.
1) It's hard to quantify what's lost, and since it's being traded "for" something usually, it's rather hard to evaluate how good a deal it is, so most people don't do the exercise, since what's lost... usually isn't lost at time of purchase, but much later.
2) What's lost can have almost infinite value, one's loss of privacy could end with becoming a victim of identity theft and until it's established one's a victim, one could be accused of pretty nasty things. But that doesn't happen right away, is hard to prove, and doesn't happen to everyone.
That means that the protection seems large, unwieldy, like expensive insurance, and at some point, risky, like suing a large corporation over a five dollar item. People don't see the value of what they lose, only the value of what they lose by trying to protect some abstract value.
Until some court cases start making noise over protection of private data, I don't see that changing.
Privacy issues won't arise for the general public untill it's them directly affected. They see no reason to care untill they see what happens when they don't care.
And as people in Germany found, sometimes when it's a matter of pain, you can't do anything anyway, because the gestapo will haul your ass off somewhere for the SS Totenkopfverband to kick the shit out of you and then hang you up in public as an example of what happens to traitors. Then your country will be bombed or whatever until there's only half the population left. Well, is that all it takes to get rid of a despot? Let me know when the revolution starts, I'll be busy with figuring out how to play mp3's in my car.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If one simply traipses over to MediaMatters.Org, or any of a number of media-watching sites, it takes no rocket science to understand that less privacy=more profits. And as profits are above all, including morality, they must reign, or so we are told.
And as all of the minimum wage serfs sneer at you when they as you for your phone number when you in for a hair trim, it becomes increasingly impossible to remain anonymous, private in one's own affairs, and free from the scrutiny of the self-righteous. Somehow, I must live their concept of the path to Heaven, and deviation is, well, deviant.
So: kick the cameras when you find them. Put a little hood on them and beat them with a hammer. Cut coax. Re-address IP cams to porn feeds. Put chewing gum in appropriate places. Part of freedom is freedom from scrutiny. Burn the man; hack the system . One this is clear: live free or die isn't just for New Hampshire license plates-- you have to live it or surrender it.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I know what you mean. Kroger knows me as Mr. Harry Peters. Randalls knows me as Mike Hunt. I forget the street addresses but they were witty.
However, have you *ever* used a valid credit card with your affinity card?
If so... your false information can be tied to your real identity.
The Kroger affinity card that gives the best discounts (15 cents per gallon on gass) is a real credit card.
The point of my humorous post was this...
We will fight to the death for our privacy, yet sell it away to get gas for 1.98 a gallon instead of 2.00 a gallon or milk at 3.00 a gallon instead of 5.29 a gallon. So basically, our privacy is worth between 2% and 10% of our annual expenditures.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
>Has most of the US populous been pegged as a terrorist because of something they did and been interrogated
Try being a photographer in Fortress America these days - particularly one with an interest in transportation and industrial settings. Trust me, it sucks. Most of us are pretty much resigned to the inevitable visit from a three-letter agency.
Is that the hat with the new RFID tracker for retailers, or the RFID trackers for the Homeland/SS at the airports, or New Improved RFID tracker for tracking toll booth payments as well as your car's every move, or the RFID tracking insert suitable for tracking the poor, helpless children would would certainly be in mortal danger from terrorist pedophile internet stalkers if we were not tracking their hats?
Thank you for your support, citizen, for obeying the Law and stopping kid-following a-rabs everywhere. Remember to report anyone who does not where the new, guvmint-approved TinFil Hat with improved security features. And tell your kids to keep an eye on those evildoers at school as well. The schools are there to be protect your tykes from rifle-wielding Arab terrorist pedophile teenaged blackcoat killers, so every kid turned in is another IED brick removed from the wall of Fortress America. Godspeed the chosen people, the American race...
I've been two a protest or two, and I've never had an FBI guy knocking on my door. I've been vocal about different issues. I have a website that will poke fun at elected officials during the election cycles. Yet, I still haven't even had a hit from the FBI's office on my website.
I must be doing something wrong.
Oh yeah... I'd like everyone to know that "garcia" is now on the FBI watch list after his comments.
Look Side A uses fear so that they can gain more control then we might normally feel comfortable with. But we seem to forget that Side B uses unrealistic fear about the erosion of personal freedoms. I feel that Bush falls in Side A and people like "garcia" fall into Side B.
Your comment might actually make sense if the people who take pictures of a bridge were trying to take pictures of a top-secret span that national security depended on.
But as it stands, beliving that a bridge might somehow be protected from "terrorism" because a photographer would be prevented from (or terrorized for) taking pictures of something that is completely open to the public and which hundreds, if not thousands or *millions* of people are free to observe on a daily basis is downright absurd.
Or are you one of those people who believe that an erosion of personal freedoms is ok, just as long as you're still comfortable?
http://cylan.deviantart.com/gallery/