DamianTV
05-13-2011, 04:57 PM
Its not that they Cant, they Wont.
I recently had the very irritating experience of having to purchase a new phone after my old one died, right on cue. What I found was nearly every phone excluding iPhone and Android phones had some custom AT&T crap interface with stuff that I dont want or need. I dont use Facebook or MySpace so their Social Networking Menu Option is useless. I dont shop for Ringtones. I download them on my PC then use a USB cable to transfer them over. I dont need or want their GPS tracking bullshit so advertisers can target me based on my location. The rest of the garbage that was on there was all oriented towards them selling me more crap that I dont want. I do however, have the occasional need of a Web Browser, for getting street addresses, and what not.
However, the worst problem is when I tried to adjust my Privacy Settings for the Web Browser was to find that THERE IS NO OPTION TO BLOCK COOKIES. Oh well thats no big deal because Cell Phones cant accept Cookies to begin with. Really? Then why is there an option to CLEAR COOKIES, but no option to BLOCK COOKIES? The last phone I had was about 3 years old, apparently a Dinosaur according to the idiot sales people. So new phones and every phone made from today until the end of eternity should have the same functionality built in. The ability to BLOCK COOKIES from Websites.
It is a basic function. Every major web browser that I have had to use has Block Cookies built in. Every previous Smart Phone I've owned prior to my current one has had the ability to Block Cookies. But suddenly, AT&T decided to make the decision to ALLOW ALL COOKIES FROM EVERY WEBSITE FOR ALL OF THEIR CUSTOMERS? I thought it was just AT&T, so I went and checked out a couple of phones at Sprint. Low and behold, the same thing happened. None of their phones even have the Option of Blocking Cookies! The layout of their targetted advertising sales bullshit looked almost identical to AT&T's, and I am pretty sure that AT&T hasn't bought out Sprint yet. They are getting there. AT&T took over Cingular, who was my original carrier, and just bought out T-Mobile leaving me with the choice of AT&T and Verizon, who has already pissed me off by flat out not allowing me to connect my phone to my PC to transfer any data between the phone and my PC. Verizon wanted me to use another "service", which was "for my safety", however it cost me 50 cents every time I wanted to get one picture or other file off of phones on their service. Which equates to financial rape, and I refused to do business with Verizon either. And although I have not been back to a Verizon store, I am quite sure they also have decided to make the decision for their customers to Allow All Cookies from Everyone.
Whats the big deal about cookies? Its about the business model being designed to profit from invading your Privacy. However, it is NOT just about Privacy, it is about Big Business flat out TELLING YOU what your Privacy Options will be. I dont care what you choose for your Privacy Options, what IS important is that you DO have a choice to allow or deny cookies. The thing is about Cookies that is apphauling to me is that Big Business is creating a Financial Pyramid, and at is very base is knowing everything about YOU that they can record. If you want to allow their cookies, thats great, but dont take that choice away from me to Block them, and dont think that you have the Right to make that decision for me. I do not like the idea that the more we build on this foundation of Zero Privacy, the worse that things will get. AT&T has made the decision for me that companies that have absolutely nothing to do with AT&T will all have the implied Right to Track me, without my permission, and I have absolutely no say so in the matter.
How can you defend your Right To Anything if you dont even know what that right is? You have the Right to Defend yourself against ANY aggressor, be it a Thief, a Terrorist, or The Government. You have the right to KILL A COP if they are trying to MURDER you without provocation. You have the right to shoot back. Of course, the Courts will decide if you were in the right or wrong, and it will depend and vary on each and every situation. None the less, if you didnt know that you had the Right To An Attorney, how could you Enforce Your Right if you didnt know it to begin with? YOU CANT. That is why, in the 1960's, Miranda Law was passed requiring Cops to make you aware of your Rights when you are placed under arrest. It is because of Miranda Law that people must be made aware of their Rights.
The same thing does NOT apply with technology. The average person is offered absolutely nothing to make them aware of their Constitutional Rights in regards to technology. And what little is left is quickly being widdled away by Big Business and Big Brother. We end up with Impossible to Understand EULA's which even Law Professionals can't decypher. We get warnings like "do not insert screwdriver into penis". But anything that makes you aware that you are being Tracked, Targetted, and essencially Electronially Stalked? Nope. No warnings about any of that.
The Constitutional Right to Privacy has a couple of loopholes which are being exploited to the N'th degree. Firstly, the word Privacy is IMPLIED, which means that the Constitutional Right to Privacy is Penumbra Right. (A Penumbra is the edge of a shadow where the shadow isnt 100% as dark as the rest of the shadow, but focus on the Edge part) Secondly, it is very frequently misinterpreted as Only Existing In Private. Thus, most people think that the only time you have a Right to Privacy is in your own home. That is not true. The Right does not simply go away because you walked out your front door. There is nothing that says your 4th Amendment Rights are suspended because you are not at home.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
You have the Penumbra Right to Privacy in Public. You have the right to leave your house and walk around all day long in public and not be Searched or your things Seized without a Warrant which specifically describes what is going to be searched and what will be seized. Coming out of your humble abode does NOT constitute Probable Cause.
