Privacy, is it dead?

So, it’s been a couple of weeks since the NSA “PRISM” was leaked. Outrage followed, but seems to have died down. Which got me thinking, most people I know are their own worst enemies when it comes to their own privacy and important information.

How many of you have Facebook? Most people do. Now, let me be clear, I don’t use Facebook and haven’t for a long time, but my wife does.

Everyone has started to post play by play updates so EVERYONE can know what they are doing. The problem is then, how can you get mad the government collected the data? You posted it in the internet equivalent of screaming in the downtown square, then getting mad someone wrote down what you yelled.

Don’t get me wrong, what the NSA is doing, is wrong; however most people are not taking even the slightest steps to guard their privacy. This makes it very hard moving forward, because it gives us another “lesser of two evils” scenario: Do we give up, and let the government monitor everything we do? Or do we punish those who even stumble on publicly published information that is sensitive in nature for “hacking”

What I think really needs to happen is that people need to start taking privacy seriously. I can’t count how often I have gotten after my family for posting information that could be used against them, and without fail, they ALWAYS seem surprised that what they posted wasn’t private.

Read the end user license agreements for all of the software, and websites you use, they always list what they do with information that travels through their services. Is unfair to get mad at companies and government for spying when you click “I accept” without reading the terms of service.

For this problem to change, it’s going to take a shift in our mentality, not just more useless legislation to supposedly limit the government, even though they already ignore the laws currently on the books, how is another law going to fix things?

Simple solution: Stop being stupid!

My View on this NSA thing

I have tried to keep my blog as non-political as possible, but with the news that has recently come to light regarding the NSA with both Verizon call data, and the PRISM program that snarfs up all our internet communications; I find myself very hard pressed to ignore the issue, but I will do my best to simply represent my objections to the issue, without getting too political.

Basically, the stories that have come to light indicate that the government, with the consent and direction of the Obama administration (and Bush previously) have been issuing secret programs and warrants to collect all of your communication data. With Verizon wireless, it appears that they are using the call metadata, not your actual call contents but rather your phone number, call time, call length, who you called, and other details but no name. They are getting that information from all Verizon customers, and put it through data-mining to find out who might need to be “watched” more closely.

This presents a very large concern to me. As someone who values both freedom, and privacy, this action bothers me to my core. The government isn’t waiting till they suspect someone of actually communicating with terrorists before looking into their activities; they are looking at everyone, looking for possible bad guys. the problem with the later, is that even if you have done NOTHING wrong, you’re being watched. The government is just WAITING for you to screw up, so they can get more information on you.

It doesn’t just end there however. The NSA is also using a program called PRISM to gobble up all of the internet communications and activities of all Americans online. They are claiming they have agreements with major companies who give them this data. They named, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook and many many more (Some of the companies are denying any knowledge of such a program, or that they do not simply give information to the government or law enforcement, which is completely beside the point) The information they are gathering, consists of email information, VOIP call data, chat history, web habits (like what sites you visit or “like” or “favorite”), shopping information. Essentially they are getting access to all you do, and can study it.

It is important to remember, that in the pursuit to fight “terror” we have systematically given up so many of our civil liberties and freedom for the false promise of “safety” that it simply proves, that which Benjamin Franklin said “Those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither”. This is exactly true. We as a country cannot allow this level of intrusion into our personal lives to continue.

There are important way to fight this, most importantly is voting. Our government is failing us as citizens, and we’re sitting by watching it happen. WAKE THE FUCK UP! it is important to hold EVERY elected official accountable for their actions (how they vote on anything) by literally tossing them out of office. Yes, I said FIRE THEM! Enough with this “we’re just protecting you” bullshit, and GET OFF MY LAWN!