Big tech is like a creepy ex and government is like an invasive and nosy neighbor
As I’ve learned about what big tech companies are doing with everyone’s data it really started to creep me out. I’ve heard about ex boyfriends/husbands and girlfriends/wives getting pretty creepy on the spying thing. Even when still together many couples have problems on that front. There was a show a long time back I saw on TV, when that was a part of my life, and a paranoid person would send out a private investigator to catch their partner cheating. The types of things that a paranoid partner does is pretty similar to what big tech does. They put bugs around to listen in, cameras around to watch, and spyware to see what online activity and communication is going on. At the end of some of the investigations there was nothing found and it played cute music and tried to show a happy ending. Some of them weren’t happy about their partner spying on them and it ended the relationship anyways. Which is understandable, it’s creepy stuff to have someone prying into your life and watching your every move to report back to your partner or anyone else for that matter.
Big tech is gathering metadata from all sources it can. This information is prime for surveillance. It might not have all of the specific content but it has a whole lot of the overall picture. Where you have been and for how long, patterns of travel, often your exact location at all times, where you spend money and often how much, who you talk to and for how long, what you search for on the internet, what websites you visit, and much more. With all of that they can put together a pretty comprehensive profile on an individual. I find all of this very creepy and over the top. In some countries they give a little more privacy protection and tools – which is nice.
Around the world and especially in the USA there is a lot of PPP’s or public-private partnerships. The government really does not want to limit corporate data mining (spying) all that much because it wants that data as well. Some countries limit their own spying so that they look good to their own people, but then get that data from allied nations. I’ve read that Israel does a whole lot of data mining around the globe and shares (maybe sells) that data to many nations. The majority of the planet is blackmailed at least a little bit. Even if it’s nothing illegal some personal information can be embarrassing, career ending, divorce enduing, and so on.
Recently I was given a package that was put together by the local government. They had detailed areal photos of our homestead. They want us to comply with some regulatory house stuff. We were out of compliance and now I’m fixing some things to help alleviate their worries. I’m not worried, my neighbors aren’t worried, the owner of the property we live on isn’t worried, no one is really worried except these weird people that call themselves government. But I was thinking about it and it really is an invasion on privacy and pretty creepy. Just like that whole spying on us that the corporations do is creepy. Bunch of creepers.
What if your neighbor put a GPS tracker on you and your car and logged everywhere you have been. What if they had spyware on your phone and computer to track everyone you communicated with and how long. What if they put together a list of everything you ever searched for and what websites you go to and what you watch. What if they also paid attention to how much you spend and where. What if one went so far as to fly a drone over your house looking for anything they didn’t like. Afterwards they put together a package telling you what they wanted to you fix. What if all of these neighbors shared that information with one another and even sold it. A little creepy? I think a lot creepy.
So if our neighbors really shouldn’t do any of this why do we turn a blind eye towards corporations and government enforcement agents doing invasive and creepy things? Maybe humanity should have a higher standard for what we passively and happily tolerate and even actively support. You know that overall Google, Facebook/Meta, Apple, and Verizon aren’t mandatory services? You can stop supporting their invasive actions by not using their services and products. Of course they are embedded in many 3rd party sites, services, and products (especially Google and Facebook) but much of that is optional and you can block a lot of that with VPN’s, solid browsers, anonymous search engines, and better operating systems. It’s true we may not be able to opt out of all government invasive creepy things at this stage of human development. But maybe if enough people started to see it for what it is, a creepy group of neighbors teaming up to sign bills that makes them think they have the authority to put together an extended creeper neighbor network to threaten the common man with fines, loss of property, to be put into little cages, or even killed if anyone resists. Maybe if people saw through all that humanity wouldn’t be so complacent and complicit.
I think the standard should be something like this. If you and I cannot do such a thing to our neighbor, then perhaps government cannot do such a thing to you and I. The act of neighbor/group/mob/government intervention should be used very lightly. Seems to me it’s used far too regularly and over far too many things. I also believe privacy should be taken more seriously. We ought to be able to opt out of corporate data-mining schemes and get profiles deleted if we don’t want these corporations to have them. There are many good books on this subject and smarter people than me have a lot to say on ideas for privacy laws in our current high tech low cost storage type of world.
Check out an older post linked below on solutions on the tech side of things if interested – some books are listed in there. New people see this blog often enough that it's worth reminding about that post in my view – solutions are important. I might update it some this winter, I’ve learned a lot since writing it but it’s still solid information.