The last limitation of the Right is that it does not restrict Private Companies or Corporations from doing the searching and seizing. Thus, the government can get away with having private companies do everything that it is restricted from by the Constitution and getting away with it free and clear. It can violate every single right, as long as some company sells or gives or does whatever is restricted from the government to the government. Want to make an unlawful arrest? Government cant do it, but no problem, let a private company do it. The government CAN and DOES pass laws allowing this type of Facist legalization of allowing private companies to do what it can not. Want to detain you indefinitely? No problem, let a private company do it. Want to torture you? No problem, let a private company do it. Want to violate any Right in the Bill of Rights? No problem! Let a private company do it!
But if you dont do anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide? The end result is that a person with No Privacy will eventually do something wrong, and Big Brother will come after them. Right and Wrong is a moral determination based on the current socioeconomic status of the people that create and pass such laws. In olden days, there were probably a few more enforced laws about acceptable behavior on horseback. Dont take your Horse into a place of business, etc. However, in those days, most people used common sense and didnt need a law prohibitng drugs to prevent them from doing drugs. Like trying to Blacksmith while youre shitfaced. Didnt need a law against that because people used common sense.
But todays laws are different. Todays laws are Profit Based. The Laws today are designed to generate revenue for whoever passes the law. (referring to city or county governments or where ever the law is passed) The result is that the tools used are Revenue Streams. Traffic Cameras are as much of a Tool as the way that Police are Trained is also a tool. And Privacy is nothing but an Obstacle to Profit governments as well. So now that governments can use private companies to do the spying, stalking, and tracking of every single one of its citizens, there is no recourse that any person has against either the governmet, or the company performing the Unconstitutional Acts against them when their Rights are violated. Governmens not only WANT you to do something wrong, they WANT to know WHEN you do something wrong so they can take what ever money they can get out of you. The government does NOT want well behaved citizens as it would provide NO MONEY.
Well that is a pretty bazaar tanget for a rant on Privacy. Its not quite that bazaar. Because everyone has so much Financial Incentive to monitor as many possible aspects of every citizens lives as possible, the risk that people face as a result of their loss of Privacy becomes ever more profound. That, and the government WANTS you to Break its Laws. The companies will financially benefit by selling the information to the government in the event that they find you doing something wrong IF the data that the private company is selling can generate a profit for the government. The company sells a video of you not using a turn signal in your car to the government to which you must now pay the fine to the government which funds the private company to sell the video of you not using your turn signal.
Both the Government and Private Comanies have Financial Incentive and the Legal Means to deprive you of the fruits of your labors enabled by your Loss of Privacy.
Your fines fund both. Look at it this way. Your Grandmother. Provided she is still alive, she may be getting up there in years and probably has to take some sort of prescription drugs. If she doesnt take all of those drugs, then she ends up being in possession of a controlled substance. If she could be FINED for her CRIME, that could be very profitable, both to the Government, and the Private Company that turns her in. Hell if they were to throw her in Jail, that is profitable to the Privately Owned Prisons. But how do you get that information to know if she has an expired prescription drug in her possession? Get her to pay for it. Get her to buy some sort of automagical drug monitoring device, which, say for the sake of argument, uses RFID chips in the pill bottles. The RFID contains information on who she is (by way of a unique identifier, which links to a remote database where her name is stored) and information on what kind of drugs are contained in the pill bottle as well as their expiration date. She buys this device to let her know when she is running low on medications and if there are any other drugs which may conflict with this particular drug. All this information has to be processed remotely, so it goes out on the internet, tells the company what pill bottles are still present in said magical RFID Pill Bottle Scanning Container, and they find that a prescription bottle expired yesterday, well thats a $150 dollar fine from the government, but if they turn her in by selling that information to the government, that is worth money to the company. Your Grandmother gets a nasty fine or can go to jail for not throwing out her expired pill bottles.
That is one possible scenario. How about getting your insurance cancelled because your RFID in your car told your insurance company that you let someone else drive your car, which is not allowed in your policy? It doesnt matter why. If you try to keep your insurance policy as affordable as you can, you are expected to be the only one that ever drives it. It doesnt matter if your friends car broke down, your grandmother drove you home after a night out of heavy drinking and partying, yes, with your grandmother, and you were too drunk to drive, or if your car is stolen. Someone else drove your car and now the insurance company doesnt have to pay for the theft of your car because you "allowed" someone else to drive your car (namely the thief, who you did NOT give permission to drive your car). There are about a billion and one scenarios that I will not be able to come up with on how your Loss of Privacy can destroy your life.
