Good point. I do think that once we use social media, debit cards, bank accounts, and such, our information is out of our control basically.

Attempts to pass laws will not put the cow back in the barn, just attempt to limit where it goes. Each day, the cow has all day to defeat the limits placed on it, and the cow will eventually outwit those limits one by one.

Specifically, in April 1967, the CIA wrote a dispatch which coined the term “conspiracy theories” … and recommended methods for discrediting such theories. The dispatch was marked “psych” – short for “psychological operations” or disinformation – and “CS” for the CIA’s “Clandestine Services” unit.

Brin himself in his own paper acknowledges funding from the Community Management Staff of the Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) initiative, which was supplied through the NSF. The MDDS was an intelligence community program set up by the CIA and NSA. I also have it on record, as noted in the piece, from Prof. Thuraisingham of University of Texas that she managed the MDDS program on behalf of the US intelligence community, and that her and the CIA’s Rick Steinheiser met Brin every three months or so for two years to be briefed on his progress developing Google and PageRank.

Ignoring reality is not objective.https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-28/how...

Virtual Private Networks provide a way to make remote connections without revealing your IP address, attempting to sever an identifying connection between you and what you are looking at for those who don't otherwise have access to your id or local IP address. You can use the tor network for the same purpose.

VPN companies do not "all have signed agreements with with law enforcement that requires them to provide a path to enable searches subject to a warrant". Any government has the authority to seize records with a warrant, depending on the jurisdiction, and NSA often has the means to circumvent that restriction internationally.

VPN providers are located in different countries that limit jurisdiction. Some of them keep what you do encrypted in a way that even the VPN owner cannot get into it, including the connection logs, so warrants and other circumventions cannot get to it. The security of VPN companies varies dramatically, despite the hype from many of them. https://thatoneprivacysite.net/

You can use https://www.startpage.com/ to do google searches without google collecting your search history. startpage serves as a kind of VPN for searches that anyone can routinely connect to. The resulting security depends on how you use the search results.

VPN protects the identify of where you are coming from. You can also use an encrypted channel to a protected dns name server to translate website names to IP addresses you are going to, including a VPN connection, keeping your destination hidden from monitoring that is local to you, including by your own ISP.

If you use the same VPN IP address to connect to everything you do, inc ing logins, and/or your own PC is vulnerable to leaks and hacking such as through identifiable or otherwise unsecure browser plugins, then in principle everywhere you go will eventually be linked back to you anyway.

You need a javascript blocker and secure cookie settings to keep para sites such as google and facebook from tracking you even though did not connect to them directly. They are everywhere. If you use a VPN that allows parasites itself when you connect to it despite their sales pitch of privacy, watch out.

But you can't stop all of it, just like you can't prevent hacking of your financial information stored elsewhere. Insecurity is built into the internet. Microsoft and other big data companies have for years been developing means of tracking without IP addresses or cookies by identifying unique electrical "signatures" within your pc.

It never ends and they do what they can get away with. We have been repeatedly told that surveillance is the price we pay for 'free services' on the internet. It isn't true. They do it because they can, whether or not you are paying money. Buy something on the web and chances are the company you bought from is also selling your information.

And you thought this was supposed to be an Ayn Rand forum. Welcome to Conspiracy Central.

You wrote that "What many fail to realize is that all programs and apps are mandated to be written with a back door for the government". It isn't true. The FBI does not control what you can write in a program and cannot impose backdoors for government access. They have to hack, sneak and steal like anyone else.

The FBI used to install its own systems (Carnivore) to eavesdrop on networks, but stopped: NSA is much more comprehensive. They still can't see what is being transmitted inside encrypted data that they eavesdrop on.

The agencies have not successfully lobbied for new laws requiring 'back doors" for them to circumvent encryption.

They're creepy all right, but it's not a line for regulation. Laws are supposed to protect the rights of the individual, not regulate. We don't speak in terms of "regulating" crime, we prohibit it. Regulation means controlling what is or should be legal choices and actions.

