[OT] Big Google Brother

Timothy Miller gandalf at doctorTimothyMiller.com
Tue May 15 22:35:10 EDT 2012


Probably no conspiracy, yet…

If and when we find out a conspiracy exists, it will be too late to take precautions.

On the other hand, if I wanted to be Big Brother, fifteen years from now, I would go to work for Google today. (I'd consider Facebook, but I'd probably go with Google.) Maybe Google isn't evil today. Fifteen years from now, who knows? In any case, my Pappy used to say, "Never trust a man who says, 'Trust me.'"

Personally, I take precautions.

I don't log into iGoogle very much, mostly just use plain Google. Maybe I'll switch to DuckDuckGo. Don't use Google docs. Don't use Gmail. Change my IP every few days.  (If you use iGoogle, log out, do a search on plain Google, Google still knows who you are, from your IP address.) I don't use Facebook. If I did, I would post very little personal information, and would not use the chat feature - I would chat on another service. I back up documents and LC stacks on the cloud, but I encrypt them first. Block tracking cookies. Clear my cookies and cache pretty often, including LSO cookies. And so on.

In the words of the Grateful Dead:

When they come to take you down,
When they bring that wagon round,
When they come to call on you,
And drag your poor body down,
Just one thing I ask of you…
Please forget that you know my name,
Please forget that you know me.

When I was in high school, lo these many years ago, every high school student read 1984. Russia and most of Eastern Europe were totalitarian dictatorships infested with informers and secret police. We were scared it could happen here. How soon we forget!

Now that technology makes it so much easier for Big Brother to exist, no one seems worried about it.

Tim

On May 15, 2012, at 4:21 PM, Igor de Oliveira Couto wrote:

> On 16/05/2012, at 8:40 AM, Peter Haworth wrote:
> 
>> Ah, another conspiracy theorist I see!
> 
> All conspiracy theories aside, there *is* something to be said about giving Google, Facebook et al less of your personal information:
> 
> http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html
> 
> --
> Igor Couto
> Sydney, Australia




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