Why focus so heavily on cookies? Its not so much as what one company can find out about you that is the danger, what is done with that data is what is dangerous. Cookies enable the Loss of Privacy. Most people think what they have been told to think. Cookies are small text files on your computer that enable settings blah blah blah. That is only half of the truth.
A Cookie IS a text file that MAY contain unique information. It also may not. A Cookie may possibly contain a COLOR Preference between a Blue and Black webpage. Since there are only really TWO options in this particular scenario, Blue and Black, it does not do a lot of good for actually tracking a user, as some percentage of users will have a Blue Cookie and the rest will be Black Cookies, or have blocked cookies. For tracking purposes, in that scenario, its useless. However, lets look further. A Cookie is a Text File. The Text that is actually contained in a cookie on your computer can contain ANY Text. There is a size limit on cookies, but you dont need to be able to put War and Peace into a cookie. That doesnt do any good. Putting a cookie on your computer and using it as the only means puts too much control of the hands of the stupid users that are being tracked. If the user deletes this one cookie that tells this company that ads have been shown to you on NYTimes.com, DailyPaul.com and FatChicksWithDonkeys.com from the same ad company, that company now is not going to be able to have any recourse. It is too unreliable for their financial purposes.
The solution? Dont store anything BUT your unique identifier in the cookie. That Unique Identifier links back to where the data is stored in their databases, which you have NO access to, and NO CONTROL over what they do with that data. So you come to my website, and youre the 3rd person to come to such and such website, and you get a Unique Idenifier Cookie of #3 on your computer. The next time you come back, they can see you've been there before. Meh, that is not that big of a deal. Oh, but it is. Especially if that cookie is from a 3rd Party Advertiser. The 3rd Party Advertiser does exactly what its name implies, they Advertise, on Multiple websites. Every website they advertise on, this company will be able to know what websites you've hit. I dont really care if one website knows I have been to it. That is what is known as a First Party Cookie. You go to DailyPaul.com and get a cookie, the only place that knows you've been there before is DailyPaul.com. However, when you get into the realm of 3rd Party Cookies, which may also have an Ad on DailyPaul.com, the Ad company now knows that not only have you been to, and visit DailyPaul.com on a regular basis, but also go to Cooking.com and some Sex websites, which is where you spend most of your time. They also show ads on Google, who generates its money by selling Ads and Ad Space. So you go to Google and search for "How to get away with Murder" and every website that you go to will also be shown to the advertiser, who can get the same information. You hit 3 websites and look at several scenarios. Later, you do another Google Search for cheap bongs, legalize marijuana, how to cheat a drug test. Yep, all that information goes to the Advertiser. The Advertiser that did NOT ask your permission to track you. They dont even have the courtesy to tell you that they are tracking you. They tell you that they are just trying to show you more relevant ads so you can be shown ads that are more to your liking. The problem comes from you not having any control over the data that they collected about you. You ask them to see what data they have on you, and they ignore you. And forget taking them to court as most of the laws enable them to do so without recourse.
It would be one thing if the data one company can get about you was ONLY used for Advertising. But they have so much information on you, and it may not be able to identify 100% of every website that you visit or have ever visited. So they missed out on the fact that you clicked on a website that they dont advertise on where you were looking to get a story published on How To Sell A Murder Mystery To A Publisher. They missed that bit. They already sold the fact that you did a search for How To Murder to the police, which now probably have you under a microscope, but based on the fact that the Advertiser did not see that you were not intending on committing a Murder, but were in fact trying to Write A Murder Mystery Novel.
The search terms that a person may enter into a search engine does not indicate a persons actual intentions. Now, lets say your significant other or one of your children is murdered. With the information that was collected by the Advertiser (not just Google) the Jury now has enough circumstancial evidence to convict you of First Degree Murder. Hey, the Goverment and many of the Privately Owned Correctional Facilities could use your False Imprisonment as a way to make money. They've established Intent based on your search terms, but THEIR intent is to Make Money, regardless if you are Guilty or Innocent, and your argument of the Intent in your Defense can go right out the window, as well as the rest of your barely existent rights.
Yes, that is yet another scenario, one of many, some of which that I can come up with, and many others which are just so intrusive that they are beyond my comprehension. The reason that I provided that last scenario is that it is Cookie Based. Cookies are the enabling means for tracking. And you probably dont care. You probably wont until it is too late. All of this technology for tracking and monitoring terrorists because they are terrorists and dont deserve to be treated like human beings can quickly and easily be turned on YOU. It may not even be the government that turns their tracking technologies on you. It might be your neighbor, a company or a thief.
We also seem to have this preconceived notion that all people with jobs are honest. Well, except for the ones at the top of the Corporate Ladder. People dont expect that the guy flipping your burgers at Burger King is the one that actually STOLE your Credit Card number when you came into his store where he had his RFID Chip Scanner in a spot that could scan for your RFID Chip Enabled Credit Card Number.
