“We reached a tipping point, where the value of having user data rose beyond the cost of storing it,” said Dan Auerbach, a technology analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an electronic privacy group in San Francisco. “Now we have an incentive to keep it forever.”
Project Chess? Prism? I'm not even mad about all of this spying stuff-- I'm just mad that they had so much creativity to give it such awesome names when I have to deal with stuff like the USCIS to get an FOIA to find out information about my only family. Just sayin'.
Maybe people just have spying on the brain, but the most recent Times Article: Web's Reach Binds NSA and Silicon Valley Leaders, hints that the rebellious, anti-establishment valley that we once knew might not be what we thought it was.
Did you know that the chief security officer for Facebook left and joined the NSA? That Skype had eavesdropping capabilities even before it left and became part of Microsoft? That maybe these companies are targeting foreigners and using their treasure troves of information in order to spy on people of interest? It's entirely possible that all of these accusations are entirely overblown, but in a world where everyone pays (in one way or another) for information, has data become king?
As consumers, did we give up this right as we bought more and more into the services that these companies offered us? Music, email, file sharing and apps? Is that what we traded our freedom for? Is it even that big of a deal? I have a very biased opinion, being born in a generation where this type of "privacy" didn't matter-- like they said during the Obama eavesdropping fiasco, "If you don't have anything to hide, then this shouldn't matter to you!", to which millions of angry Americans yelled, "I don't have anything to hide but I still don't want to tell you what I'm not hiding!". So the argument goes. I, personally, am not that worried about them knowing that I talked to my best friend about her new job or my inability to grow grass (it's really hard, ok?) in my front lawn. I happily trade that for email, music and apps, but my feelings shouldn't be the rule.
From one perspective, the government is a heavy investor to Silicon Valley companies-- by all accounts they might be the reason why these companies have the money to have cutting edge technology. On the other hand, the consumer could just be a victim in this weird love relationship. Joe Shmoe didn't sign up for the government to listen to his conversations! Jane Doe didn't sign up for the government to watch her while she sent emails to her friends! But, harking back to the technologist's words-- we reached a point where having user data rose above the cost of storing it. What will make another tipping point?
No comments:
Post a Comment