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Ask Slashdot: How Do You Protect Your Privacy These Days? Or Do You?
An anonymous reader writes "The NSA snoops traffic and has backdoors in encryption algorithms. Law enforcement agencies are operating surveillance drones domestically (not to mention traffic cameras and satellites). Commercial entities like Google, Facebook and Amazon have vast data on your internet behavior. The average Joe has sophisticated video-shooting and sharing technology in his pocket, meaning your image can be spread anywhere anytime. Your private health, financial, etc. data is protected by under-funded IT organizations which are not under your control. Is privacy even a valid consideration anymore, or is it simply obsolete? If you think you can maintain your privacy, how do you go about it?"
I don't have anything the NSA is interested in.
The people that are likely to try to gain from violating my privacy are likely to spend 10 times more then they gain.
There are two words that everyone should be concerned with: False Positive.
I agree with you 100%. The issue I've found is that people are absolutely terrible when it comes to working with big numbers. Any chance of false positive is seen as a 1 in a million shot at best. People cannot comprehend how they could end up in that kind of situation, the chances are so slim. It seems to me many have forgotten the old saying that we're supposed to let 10 guilty people go rather than jail 1 innocent person since we're (the west) supposed to be a benevolent democracy.
As I usually say: every week there is someone who wins the lottery, and that chance is really, really small.
I don't have anything the NSA is interested in.
It's correctable. Just ask your congressman to make your everyday activity punishable. Here in Russia I read about 3 reports per day about people punished due to use of social networks to publish dissent with official national policy.
It depends who you are hiding from.
The typical internet user is unlikely to incur the wrath of the NSA or even law enforcement unless they are involved in crime or political activism. They may choose to hide on princible.
What they do have to fear is the casual background check.
For example: I loathe the catholic church. A bunch of homophobic superstitious idiots with ridiculous beliefs that even they have had to shy away from out of embarassment. Stuck-up people who claim to be the sole early authority on issues of morality, though apparently this includes sheltering a truely obscene number of child-molesters in their ranks from the public relations disaster of actually being caught by law enforcement.
My first job out of university was in IT support at a catholic school.
Now, imagine if I had been dumb enough to write the above under my real name somewhere? The school may very well have put my name into google to check if I have any skeletons, found something like the above, and decided not to offer me the job. I'd never have learned why, just gotten the 'your application was not successful' form letter, so it's impossible to say how often this happens - but with facebook and google requiring real names for an increasing number of social media concerns, this is surely happening with increasing frequency.
I would add 2 words to that ones: Witch Hunt. What we see normal or harmless today could be proclaimed as crime tomorrow. The "pressure cookers" topic changed meaning after boston bombing.
Come on, you're asking the wrong question!
The sun doesn't revolve around you or me.
Those here who answer "I don't care" are halfway right.
None of us will be betrayed by Google or Amazon - that's bad business.
NSA won't post your private stuff or steal your money - they just want to do their job, damn the consequences.
However, after the next economic depression and mass unemployment, or after the next great war,
when we elect our Führers, or support revolutions ending in a totalitarian states,
they will find it convenient that our governments have built the infrastructure for their tyranny.
To answer the question that your should have asked:
* Voice your opinion.
* Support EFF https://www.eff.org/action and similar organisations.
* Contact your representative.
* Vote with your head and your heart - not your wallet.
No sig to see here. Move along.