The point is that if this information is not out there to begin with, it can not be used against you. Privacy is a Basic and Essencial Right for a Reason. You can not survive without it. I dont need to know your name to Murder you, or Rape your Daughter. All I need is to know of an opportunity. I dont care if you deleted that last cookie when you visited my website, I'll just give you a new one that will stick around on your computer until you grow enough brain cells to delete that one too. I dont care if your name is John Doe or Englebert Humperdink, or if the Unique Cookie I placed on your computer is #1 or #10000000000, I just care that I can get enough information to provide me with the opportunity to fuck you over. And out of all the people on this planet that want to fuck you, it only takes ONE to end everything you've ever worked for. Everything you've ever done in your life is meaningless once you are DEAD.
Wow, that got pretty damn grim pretty fast? You dont have to worry about me, Im not the one that would ever try to hurt you, or anyone that reads this article. People that actually have the intentions of hurting you that badly are NOT going to reveal those intentions to you. Ok, you pissed me off and I may be right to be pissed at you, hell we might even get in a fight, and a lot of things could happen from there. But if I really wanted to hurt you, you would never know it. Do you know who the biggest people who push to keep anti drug laws on the books are? The Drug Dealers. They have the Money, they have the Incentive, and they have the Opportunity. Money is power. And keeping something illegal gives them more profit. But the drug dealers will NEVER tell you that. Your local pot dealer makes his money off of you because of the Risk that creates his Profit. So if I wanted to break into your house and steal your stuff, Im not going to tell you about it. If I wanted to murder you, I wouldnt tell you about it. People need to be aware that you are the one responsible for creating the Opportunity for people to hurt you. And the more information you give them, the more opportunity you create for people.
For example, yes another example, posting on Facebook that you and your entire family are leaving town for several weeks, as well as having your street address also posted publicly on Facebook for everyone to see. It wont matter that the person that may rob you has anything against you or not, you were the one that enabled the situation by posting on Facebook in the first place. You let them know that there was an opportunity for them to exploit you.
And this all comes back down to the stupid cell phone refusing to block cookies. Someone is always looking for the opportunity to better themselves at your expense. And the more Privacy you are willing to throw away, the more opportunity you are providing to everyone to destroy you. With your nice shiny new iPhone, I could now see that you are out of the state based on your IP address on your phone, as well as that convenient data provided to ME by your shiny new iPhone, and you post on facebook that you live alone, dont be suprised to come home and find that someone (me) is the new owner of all YOUR stuff.
All I need to know is of an opportunity. And that can come to me as easily as a cookie. I have a web server that serves a picture that I uploaded to it, and it sends me a cookie back. All I need is for you to view just one webpage that uniquely identifies you and I now have your geographic location, which tells me there is an opportunity. You dont even need to visit my site. All you have to do is visit one website that shows one picture off of my servers, and I now know that I have the opportuity to come and take what you have. Thats all one little cookie can do. For me. What can it do for you? It can destroy your life.
Each type of individual has different intent on what to do with your data. The government wants to fine or imprison you. They are financially driven and motivated to get you to break the law. Advertisers want to advertise to you, then sell your data and share it with other advertisers to develop the most crystal clear picture of your entire life as they possibly can, then sell it to everyone they can sell it to, and dont offer you a penny. The advertiser will stab you in the back immediately if it means a higher profit margin for their shareholders. And there are the thieves. Usually the thieves are thieves of opportunity. They see you left your laptop in your car and you are no where to be found, kiss your laptop goodbye. But what is worse is what happens when they do get all the rest of the data that you had on your laptop. When they steal your laptop, you scream bloody murder, but wont raise a finger to help me protect OUR Right to Privacy, OUR Right to Decide what kinds of information we are willing to share with and whom, when Facebook, who has been tracking you, regardless if you are a member or not, Facebook, which enables as many thieves as you leaving your laptop in your car, and you may actually think it is a good idea that some private company monitors every prescription drug your Grandmother has in her medicine cabinet, even though one missed dose could land her in jail, you wont say anything about Privacy then.
You do not care about any of your Privacy, and think that Privacy is as Useless as a Snoose Button on a Smoke Alarm, you dont think how many people died to bring you this essencial Human Right, you dont think that it will be more convenient for you to not have Privacy to begin with, you do not think the fight for Privacy involves you, you do not think it is important for you to choose between what is Right and what is Easy, you do not think that someone may have a different opinion about the decisions you make in regards to their Privacy, you do not stick up for them when someone looking to take advantage of their lack of Privacy affects them because it doesnt affect you, you do not think that there will be no one left to stick up for you after they have come for everyone else and finally come for you, you dont think that your Privacy will be nearly impossible to get back once it is gone, you do not care about your own Privacy, you do not care that Private Companies like AT&T are making your Privacy Choices for you, and you should.
