Internet privacy is an important idea. Unfortunately, corporations, not any government, were pioneering ways to track people long before the internet was in every home. Owing to corporations, there is no internet privacy. In some ways, I agree, this is a terrifying prospect.
My credit card companies know that I am wont to show up, unannounced, in a foreign country, and buy something in a grocery store. More or less, I do not need to tell Visa that I am heading overseas, they know I will pop up in a random place, and start buying fruit and vegetables. Conversely, if I want to buy furniture, Visa is going to need a DNA test to prove that yes, I am interested in owning a bed. They know my preferences better than I do. I remember a credit card company advertising the "service" of monitoring every single purchase to protect you from fraud. The ad I recall had a handsome man describing himself to the audience as a "t-shirt and jeans guy," who decided to get married and thus bought a tuxedo, at which point, the credit card company called him to verify his identity. Society, it seems, bought the service side of this spying.
As consumers, it seems, we gain piece of mind and increased services if we let Visa, Mastercard, and American Express know us better than ourselves, by spying on our every moment. It is accepted as common place that to enjoy the full warranty on one's new blender, Osterizer needs to know your annual household income. Yet, when it comes time for the Census, the American people seem to be hesitant to tell the government the number of people living at the address.
By completing the Census, schools, roads, airports, and social programs get funding. Libraries and museums may open or close in the neighborhood, but these are not, apparently, services as worthy as the ninety-day warranty on a coffee pot. What fear of the government could possibly be worth sacrificing livelihood for? I doubt, in fact, any fear would be worth it.
Fearing one's government is not actually about fear, I think. Rather, fearing the government is about the vanity of thinking one's life is something special. I do not want to condone the NSA or CIA spying on anyone. Yet, as a society (and it seems universally human to do so), we have come to the conclusion that we need to employ spies to keep us safe. However, we fancy that our secrets are too dear to have them found out by a stranger sitting on the outskirts of DC, or Salt Lake City. When it turns out that clandestine services do spy on people, particularly Americans, rather than asking why, it seems that we react with vehement fear of our secrets being found out.
The reality about it is that you, and everyone you know has secrets that are far too boring for that spying to be worth it. An NSA file on me would be short, boring, and on a tape drive gathering dust for lack of use. I would like to think I matter, that I travel enough, or have poignant enough blog posts, to have a detail of NSA agents following my life and times. In fact, if the agents' viewing of Faux Social gets counted as a "page view" by Google's servers, I would be happy to pepper in juicier words like explosive, jihad, and McVeigh just for my own vanity. -Oman-
I do not think that this will work. To me, the internet is a public domain, I think about it like a busy street with storefronts, and people moving about. It seems totally preposterous to think anything you do there is "private," yet, like the busy street, most of what you do is "anonymous." This is not anonymous like voting, but in the numbers of it. When I shop at Amazon, they and I know exactly what I perused, then did or did not buy. A store with security cameras could do the same. I feel anonymous not because Amazon does not know who I am, but because we are strangers. In the company of strangers, we are free as if anonymous because there will be no repercussions for our actions, no need to blush, lie, proclaim, or explain in the realm where everyone is a stranger. Yet, like a police officer walking the beat, well trained people may be able tell the difference between a stranger and a potential bad guy. -Anthrax-
Thus, in my view, I do not think Americans (or anyone) should be actively monitored in public (including the internet), not because it is an issue of privacy rights (which it may be), but because I doubt it is really worth the money. If all of the money invested in monitoring Oman went into improving the lives of the poor there, how many people would choose extremism? If the money Americans spent on lipstick and fighter jets went into schools, libraries, healthcare, and financial security, would there be gangs and religious/political extremism? If Afghanistan had access to a port, electricity, phones, internet, and literacy, rather than a century of imperial domination, would it have the Taliban? There is no one fix, but the real problem is that militarism cannot solve social crises, and Americans are worried about the vanity of being spied upon, more than they are about foreign policy.
-Terrorist-
My credit card companies know that I am wont to show up, unannounced, in a foreign country, and buy something in a grocery store. More or less, I do not need to tell Visa that I am heading overseas, they know I will pop up in a random place, and start buying fruit and vegetables. Conversely, if I want to buy furniture, Visa is going to need a DNA test to prove that yes, I am interested in owning a bed. They know my preferences better than I do. I remember a credit card company advertising the "service" of monitoring every single purchase to protect you from fraud. The ad I recall had a handsome man describing himself to the audience as a "t-shirt and jeans guy," who decided to get married and thus bought a tuxedo, at which point, the credit card company called him to verify his identity. Society, it seems, bought the service side of this spying.
As consumers, it seems, we gain piece of mind and increased services if we let Visa, Mastercard, and American Express know us better than ourselves, by spying on our every moment. It is accepted as common place that to enjoy the full warranty on one's new blender, Osterizer needs to know your annual household income. Yet, when it comes time for the Census, the American people seem to be hesitant to tell the government the number of people living at the address.
By completing the Census, schools, roads, airports, and social programs get funding. Libraries and museums may open or close in the neighborhood, but these are not, apparently, services as worthy as the ninety-day warranty on a coffee pot. What fear of the government could possibly be worth sacrificing livelihood for? I doubt, in fact, any fear would be worth it.
Fearing one's government is not actually about fear, I think. Rather, fearing the government is about the vanity of thinking one's life is something special. I do not want to condone the NSA or CIA spying on anyone. Yet, as a society (and it seems universally human to do so), we have come to the conclusion that we need to employ spies to keep us safe. However, we fancy that our secrets are too dear to have them found out by a stranger sitting on the outskirts of DC, or Salt Lake City. When it turns out that clandestine services do spy on people, particularly Americans, rather than asking why, it seems that we react with vehement fear of our secrets being found out.
The reality about it is that you, and everyone you know has secrets that are far too boring for that spying to be worth it. An NSA file on me would be short, boring, and on a tape drive gathering dust for lack of use. I would like to think I matter, that I travel enough, or have poignant enough blog posts, to have a detail of NSA agents following my life and times. In fact, if the agents' viewing of Faux Social gets counted as a "page view" by Google's servers, I would be happy to pepper in juicier words like explosive, jihad, and McVeigh just for my own vanity. -Oman-
I do not think that this will work. To me, the internet is a public domain, I think about it like a busy street with storefronts, and people moving about. It seems totally preposterous to think anything you do there is "private," yet, like the busy street, most of what you do is "anonymous." This is not anonymous like voting, but in the numbers of it. When I shop at Amazon, they and I know exactly what I perused, then did or did not buy. A store with security cameras could do the same. I feel anonymous not because Amazon does not know who I am, but because we are strangers. In the company of strangers, we are free as if anonymous because there will be no repercussions for our actions, no need to blush, lie, proclaim, or explain in the realm where everyone is a stranger. Yet, like a police officer walking the beat, well trained people may be able tell the difference between a stranger and a potential bad guy. -Anthrax-
Thus, in my view, I do not think Americans (or anyone) should be actively monitored in public (including the internet), not because it is an issue of privacy rights (which it may be), but because I doubt it is really worth the money. If all of the money invested in monitoring Oman went into improving the lives of the poor there, how many people would choose extremism? If the money Americans spent on lipstick and fighter jets went into schools, libraries, healthcare, and financial security, would there be gangs and religious/political extremism? If Afghanistan had access to a port, electricity, phones, internet, and literacy, rather than a century of imperial domination, would it have the Taliban? There is no one fix, but the real problem is that militarism cannot solve social crises, and Americans are worried about the vanity of being spied upon, more than they are about foreign policy.
-Terrorist-
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