Forget about the NSA, what about Facebook?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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While I agree with privacy concerns as regards to corporations, it’s worth noting that Facebook doesn’t have a fleet of armed drones that it uses to kill people.
Well, it probably doesn’t. Otherwise, Zuckerberg would have fewer living enemies.
Amazon is working on building a fleet of drones. Not technically weaponized, but if dropped before delivery, some of those packages could be lethal.
Ridiculous. Private spying is infinitely worse.
Tarzie has documented it on his blog.
I liked this one in particular.
Or this one:
Mass Surveillance and No NSA. It Happens!
This is a continuation of FB’s recognition work. Facial recog. is a growing concern (see walk out of privacy groups from corporate talks) which corporations want to exploit. And people foolishly put their faces online, especially on social media. Once there, association trees are built showing where you go, who you hang out with, where you shop, eat, vacation, etc… and from that estimates as to income level, education, political leanings, and anything else you think is private.
Never put your picture online.
Never document your life online
Always assume corporations are as great or greater risk to your personal privacy as the govt. They have a profit motive to do so.
Ridge
—excerpt—–
A 16-month effort to set guidelines for use of facial recognition technology that satisfy consumers’ expectations of privacy and meet existing state laws went up in flames on Tuesday.
That’s when all nine civil liberties and consumer advocate groups participating in talks with trade associations on a voluntary code of conduct for US businesses to use facial recognition walked away from the table. ….
https:/nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/06/17/privacy-groups-walk-out-of-us-talks-on-facial-recognitio
n-guidelines
The FB generation doesn’t value privacy. They want the world to recognize their names and faces. Celebrity wannabes.
Not all, some of the younger people I know are aware of this, or at least, conscious of its consequences. The more information about these technologies and their consequences, look for a growing concern. However; middle aged folks who know better (including some who are very tech savvy) do nothing but put picture of themselves, dogs, family gatherings on social media.
Just think of all the “selfies” out there which have been fed into the FB maw.
the Feds have access to the driver lic. databases. If corporations get in, then everything associated with that info (address, ss#, physical descriptions….) is an open book. Look for such a push as to the huge amounts of money to be made.
R
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/state-photo-id-databases-become-troves-for-police/
2013/06/16/6f014bd4-ced5-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html
You think they can’t already?
However; middle aged folks who know better…
Do they? I don’t consider myself in the least bit tech savvy even though I have used computers since the late 1970s and did some coding way back when. What I did know how to use was a reference library and thus, my internet learning curve was very short.
Before the FB and “selfies” era, the public gorged on TV shows such as Oprah, Jerry Springer, etc. And game shows. The major personality requirement being an exhibitionist.
wrt facial recognition programs — probably little to nothing can be done to stop the trend. The “law enforcement” institutions in this country are too strong not to get their way. (And NCIS is very popular.) This tech will continue to improve and more cameras will be installed. All very necessary (according to the authorities) because somehow, with the highest incarceration rate in the world, we’re still not catching enough “bad guys.”
That article should give pause to anyone obtaining a passport. Not mentioned in the article is the fact that all sorts of professionals in CA are required to submit a full set of fingerprints to the state. Expect all of those are now digitized.
They mean not enough bad guys like TarHeelDem. Bad Guys like Cliven Bundy are just fine.
Some I know, who are writing apps for mobile devices and are very plugged in spread their features all over social media.
What I think is that they have yet to see a negative to that behavior. Any advertizing based on the Facial Recog. technology will be treated as so much spam and ignored. However when your insur. rates go up because you buy too much red meat and butter based on your grocery store loyalty card, or you start being rejected for jobs because you were seen going in a gun store or hanging around the rifle case in Dick’s Sporting Goods. Maybe you were caught on camera in the lobby of a Holiday Inn during lunchtime? It could all go into the great corporate database with records of who, where and when are stored for future searches by customers (at a reasonable fee of course).
Problem is, this type of thing can color intent or interest; not action. Even if there is no money trail or credit card slip. Nothing purchased, no overt action…but You Were There! Why? And how would that effect our bottom line?
Ridge
I agree. Began switching to cash a few years ago instead using those cards that track my purchases. Guess I pay a few pennies more for the privilege of not being tracked by corporations. Even if absolutely nothing untoward is done with the data, it all still feels creepy to me.