I recently had the very irritating experience of having to purchase a new phone after my old one died, right on cue. What I found was nearly every phone excluding iPhone and Android phones had some custom AT&T crap interface with stuff that I dont want or need. I dont use Facebook or MySpace so their Social Networking Menu Option is useless. I dont shop for Ringtones. I download them on my PC then use a USB cable to transfer them over. I dont need or want their GPS tracking bullshit so advertisers can target me based on my location. The rest of the garbage that was on there was all oriented towards them selling me more crap that I dont want. I do however, have the occasional need of a Web Browser, for getting street addresses, and what not.
However, the worst problem is when I tried to adjust my Privacy Settings for the Web Browser was to find that THERE IS NO OPTION TO BLOCK COOKIES. Oh well thats no big deal because Cell Phones cant accept Cookies to begin with. Really? Then why is there an option to CLEAR COOKIES, but no option to BLOCK COOKIES? The last phone I had was about 3 years old, apparently a Dinosaur according to the idiot sales people. So new phones and every phone made from today until the end of eternity should have the same functionality built in. The ability to BLOCK COOKIES from Websites.
It is a basic function. Every major web browser that I have had to use has Block Cookies built in. Every previous Smart Phone I've owned prior to my current one has had the ability to Block Cookies. But suddenly, AT&T decided to make the decision to ALLOW ALL COOKIES FROM EVERY WEBSITE FOR ALL OF THEIR CUSTOMERS? I thought it was just AT&T, so I went and checked out a couple of phones at Sprint. Low and behold, the same thing happened. None of their phones even have the Option of Blocking Cookies! The layout of their targetted advertising sales bullshit looked almost identical to AT&T's, and I am pretty sure that AT&T hasn't bought out Sprint yet. They are getting there. AT&T took over Cingular, who was my original carrier, and just bought out T-Mobile leaving me with the choice of AT&T and Verizon, who has already pissed me off by flat out not allowing me to connect my phone to my PC to transfer any data between the phone and my PC. Verizon wanted me to use another "service", which was "for my safety", however it cost me 50 cents every time I wanted to get one picture or other file off of phones on their service. Which equates to financial rape, and I refused to do business with Verizon either. And although I have not been back to a Verizon store, I am quite sure they also have decided to make the decision for their customers to Allow All Cookies from Everyone.
Whats the big deal about cookies? Its about the business model being designed to profit from invading your Privacy. However, it is NOT just about Privacy, it is about Big Business flat out TELLING YOU what your Privacy Options will be. I dont care what you choose for your Privacy Options, what IS important is that you DO have a choice to allow or deny cookies. The thing is about Cookies that is apphauling to me is that Big Business is creating a Financial Pyramid, and at is very base is knowing everything about YOU that they can record. If you want to allow their cookies, thats great, but dont take that choice away from me to Block them, and dont think that you have the Right to make that decision for me. I do not like the idea that the more we build on this foundation of Zero Privacy, the worse that things will get. AT&T has made the decision for me that companies that have absolutely nothing to do with AT&T will all have the implied Right to Track me, without my permission, and I have absolutely no say so in the matter.
How can you defend your Right To Anything if you dont even know what that right is? You have the Right to Defend yourself against ANY aggressor, be it a Thief, a Terrorist, or The Government. You have the right to KILL A COP if they are trying to MURDER you without provocation. You have the right to shoot back. Of course, the Courts will decide if you were in the right or wrong, and it will depend and vary on each and every situation. None the less, if you didnt know that you had the Right To An Attorney, how could you Enforce Your Right if you didnt know it to begin with? YOU CANT. That is why, in the 1960's, Miranda Law was passed requiring Cops to make you aware of your Rights when you are placed under arrest. It is because of Miranda Law that people must be made aware of their Rights.
The same thing does NOT apply with technology. The average person is offered absolutely nothing to make them aware of their Constitutional Rights in regards to technology. And what little is left is quickly being widdled away by Big Business and Big Brother. We end up with Impossible to Understand EULA's which even Law Professionals can't decypher. We get warnings like "do not insert screwdriver into penis". But anything that makes you aware that you are being Tracked, Targetted, and essencially Electronially Stalked? Nope. No warnings about any of that.
The Constitutional Right to Privacy has a couple of loopholes which are being exploited to the N'th degree. Firstly, the word Privacy is IMPLIED, which means that the Constitutional Right to Privacy is Penumbra Right. (A Penumbra is the edge of a shadow where the shadow isnt 100% as dark as the rest of the shadow, but focus on the Edge part) Secondly, it is very frequently misinterpreted as Only Existing In Private. Thus, most people think that the only time you have a Right to Privacy is in your own home. That is not true. The Right does not simply go away because you walked out your front door. There is nothing that says your 4th Amendment Rights are suspended because you are not at home.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
You have the Penumbra Right to Privacy in Public. You have the right to leave your house and walk around all day long in public and not be Searched or your things Seized without a Warrant which specifically describes what is going to be searched and what will be seized. Coming out of your humble abode does NOT constitute Probable Cause.
