<p>BTW, it’s a good thing for two of the Duke Lacrosse kids that there was a lot of electronic surveillance as it provided alibi evidence. Of course the police and prosecution were too dumb to look at it.</p>
<p>BC - it depends on who’s hands the electronic surveillance is in. One of my great grandfathers died in a gulag - he had nothing to hide from the government. It is one thing when Google is “spying” on me, but it is a totally different thing when the government is looking at what Google has in my file without a warrant.</p>
<p>Don’t use Google then.</p>
<p>I heard, but didn’t get all the details, that photos taken with some cell phones contain the GPS coordinates of the location the photo was taken. If the photos are uploaded online, some of that information goes along.</p>
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Also, your driveway is now public property. Unless you gate it, anyone has the right to enter your property.</p>
<p>Hopefully when the Supreme Court gets this, they will strike it down.</p>
<p>Not looking for a lot of civil liberties from the Bush SCOTUS</p>
<p>There might have been a TERRORIST in the driveway.</p>
<p>Just a note, even if you don’t have an iPhone, you need to go into your fb privacy settings and adjust them to indicate that others with iPhones can not include (essentially tag) you in their location updates. In short, even if you don’t have and iPhone, you are at risk.
This was the last straw with my rocky relationship with fb. I pulled the plug, which of course means it’s simply in hibernation. It’s never really ‘gone’.</p>
<p>I’m of the belief that the government has been monitoring us in many ways we were unaware of. Thanks to the Patriot Act they are simply more open about it because the don’t fear the courts anymore. Bottom line, they are going to do it with or without our approval and it’s likely been that way for a long time.</p>
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Google can’t arrest me. Google can’t incarcerate me. Google can’t confiscate my property. Google can’t coerce behavior from me under threat of physical harm. Google can’t kick my door in in the middle of the night and point guns at me and threaten to (and maybe actually) shoot me.</p>
<p>^^ Agreed. From the first time I sat at a computer, I had this skeevy feeling that someone was behind the screen looking back. I don’t think I was too far off.</p>
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Not yet at least… ;)</p>
<p>" … kick my door in in the middle of the night and point guns at me and threaten to (and maybe actually) shoot me."</p>
<p>Well if they did shoot you I’m sure you DESERVED IT!!! jk of course. But really, I don’t see anyone here arguing that this reduction in privacy is a good thing … merely that it’s simply an extension of what’s already in place. Instead of two bored guys in an unmarked Crown Vic following you around, you can now be “tailed” with a GPS signal. So have some fun with it … loan your car to the local pizza delivery guy every once in a while. Switch cars with your spouse. “What’s Mr. Richards doing at the Spa today?”</p>
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[quote]
Not yet at least…
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<em>Bang!</em> <em>Crash!</em></p>
<p>“On the floor! Hands on your head!”</p>
<p>“What’d I do? What’d I do?”</p>
<p>You are under arrest for using a different search engine!"</p>
<p>:cool:</p>
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<p>What a disgusting, ignorant response. What callous disregard for the principles our nation was founded upon. People with this attitude make me sick, literally. Go live in some totalitarian country where you won’t be burdened with liberties, and leave us and our Constitution alone.</p>
<p>mantori.suzuki</p>
<p>I am pretty sure Google is not in the Constitution but I understand your point.</p>
<p>I would suggest a goverment agency monitoring a publicly accessible system like the internet or the phone system is acceptable. Its like watching for speeders on the roads.</p>
<p>Actively placing an electronic device on a citizen’s car (or in their home) without their knowledge is not acceptable, even if the car is in a public place.</p>
<p>If a car is trespassing on another persons property, is it OK for the landowner to electronically tag the vehicle for later reporting to police?</p>
<p>Massachusetts has been considering a use tax on roads and their implementation of this would be a GPS recorder in your vehicle to record where and how far you travel. This would form the basis of your road taxes for the year. There has been some consideration of this at the Federal level too though implementation would be a nightmare.</p>
<p>We already give up a considerable loss of privacy with the EZ-Pass system in the Northeast. It’s a common target of divorce attorneys.</p>
<p>EZ pass… Go through the cash line and use your quarters. Pain in the rear, you bet. Do I want someone having record of when I am on the road? Not if I can help it. </p>
<p>Yes, I am ‘that’ person who put masking tape over the integrated camera on every computer as it came in the house. It just made my skin crawl. Years later we find that schools have had them enabled on computers loaned to students… Masking tape. </p>
<p>Technology is the wild west. We have no idea the way this information will eventually be used.</p>
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<p>Good. The difference is that Google is a private entity to whom I choose to divulge information about myself (through my choice of search terms). Unless Google’s privacy policy includes a warning that my online searches are going to be turned over the government, then they shouldn’t be doing that.</p>
<p>Mind you, I’m not an anti-government nut. I send the government information about myself voluntarily all the time, e.g., the census and my income tax return. And if I seem to be doing something felonious, I expect the government to seek permission to monitor me somehow, via a warrant granted by a judge who has heard evidence that monitoring me is of greater importance than preserving my right not to be monitored.</p>
<p>What I’m on about is the careless flinging of privacy to the wind. “Well, we are being watched all the time, so what?” Again—and this is the point—where do we draw the line? Can the police show up tonight and put a camera in your bedroom window? Can they sleep in your bed? Rummage through your car trunk?</p>
<p>Fortunately, the Founding Fathers of this great country foresaw the need to draw the line somewhere, and they enshrined it in the Bill of Rights. There are certain things the government is just plain not allowed to do, period. But practically no one seems to give a rat’s behind anymore; we just compromise our freedom away, one little warrantless search at a time. It’s sad. It’s no exaggeration to say that I grieve over it. God forbid we ever live in a totalitarian state like Nazi Germany, but if it happens, it will be because we chose it, whether we realized it or not.</p>
<p>Now a complete 180: Have you ever heard of David Brin? He wrote an interesting book called The Transparent Society in which he postulates that there will be neither a possibility nor an expectation of privacy in the future, and that this paradoxically will actually make society more free by, among other things, exposing hypocrisy and allowing everyone who is spied upon to know who’s doing the spying. It’s a cool read.</p>
<p>The death of the concept of intellectual property is a real possibility.</p>
<p>How will businesses operate when all technical and financial information is known to all?</p>
<p>IMO companies will be screaming for the government to step in and legislate prices, margins, etc. like it used to do for the airlines.</p>
<p>Interesting propositions, BigG.</p>
<p>I wonder if the open-source model will eventually dominate all facets of the economy. For example, I enjoy the music of a local band, so I just pledged $10 to fund the creation of their next album, and I pay to see their rare live shows. I’ve donated to freeware developers after trying their software and deciding it was useful. And I sometimes pay more for produce grown by local farmers (using freely available seeds) rather than large commercial farms (using specially-engineered hybrids and fertilizers).</p>
<p>I just hope that government becomes as transparent as our lives seem destined to be. Nothing has heartened me in recent times as much as WikiLeaks! I just love watching governments scramble helplessly to hide information from the public. "Why, you can’t tell anyone about the people we killed, the officials we bribed, and the tax breaks we gave to our biggest campaign donors! It’s secret!" Meanwhile, they’re desperate for any of your private information that will allow them to nail you for smoking a joint once in a while. (Which I don’t do, by the way. That’s not why it matters to me.)</p>
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<p>I missed this earlier. I guess my answer would be, that’s what license plates are for…but I need to think about it a little more.</p>