It is not just the government. How often to you have your cell phone pop up ads about something you were just talking about?
The Gov’t. does not belong in our lives…. JUST because recent technology has meant that they CAN be.
The website linked in the story is a parody site. See here:
Always an honor reading your works and opinion
Ditto finding news not juvenile or redundant
Good tagger huh
One, knowing what's being collected and how it might be used helps you resist targeted ads and such. Although every once in a while they may actually be useful. If you buy a gas grill why yes, you just might be interested in a propane tank. If you've been looking up recipes online you might be interested in the specials at a couple of local grocery stores. In short, it's good that various services are being "helpful" but just be aware of the why they're being helpful behind it.
Even more importantly though. If you are aware of what's being collected and how, then you know how to keep data from them. By letting certain entities collect data relatively easily you lull them into complacency and laziness. Then when you want or need to keep something private, they don't have the means in place for/on you to know it's there. You've only elicited the standard level of interest. I'm not paranoid, I'm careful. I'm keeping options open because you never know what might be happening this time next year.
After 70 years, spending a career in the military with top secret and above clearances, uncounted security investigations, taxes, working in the civilian world, and credit checks, I would guess they know every time I belch or sneeze.
I just watched the movie “Enemy of the State” not long ago, and the ‘Bourne’ movies.
Everyone should watch those. Every bit of the surveillance they depict, plus some, was entirely possible 20 years ago.
When Nixon went to China about 1970 or so, I read an article in Popular Science about satellite technology. That long ago, when Nixon was in a parade in China, they showed a print of a satellite picture of the Chinese equivalent of a secret service agent riding alongside the motorcade on a bicycle. You could literally read the time on his watch. Taken by a camera over 100 miles in space.
I have the camera and lenses I can use to sit 50 yards from your car and get a picture clear enough to easily read the license plate, maybe 100 yards, I haven’t tried it. I did get such pictures of a guy hanging out in a Louisiana park, trying to pick up guys in the bathroom, (he tried it on me, got a serious threat instead) I wanted his license plate and face in pictures in case he EVER followed a teenager into that bathroom again. Yes I saw him follow a guy about 14 in one day. Reported him to the cops, they did absolutely nothing. Sitting over 50 yards away I got pictures good enough to ID man, car and license plate. And my stuff is nowhere near what FBI & CIA have.
Wear a cap, never look up. They can only get a good shot of your face from a satellite if you look up.. In stores, forget it. Your picture is taken an average of a dozen times a day. Twice that if you spend 30 minutes in a mall.
Look at the ceiling. Wally World, grocery store, Lowes, wherever. Those black plastic bubbles you see are video camera covers. Wal Mart always covers every square inch of their store with video.
Wal Mart and Target stores also usually have at least 2 “secret shoppers” who are actually roving plainclothes security. I knew 2 of them locally a few years ago, one in each store. They walk around the store with 3 or 4 items in a cart, swap it out now and then, and act just like any shopper. Picking things up to supposedly read the label or check the price, etc. They are actually watching YOU if they have the slightest reason to think you might be even thinking about shoplifting.
Anyone in the store wearing out of season clothes, really loose clothes, oversize coats, a jacket in 80 degree weather, or just acting suspicious, they will follow you around, get on the radio and inform the other plainclothes shopper and swap off every couple of aisles so you don’t know you are being followed, and when you walk out the door, if they know you are shoplifting, police will be waiting for you. Off to the side, just out of sight. There’s a reason the front of their store is not a wall of huge windows.
Once you walk out the door, then they can hit you with shoplifting charges. Until then, it might not hold up in court. I watched them bring a guy back inside one day, the store manager later told me he had $280 in merchandise and was still pulling stuff out of his pockets when they got him upstairs, with cops of course. Car battery, $50 tennis shoes both in plain sight in a shopping cart. In various pocets he had fishing reels, lures, jewelry, makeup, small toys, a total of $280 in merchandise. Walking around in a jogging suit with jacket when it was over 80 outside.
Plainclothes security watched him, called it in to the video room, manager called cops, they were waiting when he walked out the door. Cuff him Bob...they had security people who watched him steal items, all of it on video tape...no way out, he did some jail time. I never found out how much, I stopped doing demos not long after that.
And that was their capability over 20 years ago, around 1998. Today, I wouldn’t try to swipe a paper clip...if I find an empty box on a shelf, I don’t even touch it. Years ago, I’d take it to a cashier and let them know someone had stolen whatever was once in it. The only ones I bother with is like when I found a can of Kipper snacks bulged out like a football...it’s VERY inedible, I took it to the cashier to throw out before someone decided to buy it...some people actually do not know that means don’t even think about eating it.