The last limitation of the Right is that it does not restrict Private Companies or Corporations from doing the searching and seizing. Thus, the government can get away with having private companies do everything that it is restricted from by the Constitution and getting away with it free and clear. It can violate every single right, as long as some company sells or gives or does whatever is restricted from the government to the government. Want to make an unlawful arrest? Government cant do it, but no problem, let a private company do it. The government CAN and DOES pass laws allowing this type of Facist legalization of allowing private companies to do what it can not. Want to detain you indefinitely? No problem, let a private company do it. Want to torture you? No problem, let a private company do it. Want to violate any Right in the Bill of Rights? No problem! Let a private company do it!
But if you dont do anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide? The end result is that a person with No Privacy will eventually do something wrong, and Big Brother will come after them. Right and Wrong is a moral determination based on the current socioeconomic status of the people that create and pass such laws. In olden days, there were probably a few more enforced laws about acceptable behavior on horseback. Dont take your Horse into a place of business, etc. However, in those days, most people used common sense and didnt need a law prohibitng drugs to prevent them from doing drugs. Like trying to Blacksmith while youre shitfaced. Didnt need a law against that because people used common sense.
But todays laws are different. Todays laws are Profit Based. The Laws today are designed to generate revenue for whoever passes the law. (referring to city or county governments or where ever the law is passed) The result is that the tools used are Revenue Streams. Traffic Cameras are as much of a Tool as the way that Police are Trained is also a tool. And Privacy is nothing but an Obstacle to Profit governments as well. So now that governments can use private companies to do the spying, stalking, and tracking of every single one of its citizens, there is no recourse that any person has against either the governmet, or the company performing the Unconstitutional Acts against them when their Rights are violated. Governmens not only WANT you to do something wrong, they WANT to know WHEN you do something wrong so they can take what ever money they can get out of you. The government does NOT want well behaved citizens as it would provide NO MONEY.
Well that is a pretty bazaar tanget for a rant on Privacy. Its not quite that bazaar. Because everyone has so much Financial Incentive to monitor as many possible aspects of every citizens lives as possible, the risk that people face as a result of their loss of Privacy becomes ever more profound. That, and the government WANTS you to Break its Laws. The companies will financially benefit by selling the information to the government in the event that they find you doing something wrong IF the data that the private company is selling can generate a profit for the government. The company sells a video of you not using a turn signal in your car to the government to which you must now pay the fine to the government which funds the private company to sell the video of you not using your turn signal.
Both the Government and Private Comanies have Financial Incentive and the Legal Means to deprive you of the fruits of your labors enabled by your Loss of Privacy.
Your fines fund both. Look at it this way. Your Grandmother. Provided she is still alive, she may be getting up there in years and probably has to take some sort of prescription drugs. If she doesnt take all of those drugs, then she ends up being in possession of a controlled substance. If she could be FINED for her CRIME, that could be very profitable, both to the Government, and the Private Company that turns her in. Hell if they were to throw her in Jail, that is profitable to the Privately Owned Prisons. But how do you get that information to know if she has an expired prescription drug in her possession? Get her to pay for it. Get her to buy some sort of automagical drug monitoring device, which, say for the sake of argument, uses RFID chips in the pill bottles. The RFID contains information on who she is (by way of a unique identifier, which links to a remote database where her name is stored) and information on what kind of drugs are contained in the pill bottle as well as their expiration date. She buys this device to let her know when she is running low on medications and if there are any other drugs which may conflict with this particular drug. All this information has to be processed remotely, so it goes out on the internet, tells the company what pill bottles are still present in said magical RFID Pill Bottle Scanning Container, and they find that a prescription bottle expired yesterday, well thats a $150 dollar fine from the government, but if they turn her in by selling that information to the government, that is worth money to the company. Your Grandmother gets a nasty fine or can go to jail for not throwing out her expired pill bottles.
That is one possible scenario. How about getting your insurance cancelled because your RFID in your car told your insurance company that you let someone else drive your car, which is not allowed in your policy? It doesnt matter why. If you try to keep your insurance policy as affordable as you can, you are expected to be the only one that ever drives it. It doesnt matter if your friends car broke down, your grandmother drove you home after a night out of heavy drinking and partying, yes, with your grandmother, and you were too drunk to drive, or if your car is stolen. Someone else drove your car and now the insurance company doesnt have to pay for the theft of your car because you "allowed" someone else to drive your car (namely the thief, who you did NOT give permission to drive your car). There are about a billion and one scenarios that I will not be able to come up with on how your Loss of Privacy can destroy your life.