There is no privacy. If you’re on this page, your information is already available. If you want privacy, go live off grid in a cave somewhere with no tech. Otherwise, acknowledge that there is NO way you can control your information, and that we have to focus on insisting that our information be used appropriately, rather than trying to put that genie back in the bottle.
This is why I have a piece of cardboard blocking my camera.
OT:Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: It’s Media Terrorism to Deny Charleston Was About Race
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar @kaj33
June 20, 2015
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: A man walks into a crowded room… and shoots a bunch of people. Yeah, you’ve heard it before. Get used to it, because statistics suggest you’ll be hearing it a lot more. According to a study by Harvard and Northeastern University researchers, from 1982 to 2011, a mass shooting occurred an average of every 200 days; since 2011, mass shootings happened an average of every 64 days. Each time it happens, politicians and commentators immediately rush into to announce the social significance of the tragedy. And sometimes, these commentaries can be more harmful than the actual shootings because of their long-term effect, to the point of creating even more widespread damage to the community.
There’s a lot of debate about whether or not this was a terrorist act. Terrorism is a political tool that has a specific goal. Terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan want to drive Americans out of their countries. Terrorists in other countries do it for the same reason: to gain political power. After an hour at the prayer meeting, Dylann Roof stood up and proclaimed that he was there “to shoot black people.” His rambling manifesto during the shootings was: “You rape our women, and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” In his mind he was a terrorist, but in reality this was nothing more than hate crime using terrorist tactics to enact his racist fantasy. Roof had no hope of driving African Americans out of the country, starting a race war or engendering any political or social change at all. We shouldn’t use it as an excuse to discuss terrorism because that diverts us from the actual problem.
The real threat here isn’t that this is an indicator of an surge in right-wing racist attacks, it’s that we allow this incident to be used as a political football by those who hope to leverage it to their gain, which is a more subtle form of terrorism: media terrorism.
……………………….
Those who refute the clear racial element in these attacks are like Holocaust deniers who say there were no gas chambers, no mass genocide, that the world is just conspiring against the poor misunderstood Nazis. Slavery was America’s Black Holocaust. There were over 10 million slaves in the U.S. between 1525 and 1866, and they were systematically stripped of their identities, dignity, human rights, and far too often, their lives. Yes, that’s ancient history and Americans today should in no way be blamed for the misdeeds of their ancestors. But the hard truth that deniers wish to avoid is that the residual effects of that slavery, abolished 150 years ago, still permeates society. Statistics prove that, despite enormous gains and sincere efforts by many in the white and black communities, African Americans are still struggling to gain economic, educational, and judicial parity. As long as we admit the problem, we have a chance of eventually fixing it.
http://time.com/3929382/charleston-hate-crime-terrorism/
Off topic, but speaking of acronyms, horrible transition I know, I was hoping you would do a post after the Senate passes the TPP about how that all went down. I guess I’m one of the few who are not vehemently against it on the left, I don’t feel sold out as I don’t feel I was ever promised that a trade bill wouldn’t pass. In my mind, it was one of the few things that WOULD get through Congress this session and I’ve said as much before.
I just don’t think it can possibly be as bad as everyone is saying, and I think that there are only two options for it: if it is a shitty deal and just a bunch of corporate handouts Obama would have let it fail or will let it fail, but if he actually wants it passed then I am going to assume it is actually more bad than good and helpful to the US as a whole then I expect.
I also don’t care that we can’t see exactly what is in the bill, but do get summaries, because I don’t see any other way a trade deal can be struck across such disparate countries.
I thought I was the only one
” if it is a shitty deal and just a bunch of corporate handouts Obama would have let it fail “
Your childlike faith is touching.
Sorry, I’m much better at taking someone like Obama at his word (which he has been doing more often than not) than trying to divine his “true” feelings. I just choose not to live any other way, so call me what you will because at the end of the day the truth will out us both.
I have done so. Hope it works. I don’t have a camera on any of my desktops anyway. And this is a reason not to use Google Chrome on your laptop. If one uses Skype a lot, you might want to leave it enabled. Else turn it on and off as the occasion requires.