The Internet is a surveillance state

[dperecky]

Knowing people, I have my suspicions.

Why are they tripping over themselves and each other to give us 'free' email?

Why are they rushing to us with their 'free' browsers?

Why is the cloud being pushed?

Nooooo... they just want us to use these products because they like us... They don't make any money off of any of them... And no, they would Never snoop on our data, our emails, or our behaviors. :shock:

Don't have any proof, but it's an old suspicion/story... It's probably a lot worse than what people think. Wake me when things change for the better.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Meh, that's why pros of the "underground" usually use long-range directional wifi antennas to connect to networks they crack, and change network relatively fast. You can track down only so much that way.

The internet itself isn't the issue, it's the men that created it that is. Honesty, honor, integrity, and altruism are very rare traits in the human being.

I heartily disagree. Under this logic General Motors or Ford are responsible for drunk drivers killing people, baseball makers for all broken windows, Hammer makers for a man's split thumb, etc.

Both extremes are wrong.
GM and Ford are responsible if they don't take basic design precautions for pedestrian safety (it boils down to designing the car in a way that a pedestrian is pushed OVER not UNDER the car in event of collision), because they can do that, easily. Cars not working for drunk drivers is not really practical at the moment, but when it will be it is likely going to be the norm... and as tech goes further, they will have to do fully automated cars.
Again the same applies to baseball and hammers, it's not possible to do that for the manufacturer.
And the same goes for Teh Internetz, if they make stuff exploiting basic human stupidity to gather info they then use to screw you over better, then it's their responsibility. As you cannot really ask a stupid person to be less stupid and not fall into their traps. And yes, this applies to gambling as well.

Don't take the fact something is legal as it is also moral or a good thing to do as well, it's just that it's too hard to stop and keeping an eye on it is the best that can be done. (both gambling and this spying do have the "consent" of the user, and are as such perfectly legal, with some minor restrictions)

Nooooo... they just want us to use these products because they like us... They don't make any money off of any of them... And no, they would Never snoop on our data, our emails, or our behaviors.

There is no free cake. Never was, never will be. Everything else is scam one way or another.

 

[josearedux]

Some excellent points here. This is precisely why I tend to use Ubuntu, FF, NoScript and AdBlock + more and more. This forum is one of the few sites I frequent where everything seems to work with out allowing or disabling the aforementioned plugins. As stated above I really did not feel comfortable when I returned a big ticket item to Target and they already had my CC info stored. AFA the cloud - I just started using it for pictures only but after reading this thread I am having second thoughts.