I'm shocked, stunned, and more than a little amazed.
Not that they are doing it of course, as Blind Freddy
could see that it was going to happen.
I'm shocked, stunned, and more than a little amazed at the people who
are surprised by this, and are suffering a fit of moral indignation.
We live in a world of pervasive electronic
surveillance. From satellites mapping
the globe, to Google cars collecting photographs and WiFi traffic, to CCTV
cameras in every major city with active face recognition, to the supermarket
loyalty card you use for a discount, to your friends and family posting your
every move on Facebook, and finally to governments snooping on the
Internet. We can have heated discussions
about whether this should be, and what it means, but the horse has well and
truly bolted.
This is not new.
This is not unexpected. This is
not a surprise. Mostly we did it to
ourselves. The real question is what are
we going to do going forward, and this is something we do have a choice about.
The providers that are reported to be the major source of
information are the free e-mail services, the ones that already data-mine your
e-mail to serve you targeted adverts. As
you didn't pay for the service you are not their clients, you are their product
- they sell your eyeballs.
If you want to take back control, choose to use a
different provider. If you want to make
it harder to be snooped on, choose to always use encryption. It might be impractical to go completely off
the net, but you can choose to not make it easy. Or you can choose to keep the benefits you
have at the cost of your privacy.