Why focus so heavily on cookies? Its not so much as what one company can find out about you that is the danger, what is done with that data is what is dangerous. Cookies enable the Loss of Privacy. Most people think what they have been told to think. Cookies are small text files on your computer that enable settings blah blah blah. That is only half of the truth.
A Cookie IS a text file that MAY contain unique information. It also may not. A Cookie may possibly contain a COLOR Preference between a Blue and Black webpage. Since there are only really TWO options in this particular scenario, Blue and Black, it does not do a lot of good for actually tracking a user, as some percentage of users will have a Blue Cookie and the rest will be Black Cookies, or have blocked cookies. For tracking purposes, in that scenario, its useless. However, lets look further. A Cookie is a Text File. The Text that is actually contained in a cookie on your computer can contain ANY Text. There is a size limit on cookies, but you dont need to be able to put War and Peace into a cookie. That doesnt do any good. Putting a cookie on your computer and using it as the only means puts too much control of the hands of the stupid users that are being tracked. If the user deletes this one cookie that tells this company that ads have been shown to you on NYTimes.com, DailyPaul.com and FatChicksWithDonkeys.com from the same ad company, that company now is not going to be able to have any recourse. It is too unreliable for their financial purposes.
The solution? Dont store anything BUT your unique identifier in the cookie. That Unique Identifier links back to where the data is stored in their databases, which you have NO access to, and NO CONTROL over what they do with that data. So you come to my website, and youre the 3rd person to come to such and such website, and you get a Unique Idenifier Cookie of #3 on your computer. The next time you come back, they can see you've been there before. Meh, that is not that big of a deal. Oh, but it is. Especially if that cookie is from a 3rd Party Advertiser. The 3rd Party Advertiser does exactly what its name implies, they Advertise, on Multiple websites. Every website they advertise on, this company will be able to know what websites you've hit. I dont really care if one website knows I have been to it. That is what is known as a First Party Cookie. You go to DailyPaul.com and get a cookie, the only place that knows you've been there before is DailyPaul.com. However, when you get into the realm of 3rd Party Cookies, which may also have an Ad on DailyPaul.com, the Ad company now knows that not only have you been to, and visit DailyPaul.com on a regular basis, but also go to Cooking.com and some Sex websites, which is where you spend most of your time. They also show ads on Google, who generates its money by selling Ads and Ad Space. So you go to Google and search for "How to get away with Murder" and every website that you go to will also be shown to the advertiser, who can get the same information. You hit 3 websites and look at several scenarios. Later, you do another Google Search for cheap bongs, legalize marijuana, how to cheat a drug test. Yep, all that information goes to the Advertiser. The Advertiser that did NOT ask your permission to track you. They dont even have the courtesy to tell you that they are tracking you. They tell you that they are just trying to show you more relevant ads so you can be shown ads that are more to your liking. The problem comes from you not having any control over the data that they collected about you. You ask them to see what data they have on you, and they ignore you. And forget taking them to court as most of the laws enable them to do so without recourse.
It would be one thing if the data one company can get about you was ONLY used for Advertising. But they have so much information on you, and it may not be able to identify 100% of every website that you visit or have ever visited. So they missed out on the fact that you clicked on a website that they dont advertise on where you were looking to get a story published on How To Sell A Murder Mystery To A Publisher. They missed that bit. They already sold the fact that you did a search for How To Murder to the police, which now probably have you under a microscope, but based on the fact that the Advertiser did not see that you were not intending on committing a Murder, but were in fact trying to Write A Murder Mystery Novel.
The search terms that a person may enter into a search engine does not indicate a persons actual intentions. Now, lets say your significant other or one of your children is murdered. With the information that was collected by the Advertiser (not just Google) the Jury now has enough circumstancial evidence to convict you of First Degree Murder. Hey, the Goverment and many of the Privately Owned Correctional Facilities could use your False Imprisonment as a way to make money. They've established Intent based on your search terms, but THEIR intent is to Make Money, regardless if you are Guilty or Innocent, and your argument of the Intent in your Defense can go right out the window, as well as the rest of your barely existent rights.
Yes, that is yet another scenario, one of many, some of which that I can come up with, and many others which are just so intrusive that they are beyond my comprehension. The reason that I provided that last scenario is that it is Cookie Based. Cookies are the enabling means for tracking. And you probably dont care. You probably wont until it is too late. All of this technology for tracking and monitoring terrorists because they are terrorists and dont deserve to be treated like human beings can quickly and easily be turned on YOU. It may not even be the government that turns their tracking technologies on you. It might be your neighbor, a company or a thief.
We also seem to have this preconceived notion that all people with jobs are honest. Well, except for the ones at the top of the Corporate Ladder. People dont expect that the guy flipping your burgers at Burger King is the one that actually STOLE your Credit Card number when you came into his store where he had his RFID Chip Scanner in a spot that could scan for your RFID Chip Enabled Credit Card Number.
