Privacy, we hardly knew ye...

More and more we are hearing reports, seeing articles, and coming face to face(book), with the lack of privacy today...

Each time we log on, make a phone call, or in the urban areas walk down the street, we are being tracked...

The facts are plain, Google has for years collected "unsecured" data with it's Street View vehicles, both here and in Europe, the fine?

$7 million... Against a company that makes something in the neighborhood of $100 a day...

And the fault?

The company blamed the intrusion on a rogue engineer who rigged a data-collection program into equipment that was supposed to only detect basic information about local Wi-Fi networks to help plot the locations of people using its mapping service and other products. After concluding its own investigation, the Federal Communications Commission last year asserted that some of Google's managers knew about the engineer's plan to vacuum information being transmitted over the Wi-Fi network

Report from CNN HERE; from Fox HERE. Now let's be honest here, does anybody really believe the 'rogue' engineer story??? When they've touted how 'tight' their controls are on development, to put this kind of excuse out there is just ludicrous...

And the data will all be destroyed?  Yeah, right... It's in government/regulator's hands now and you can bet it's already in a data mining data base somewhere!

Facebook has 'always' been "open" about tracking your account, your friends and other things (like buying, websites visited, etc.). Apple and the other phone providers track your location all the time and all those nicky neat pictures you take with your phones and digital cameras have metatags embedded that show exactly when/where the pictures were taken.  Here's a LINK to the Wiki on it.

Bruce Sheneier has an editoral up at CNN International that goes into a good bit of detail, and hits most of the high points HERE.   

Among other things, remember google maps, was not created by google, it was developed by In-Q-Tel, a taxpayer funded, not-for-profit, development organization of the CIA.  It is a whole lot easier for private companies to do snooping on AMERICAN citizens than it is for the government; and if they get busted they pay a small fine (see above), and are quietly reimbursed under the table by the agency that hired them to do their dirty work.  Oh, and as an aside, Siri, Apple's voice query tool, also can be traced back to In-Q-Tel.  Now ask yourself, "What can the government do with voice-print and voice-recognition software, and how can they collect my voice…."  hmmmm, maybe you just gave it to them….

And here's In-Q-Tel's SITE if you want to read about it's 'history'...

Lastly, remember that everything you do on line is subject to snooping by any government agency, that includes walking around with your cell phone.  Also remember, there are cameras everywhere, and if you do not carry your cell phone you will stick out because facial recognition software will pick you out and you could be tagged as an "extremist/insurgent" who is not carrying a cell phone because he does not want to be tracked.  It doesn't take much computing power to pick out people who don't carry cell phones, especially if it's old white guys with carry permits who are under constant surveillance anyway.  As for the filtering, it's a simple comb filter algorithm that's been around since the '60's.

And along this theme, a short story that Matt Bracken wrote at the WRSA site last year for your reading 'pleasure'...

Are we screwed? Probably...