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Did We Lose the Privacy War?
eihab writes "I've been a fanatic about my online privacy for the last few years. I've been using NoScript and blocking Google Analytics, disabling third-party cookies, encrypting IM and doing everything in my power to keep data-miners at bay. Recently, I've been feeling like I'm just doing too much and still losing! No matter what I do, I know that there's a weak link somewhere, be it my ISP, Flash cookies, etc. I've recently gotten AT&T U-Verse, who, according to their privacy statement, will be monitoring my TV watching habits for advertisement purposes. I'm extremely annoyed by that, yet I love the service so much and I don't think I can cancel it. I just can't take this anymore. I have nothing to hide, but I do not want to be profiled and become member #5534289 in a database somewhere that records everything I do. I know I'm not that interesting to anyone, but the idea of someone being able to pull up everything about me with a simple SQL SELECT statement and a couple of JOINS makes me cringe. One of the reasons I hate data mining is that data security is not understood and almost non-existent at a lot of places. Case in point: I changed my life insurance two years ago, and the medical firm that conducted my health screening was broken into and computers with non-encrypted hard drives and patients' data were stolen. That medical firm didn't really need my SSN, but then again neither did AT&T when I signed up for U-Verse. Am I just too paranoid? Is privacy dead? Should I just give up and accept the fact that privacy is not the norm anymore (like Facebook's founder recently said) or should I keep fighting the good fight for my privacy?"
You have no privacy, none. Any hacker, any private investigator, any stalker, can access your data from thousands of private or public databases. If you are jewish then the neo-nazi's probably already know where you live. If you voted for Bush the lefties already know who you are and where you live. If you disagree with how I think on privacy, I could find out where you live.
And nothing stops me from creating a huge list of names and addresses, putting it into a database, and selling this list to advertises so they can spam you. And nothing stops anyone from selling your health records to the nazi's, the mafia, the street gang, the Republicans. So if you are a gay homosexual you can expect that your medical records will be accessed. If you are Barack Obama then you can expect your cellphone records to be accessed http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10104997-83.html
The far right, those people who vote for Sarah Palin and who have all those guns and bibles, those people who don't believe in evolution, they know where you live and they know everything about you because you added a Republican to your facebook page. And if you added a liberal then you can expect that those global warming crazies and anti-globalists will know where to find you and all your vulnerabilities.
So why don't you have a right to privacy? You don't have a right to privacy because your life just isn't important to the government. The government knows that most Americans are dumb breeders who will pop out babies just like the Octomom. If you die the Octomom will have another baby and replace you. Corporations don't see you as anything more than consumers. And political parties only care about you when you think like they do and are willing to serve their special interests.
Face it, you aren't all that and nobody is protecting you or your privacy.