The point is that if this information is not out there to begin with, it can not be used against you. Privacy is a Basic and Essencial Right for a Reason. You can not survive without it. I dont need to know your name to Murder you, or Rape your Daughter. All I need is to know of an opportunity. I dont care if you deleted that last cookie when you visited my website, I'll just give you a new one that will stick around on your computer until you grow enough brain cells to delete that one too. I dont care if your name is John Doe or Englebert Humperdink, or if the Unique Cookie I placed on your computer is #1 or #10000000000, I just care that I can get enough information to provide me with the opportunity to fuck you over. And out of all the people on this planet that want to fuck you, it only takes ONE to end everything you've ever worked for. Everything you've ever done in your life is meaningless once you are DEAD.
Wow, that got pretty damn grim pretty fast? You dont have to worry about me, Im not the one that would ever try to hurt you, or anyone that reads this article. People that actually have the intentions of hurting you that badly are NOT going to reveal those intentions to you. Ok, you pissed me off and I may be right to be pissed at you, hell we might even get in a fight, and a lot of things could happen from there. But if I really wanted to hurt you, you would never know it. Do you know who the biggest people who push to keep anti drug laws on the books are? The Drug Dealers. They have the Money, they have the Incentive, and they have the Opportunity. Money is power. And keeping something illegal gives them more profit. But the drug dealers will NEVER tell you that. Your local pot dealer makes his money off of you because of the Risk that creates his Profit. So if I wanted to break into your house and steal your stuff, Im not going to tell you about it. If I wanted to murder you, I wouldnt tell you about it. People need to be aware that you are the one responsible for creating the Opportunity for people to hurt you. And the more information you give them, the more opportunity you create for people.
For example, yes another example, posting on Facebook that you and your entire family are leaving town for several weeks, as well as having your street address also posted publicly on Facebook for everyone to see. It wont matter that the person that may rob you has anything against you or not, you were the one that enabled the situation by posting on Facebook in the first place. You let them know that there was an opportunity for them to exploit you.
And this all comes back down to the stupid cell phone refusing to block cookies. Someone is always looking for the opportunity to better themselves at your expense. And the more Privacy you are willing to throw away, the more opportunity you are providing to everyone to destroy you. With your nice shiny new iPhone, I could now see that you are out of the state based on your IP address on your phone, as well as that convenient data provided to ME by your shiny new iPhone, and you post on facebook that you live alone, dont be suprised to come home and find that someone (me) is the new owner of all YOUR stuff.
All I need to know is of an opportunity. And that can come to me as easily as a cookie. I have a web server that serves a picture that I uploaded to it, and it sends me a cookie back. All I need is for you to view just one webpage that uniquely identifies you and I now have your geographic location, which tells me there is an opportunity. You dont even need to visit my site. All you have to do is visit one website that shows one picture off of my servers, and I now know that I have the opportuity to come and take what you have. Thats all one little cookie can do. For me. What can it do for you? It can destroy your life.
Each type of individual has different intent on what to do with your data. The government wants to fine or imprison you. They are financially driven and motivated to get you to break the law. Advertisers want to advertise to you, then sell your data and share it with other advertisers to develop the most crystal clear picture of your entire life as they possibly can, then sell it to everyone they can sell it to, and dont offer you a penny. The advertiser will stab you in the back immediately if it means a higher profit margin for their shareholders. And there are the thieves. Usually the thieves are thieves of opportunity. They see you left your laptop in your car and you are no where to be found, kiss your laptop goodbye. But what is worse is what happens when they do get all the rest of the data that you had on your laptop. When they steal your laptop, you scream bloody murder, but wont raise a finger to help me protect OUR Right to Privacy, OUR Right to Decide what kinds of information we are willing to share with and whom, when Facebook, who has been tracking you, regardless if you are a member or not, Facebook, which enables as many thieves as you leaving your laptop in your car, and you may actually think it is a good idea that some private company monitors every prescription drug your Grandmother has in her medicine cabinet, even though one missed dose could land her in jail, you wont say anything about Privacy then.
You do not care about any of your Privacy, and think that Privacy is as Useless as a Snoose Button on a Smoke Alarm, you dont think how many people died to bring you this essencial Human Right, you dont think that it will be more convenient for you to not have Privacy to begin with, you do not think the fight for Privacy involves you, you do not think it is important for you to choose between what is Right and what is Easy, you do not think that someone may have a different opinion about the decisions you make in regards to their Privacy, you do not stick up for them when someone looking to take advantage of their lack of Privacy affects them because it doesnt affect you, you do not think that there will be no one left to stick up for you after they have come for everyone else and finally come for you, you dont think that your Privacy will be nearly impossible to get back once it is gone, you do not care about your own Privacy, you do not care that Private Companies like AT&T are making your Privacy Choices for you, and you should.