60 Minutes

I recently got involved in an online thread, when I asked about how to leave the Amazon.com contest. It was an interesting conversation, but what kinda disturbed me was how the money was the big motivator in the decision to partake in such contests at the expense of rights. Then, I watched a 60 Minutes piece about data mining. See this link for privacy protection information. I’m not naïve about data mining, but I was definitely raising my eyebrow about the extent of data mining. How is any of that even remotely legal, what with all the protection-of-privacy decrees we have out there? With all our indignance over domestic spying? If we get all ruffled over our own government agencies directing their spying efforts on ourselves, how to do we even remotely allowed commercial spying on ourselves?

There is so much to go into, here, on this subject, but the point I want to narrow down to is that we need to care what we sign away for our rights, for our toys. I read all those pages of terms before I get any app…and have dumped some apps because I didn’t like the terms. But does this even really matter, given the indecent lengths to which commercial companies are mining all of our data and actively selling it to other companies? Data as personal as what diseases you have, your sexual orientation, whether or not you use drugs (and how much), and what web sites you visit, and for how long?

It is also not made any easier by companies increasingly doing more and more business online, asking extremely and increasingly more personal questions online that are becoming mandatory before you even use their online functions. Even now, we are losing large leaps of privacy in the name of ease-of-use and accessibility.

Many argue it’s an inevitability. We can’t win.

I’ve asked a handful of people about this kind of thing off and on over the past few years, and I’ve received a disturbing amount of “I don’t care.”

Good Lord, that scares the crap out of me!

You do not care that your personal rights-to-privacy are quickly eroding, just so you can tweet you’re taking a shit at a Pink concert?

You just want to take the money and run, and not care how a novel your poured your heart and soul into will be treated forevermore in the future?

Have we become so shortsighted a race in the  name of the goddamned Internet? Instant gratification, where everyone’s a superstar on Twitter?

There is so much good about the advancement of technology and the creation of computers, but I guarantee you will regret it sometime in your future. You will. You will regret you did not take better control of what you let go in the frenzied grab of the next useless toy and app you installed on that toy, and it will be far too late.

But there are agencies out there fighting this uphill battle, and I applaud them. They realize the logical conclusion to all this insanity. Just because you can do something, does not mean you should. Just because you use the Internet does not mean others out there are granted the inherent right to snoop in on you. To market what they mine to others because it better suits them in their marketing (i.e., they can make more money off of you—the almighty friggin profit-driven society).

Again, there is so much to say on this topic, but I just want to bring it before you now, and implore you to pay attention to what you’re doing. Don’t give away your freedoms. Say NO. Encourage others to do the same. And it doesn’t matter what’s already out there. It’s never to late to stop, to say No, and attempt to put an end to this heinous use power.

We need to care.