Yeah I just go about my day to day life assuming anything I do on a computer is accessible by pretty much anyone who cares to find out what I've been doing on a computer. It sucks, but I'll take all the convenience of the internet and live with the invasions of privacy.

At the highest levels, nearly everything you do is accessible. Computer use, phone calls, phone location data, bank and credit transactions, ubiquitous public video surveillance, etc.

Why? When private companies mine data they do so in a deliberate attempt to take your money. When the government does it they just ignore you, because you almost certainly aren't doing anything they find interesting.

I'm not justifying it. It just boggles me that people distrust the relatively benevolent Big Brother that they elect far more than they distrust the profit-seeking Big Brother that's trying to empty their wallets. It borders on tinfoil. The same people who threaten to shoot census workers are probably leaving a trail a mile wide across the internet for Alex Jones' advertisers to sell them survival videos and water-fueled engines.

Google's motto is "Don't be evil". It kinda creeps me out that they felt the need to not only coin the phrase, but to include it in their IPO prospectus.

Not just that, but those private companies don't give a **** about your privacy. There are companies who make a living keeping old data (pictures/posts/etc) that you made public on FB, etc., for the purposes of selling to prospective employers. They are literally selling your (supposed) privacy.

I think the gov't at least attempts to keep your private info under lock and key, as opposed to waving it around with a price tag on it.

Amazon learns things about me in an effort to market things to me i would like to buy. The government learns things about me to try to find things to use against me.

zikzak what's wrong with selling survival videos?

I find this argument highly reminiscent of people who think the census should be done by private companies 'to protect privacy, something something government'. Why people think that a profit-seeking entity is more to be trusted with that stuff is beyond me. Even if we assume - generously - firm market disincentives against monetising that data beyond their immediate commercial interests, inevitably one of them will break ranks and sell your data and everyone else's. And here's the thing - what's stopping them from selling it to the government? That's way more likely than the NSA flogging it to Fluoride Water Filters Inc.

The constitution, theoretically

I just can't get as freaked out as I should by surveillance simply because there's not really anything I worry about anybody knowing. Unless the FBI tells my boss how much time I spend on 2p2 or some girls how long I linger on their facebook I'm not worried.

Yeah. The stuff the government actually cares about I have no problem with them knowing. Like spy on kiddie rapists and assorted crazies all you want, doesn't affect my life.

When you actually show me an example of the government making **** up to throw political opponents or otherwise unfavored people/groups in jail then I'll care. And no, crazy-ass David Koresh types do not qualify.

We reached the "if you've got nothing to hide..." defense a little faster than i thought we would.

General Petraeus fall from grace troubles me. Why can't a man have a filthy, morally reprehensible affair and have that impinge on his ability to perform his duties? Come on. Reason is a homunculus astride the noggin of an apish beast.

Yeah but this is the same constitution which theoretically could stop the government gathering the data at all. Realistically, if they want it, they'll get it. I'd rather know about it than not, making that assumption.

Im pretty sure the T&Cs that let facebook sell your details to farming games lets them sell those same details to the government, but even if not they can be subpoenaed to hand over the details.

And it isnt just how many times you read Fifty Shades of Grey on your kindle that is being databased by these companies.

I mean you are free to be paranoid but unless you are entirely shutting yourself off from the internet your are just falsely reassuring yourself to say stuff like "at least that faceless unaccountable corporation cataloguing and reselling all my data has my best interests at heart, not like the evil gubmint".

Well, yeah, that's my complaint. They constitutionally shouldn't be able to do this but they're just like "**** it, we're doing it anyway."

Hopefully this all changes when Obama takes office.

Stuff I put on facebook is mostly explicitly put there by me for sharing. Plus like you said, the T&Cs disclose this.

I have an expectation of privacy in my phone calls or private communications. Should really need a warrant to tap into those imo

Nothing really. I'm just a tad skeptical that the people who buy them stand much of a chance when the zombie apocalypse comes.

Also, of the few episodes of Doomsday Preppers that I've seen, the only guy I thought had a good plan was the one who figured out how to survive on foraged weeds around the L.A. river. He's the sort of out-of-the-box thinker I want on my team for the End Times.

No doubt. Private companies don't have the ability to imprison me, just sell me stuff.

debunked?

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/natio...-affair/58882/

I don't think Michael Hastings is gonna get invited to the Pentagon Christmas party

First the McChrystal piece in Rolling Stone and now this:

Apparently, Petraeus's mistress was a gun model. In other news, there is such a thing as a gun model.

Sex sells everything bro.

Even guns.

I'd take her to the gun show, if you know what I mean.


(I don't even know what I mean)

I don't know what that means either.

But yea, they sell DVD's of large breasted women in bikinis firing AK-47's on full auto.

I don't believe that emphasized portion.

There's no way the FBI was in the middle of a relatively long, ongoing investigation of the head of the CIA, was briefing Congressmen with no security clearance, and yet the President didn't know about it.