I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE. I hope this post will be seen as helpful and a service. I keep hearing this phrase from people, who may not yet have had the time to look into and think about the extremely invasive destruction of our privacy. Here are are three TED Talks here worth watching if anyone still feels they have nothing to hide. Ultimately, and unfortunately, we dont get to decide if we have nothing to hide because that decision has been taken away from us, by the NSA, and by many companies we depend on. It would take close to an hour to watch all three, but they will at least be interesting and worth an hour out of prime time. * Data is collected on everyone, from your electric company being able to tell what electronic equipment (TVs, stereos, computers) you have to when you are home, when not, when you sleep. Your internet search history is kept forever, from that they can tell your interests, whether or not you think you are sick, whether or not you have a preexisting condition that could harm your insurance, and way more than that. Who you know, where you go, (wifi tracks your phone everywhere even if GPS is off, andwhen. This barely scratches the surface * The data collected by the federal, state and local governments, as well as by companies is not safe, it can be, has been, and will be hacked. Would you want people who have hacked your electric company to know when you are out of town and what appliances you have? * Everything is inherently less safe because the NSA has weakened security across the board to enable them to spy on you, this makes it easier for criminals (the other criminals) to spy on you. There is a lot more, but that is a start. Here are the TED Talks: Mikko Hypponen: The Darker Side of DatA: ted/playlists/130/the_dark_side_of_data Alessandro Acquisti: Why privacy matters: ted/playlists/130/the_dark_side_of_data Malte Spitz: Your phone company is watching: ted/playlists/130/the_dark_side_of_data What to do about it? This will take a little more time,but: 1) Become aware and start talking about it. 2) But a start is to let your representatives in Congress know you want your privacy back and those who have tossed the constitution in the trash brought to justice; 3) And start using Tor browser (though I recently heard the NSA has cracked it too) and PGP encryption.
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 06:00:30 +0000