Privacy protections disappear with a judge's order

Hello ... ... senators ... congressmen ... are you home? Are you going to do anything to keep this invasion from spiraling out of control ... Hello?

Hmmm ... must be out getting their palms greased ...

Back to the carrier-pidgeons then.

sounds all the privacy policies are ludicrous.. we can only trust these BIG guys and hope we are not vandalized for being online...

"Elsewhere, search engines such as Google and Yahoo Inc. keep more than a year of records on your search requests, from which one can learn of your diseases, fetishes and innermost thoughts. E-mail services are another source of personal records, as are electronic health repositories and Web-based word processing, spreadsheets and calendars. "

Use Scroogle http://www.scroog...aper.htm and don't use on-line applications.

So we need to use proxies and give false identity information just to keep our privacy online. Thank you Viacom for forcing us to lie for privacy.

Arikin, you made me realize something. Telling a computer program I'm James Bond is not necessarily "lying". Telling you that I am James Bond IS lying. Between two people, there is a social contract. An establishment of trust. I have no "contract" with a computer program. I certainly don't trust it. For someone to say: "This computer program represents me and you have to trust it" is ... well ... interesting ... speculative. But it's nothing I signed up for. For a company to claim that any question asked by their programs must be answered "honestly" is a one-way contract. Not quid pro quo. If there's no contract, no social contract, even, then, it's not a lie. The deception is companies attempting to get us to use systems for which they have no social responsibility.

Excuse me, but I believe that this has been the basic condition since big business and big gov't first came in contact with the world of electronic communications.

I'm afraid we all must accept the basic facts of the technologies. All electronic communication is essentially transparent to any and all prying eyes who have the wherewithall and the resolve to "peek."

The information that the user provides to the system through consentual use should no longer be considered their exclusive and private property.

This is simple prudence based on technical realities. It is unfortunate, but it is true. It has also been unfortunate that the providers of these instruments have allowed so many to continue for so long imagining that it might not be true.

This includes cell phones, text, credit card transactions, email, pagers, telephones, cable/satelite interactions, and of course every keystroke you commit to the beloved Internet.

User beware. I'm sorry if this disturbs, but the technology is what it is. And it will be used.

If i were a company serious about guarding privacy, I would clasify all incoming IPs to a greater metropolitan area, then dump the IPs and not save any unneccesary data. Providers need to know what is visited and it could be interesting to see geopgraphic trends so they can target ads or provide better regional services (for example, logging onto google.com from Germany automatically defaults to google's German page). As far as I know, no company needs to maintain records, they are doing it voluntarily.

Unfortunatly, anonymity and the internet don't mix straight out of the box. If governments want a sites information, they can issue a subpoena, just like if they want to see video cameras at a store to see if someone is going in and out. Unlike a store, on the internet you effectively wear a badge with your address on it everytime you visit a site. All you can really do is put additional name badges overtop by using programs like Tor and Foxy Proxy.

Personally, I've always been a fan of making the internet fall underneath of the rules they have for wire tapping, but obviously it's not even close to that yet.

If good old fashioned privacy is your aim, I think you may have gotten off the time machine at the wrong stop. You'll want to catch the next bus back about a century.

So when do we start worrying about privacy? I see a few people who say its a facet of todays informationi age and the price you pay for going there. So how do you feel about an insurance company doing annalyisis on the envelope on the check you mailed your bill to them. A genetic screen and then adjusting your rates based on that result. After all its information you sent to them. How about if you are involved in an accident and the onstar system in your car reveals you were doing 26 in a 25, do you want your insurance company to deny your claim because of it?

Do I want my insurance company to deny YOUR claim for having an accident while driving illegally instead of raising all our rates?

Maybe.

I am somewhat amused by the inferred "morality" arguement -- that it's immoral for someone to have access information about another's immoral acts.

Good luck with that.

Good scenario, PaulLove. These are big questions.

On the one hand, for insurance purposes, no one wants to be "dumped" in with a lot of people with bad habits, poor health, risky driving. But on the other hand, no one wants to be "thrown to the wolves" because they don't exercise regularly, weren't born with a perfect body, and can't afford an new, expensive, safe car.

Insurance is about shared risk. If it's just you and me, and you do something I feel is excessively dumb, we can discuss it. The problem with insurance companies is that they are doing the "discussing" for us. They make the decisions about what is acceptable and what isn't.

The insurance companies have been doing all of these things from the beginning with the best available information. Now there will be much more detailed information available to them. If the ROI is there, then we should expect them, and numerous other organizations and individuals to do the same thing.

Our technology has the capacity to gather huge amounts of data. Soon computers will have the scale and speed to correlate and collate it for a fraction of today's cost. Judges will make it available(as they must, I'm afraid).

We'll all gain to a great extent. And those unfortunate enough to be caught behind the curve, whether due to lack of education, lack of opportunity, or expressing less-than-desirable social behaviors will not be so lucky.

My advice would be to "pack your data" to be on the upside. Any young woman knows this instinctively when selecting a mate who will be socially responsible and help produce and rear the most healthy offspring.

These desires to know and gain advantage through collecting data are not nefarious. I'm afraid they are hard-wired into us.

It's pretty much why we have big brains and tend to dominate the ecosystem wherever we go. Now we have electronic brains that can vastly multiply these powers in the quest for advantage.

Welcome to the information age, my friends.