firefox, trackers and ghostery

Wed Jul 17 10:58:33 UTC 2013

On 07/17/2013 04:23 AM, pete smout wrote:
> On 17/07/13 08:28, Sajan Parikh wrote:
>> May I ask in what out any individual's liberty has been infringed upon?
>> In what way have Governments imposed any sort of 'control' upon its
>> citizens with all of this?  Let's say PRISM began in 2007; How has your
>> life in terms of liberty or deliberate personal invasion changed since
>> then?
>
> Here in the UK our liberties have been infringed upon since 2007 for 
> example: data collected on the internet can now be used to start a 
> police investigation, a friend of mine disagreed on a message board 
> with a certain government policy and had a knock on his door from the 
> police, whilst I would be the first to admit his language could have 
> been phrased better this is an infringement of his 'freedom of speech'.
Removing the anecdote in that, "data collected on the internet can now 
be used to start a police investigations."  No offense, but I'd quite 
hope so!  If the FBI sees a large amount of fertilizer being delivered 
to connected individuals at the same time, I honestly hope that would 
start an investigation.  I'm sure the average Joe doesn't mind telling 
the government what brand of shoe they buy online to allow that 
investigation to start, and if they do, it's only
> And now we have to 'pre-book' any demonstrations, if you are guilty of 
> trying to instigate an unlawful protest you can be arrested.
Registering to protest in a public place is not unreasonable, and I'm 
not sure how it relates to this discussion.  If law enforcement were to 
see a potentially controversial protest forming in advance, they can 
better prepare protecting the protesters or handling them if it became 
violent.  Also, not sure how it relates to this discussion or is 
violating any sort of 'liberty'.  Unless of course you're angry about 
losing the liberty to randomly go wild on the streets whenever you feel 
like it.

Please don't rebut this with anecdotal stories of law enforcement 
abusing protesters.  Yes, it's happened.  Yes, it's been bad. 
However...really?
> Not to mention if you were to sign a legitimate petition on a 'genuine 
> site' (38 degrees or Avaaz for example) you are then placed on a 
> 'potential dissident' list and have your life monitored more closely, 
> there have been reports of people homes being watched by mysterious 
> vans outside their homes, and I have heard of one case where the 
> police turned up a place of work saying that an employee has been 
> 'trying to stir up a violent reaction' to whatever it was that upset 
> them on that particular week.
Are you trying to say that signing a petition should be...anonymous?  
How would that work?

The petition itself is a list and in most cases public, how external 
groups label that list is up to them.  If the petition is to start a 
"Hail Hitler Day", yeah you'll have the Government take an extra look at 
that list and the people on it.  I highly doubt anyone signing a 
petition to make all M&Ms blue has any scary vans outside their homes.
> The obvious conclusion of this along with the plans of the almighty 
> net companies of this world is a two-tier internet with the best and 
> fastest access being given to 'drones' who just  follow the crowd and 
> anyone who questions this being classed as a 'second class' user and 
> his / her traffic of less importance.
That's because the money is in appealing/targetting the critical mass of 
the population.  Take Linux for example, aren't we all viewed as second 
class computer users by many software developers? Why?  Because we're 
not the critical mass.
> http://anphicle.com/en/two-tier-internet-explained/
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12791376
>
>> Everybody things that there's some personal file that identifies
>> everyone by name and email address.  Sorry, but nobody is that special.
>> We're all just numbers and datapoints aggregated together. Unless of
>> course you personally find time to fill out every survey you find.
>
> Of course this assumes that some nefarious individual / organization 
> doesn't want to split the data down to the individual and possibly 
> start creating false information online to discredit a person or 
> organization or remove them completely and create a person-non-grata
and do you really think that person is you?  Do you ever think it's 
going to be you?  Or someone you know?  Do you honestly believe that 
there's a chance the Government will be scared enough of /you/ 
/personally/ to do something like this?  We don't live in that era 
anymore.  If anyone truly believes that they are special enough to get 
individual, personally targeted treatment from an organization like 
this...sorry, but that's a bit delusional. That...or you've been 
Googling how to make bombs.

Again, I really don't care that General Keith Alexander saw me buy that 
laptop cooler on Amazon last week.  I really, truly honestly don't.  
It'd be the same as if I ran into someone at a physical store while 
buying it.  The people getting outraged by all this are hyping up 
something that really, truly has zero impact on their individual, 
personal lives.
> Perhaps I am overly paranoid, but with so much of our everyday lives 
> on the net these days, it being so easy to leave (sometimes 
> unknowingly) a large data trail behind us, this debate is long over 
> due over what happens to this data, and who or what it belongs to.
The data trail is only exists where you actually go.  If you don't want 
Microsoft to share your internet habits with the Government, I'm 
sorry...but stop using a @live.com email address.  That's a little absurd.
> Hopefully Mr & Mrs J Doe are now having this conversation and a wider 
> awareness of what we leave behind on the net and what can 'possibly' 
> happen to that data.
>> Sajan Parikh
Furthermore, that whole line about trading liberty security is a bit of 
BS as well.  The world is so much more complicated than, "Unless I can 
do whatever I want without the Government looking over me, we'll never 
be secure."

Sajan Parikh
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