I care about privacy too and I have thought about this a lot. But if the network is going to be the village where you work, play and transact business, how exactly are you going to do that without leaving traces behind? I don't see any interest from the general public in encrypting all e-mail traffic with PGP and obscuring their Web habits with Tor. The simple truth is that there is so much of that data that practically nobody is especially interested in knowing the real details about you or me. If I get a few targeted ads, I'll ignore those to the same degree that I always ignored TV ads. Most mega-companies don't have much interest in us beyond analyzing our behavior in the aggregate. After that it's not much worth doing. I do get rattled when I hear that AT&T and others shared our data with the NSA, but they didn't need the Internet to do that. I'm sure they were doing it in the days of POTS too. And besides, data sharing doesn't just benefit large, faceless business entities. It benefits you and me too. When some member of the general public knows about an abuse, he can share it on the Internet with an ease that would have been unimaginable at the beginning of the last decade(Wikileaks, anybody?). So, on the whole, I'm not terribly worried. If I were, I would become a Luddite and swear off the Internet altogether. Because that would be the only true defense.<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Jim Kinney <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jim.kinney@gmail.com">jim.kinney@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I agree with you Jeff. And it's not just the tin-foil hat talking either.<br>
<br>
Yet I also think we've already passed the point of no return.<br>
<br>
You and many others use (myself included) use Google search daily<br>
because it works. That ability to work is a direct result of the<br>
constant tracking that they do. That search allows a data point of<br>
topic and requester's IP. The ALE list is mirrored on google groups<br>
as an emergency backup medium. That means they also have the email<br>
address of anyone who posts to the list. This now provides a directly<br>
inferrable "interest route" that can be pegged against the IP address<br>
and email address. The search links can now correlate between an email<br>
persona and other people and can also obtain a fair estimate of<br>
"degrees of separation" based on email correspondence and similarities<br>
of search data.<br>
<br>
Now couple that with "customer loyalty card" data and credit card<br>
purchase data and it is quite easy to built up a solid profile with<br>
fairly accurate personality profiles (Yikes! Free software/speech/beer<br>
advocate alert!). Google has Checkout already. Do they also provide<br>
bulk mail services for Kroger and Publix? I don't know but is either<br>
wanted to make sure their message made it past spam filters, sending<br>
email coupons through Google mail servers would be a good way.<br>
<br>
Somewhere a series of red blinking lights just activated....<br>
<div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 8:15 AM, Jeff Lightner<<a href="mailto:jlightner@water.com">jlightner@water.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> Sorry but a company that keeps tabs on everything you do on the internet via<br>
> little javascript embeds in every web page is unlikely to ever convince me<br>
> to use them for my browser. Firefox lets me block their little embed. I<br>
> use Google for searching but don’t think it is smart to use them for much<br>
> more.<br>
><br>
><br>
><br>
> ________________________________<br>
><br>
> From: <a href="mailto:ale-bounces@ale.org">ale-bounces@ale.org</a> [mailto:<a href="mailto:ale-bounces@ale.org">ale-bounces@ale.org</a>] On Behalf Of Jim<br>
> Philips<br>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 6:13 AM<br>
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!<br>
> Subject: Re: [ale] Google Chrome just got a lot better on Linux<br>
><br>
><br>
><br>
> Well, this definitely adds some fuel to the fire:<br>
><br>
> <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html" target="_blank">http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html</a><br>
><br>
> The Google OS is going to be a reality.<br>
><br>
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 5:37 AM, Jim Philips <<a href="mailto:briarpatch.jim@gmail.com">briarpatch.jim@gmail.com</a>><br>
> wrote:<br>
><br>
> There are already add-ons in an experimental state. I haven't tried to use<br>
> them in Linux. But the work is under way.<br>
><br>
><br>
><br>
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 1:29 AM, Richard Bronosky <<a href="mailto:Richard@bronosky.com">Richard@bronosky.com</a>><br>
> wrote:<br>
><br>
> Amen.<br>
><br>
> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 9:51 PM, Andrew Grieser<<a href="mailto:agrieser@gmail.com">agrieser@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>> Is there any plan for add-ons? It seems like they have to do something<br>
>> similar to add-ons in order to win over Firefox users.<br>
>><br>
>> Andrew<br>
>><br>
>> On Tue, Jul 07, 2009 at 07:59:29PM -0400, Jim Philips wrote:<br>
>>> Well, Chromium really. I've been downloading the nightlies from here:<br>
>>> <a href="http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel#TOC-Linux" target="_blank">http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel#TOC-Linux</a><br>
>>> Today, there was a giant leap ahead in features. You can manage<br>
>>> bookmarks,<br>
>>> save passwords, switch to a GTK theme and do a whole lot of other<br>
>>> things<br>
>>> you couldn't do before today. I don't know if I'll prefer it over<br>
>>> Firefox<br>
>>> or not. But it is *nice* to have a choice.<br>
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><br>
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--<br>
</div></div><font color="#888888">--<br>
James P. Kinney III<br>
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
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