The rampant hacking and intrusion into personal computers to facilitate surveillance, stealing personal information, selling it, and assembling it into dossiers with no accountability, violation of privacy, misrepresenting their own actions, and collaborating with government for illegal search and seizure of documents are violations of the rights of the individual which should be codified in law as such. Those who seek to regulate it want to control the crime while allowing it to persist.

Conservatives like the author of this Hillsdale article show no concern with the rights of the individual and therefore no concept of the difference between outlawing crime and regulating it. They are Pragmatist statists talking in terms of breaking up companies, their own opinions on economic "efficiency", and what degree of regulation to impose on innocent individuals and businesses while refusing to stop the abuse. They are the ones who are crossing the creepy line into statism.

The trouble with the "choose not to buy/participate" stance is that the relationships are so intertwined with a vast amount of companies purchasing and using social media analytics for marking and profit that the consumer has little to no control over where his/her personal, not so personal, medical or financial information goes or how it is used. Our private data is now a commodity peddled by companies on the stock market.

Although there is not a legal mandate per se programs like Carnivore (from the FBI) and others are implemented and so the demand becomes a mandate, i.e. if you want to write these programs we need access to provide for your security. A little threat goes a long way.

Google was not created by the CIA. Many technologies have been in part subsidized through research grants or paid by the military at some point in their progression. It doesn't mean that the technologies or the private companies were "created" by government, let alone the CIA.

The government has so far failed to acquire mandatory 'backdoor' circumventing encryption. There is no such mandate. (But Australia has recently imposed one there.)

Your point is well taken. As long as the companies don’t get government power behind them, I think we consumers are safe. We can always choose NOT to buy and we can boycott

Google is the pits. They skew their searches, often because of influence, monetary or political. When Hillary ran, I did a search of her brain damage and it's link to her plane crash in Iran (unreported). I found the info from other search engines, and foreign press. Google, when I searched, Hillary's health gave me Hillary's work out gear, etc. More delving reported Google had been contacted by her campaign staff and make a deal for them to show only positive results for Hillary. Same with searches for the long standing Congressional pedophile ring - no results on Google. They are intentionally affecting the outcome of elections for profit. Facebook is not objective. YouTube bans conservative videos, supports METOO, but allows "Rape the Baby", a song with accompanying call for the act, to remain on the site. That is just wrong.Obviously, they are incapable of of governing their own content, are anti-conservative, and anti-capitalism.

As written in the article, and gives me pause to go against your assertion (which was mine),

"Another aspect of the Big Tech revolution that sets it apart is the quantity and precision of amassed data it makes possible. Businesses have always accumulated data on their clients, but the amount and detail of data concentrated in the hands of Big Tech companies are beyond anything previously imagined. And its value increases rather than decreases with quantity: consumption patterns of individuals are more valuable if linked to their location, more valuable still if linked to their health information, and so on. Not only does this data concentration represent an insurmountable barrier for new entrants into the market, it also represents a threat to individual privacy and can even be a threat—as recent data mining and censorship scandals suggest—to the functioning of our democracy."

By waiting for damage and allowing data to amass we are building an insurmountable foe when they choose to flex their power. As exceller wrote about, its may have already gone to far thwart. Think of the politicians and how much data could already be in big tech hands. How much influence can big tech wield with text, pictures, video, audio, and phone conversations on any person let alone a controlling block of congressmen?

We should NOT regulate ANYTHING with government. Until someone is damaged, there is no crime and shouldnt be any regulation.

https://goo.gl/images/BXeW9Q

Um...OK?

Should WE regulate big tech? The operative term there is the WE and anything but the government.
WE should refuse to participate any way we can and certainly not play or pay into big techs coffers.
We older folks here remember when the phone was screwed fast onto the kitchen or hall way walls. If WE were not at home when it rang then life moved on and who ever called can call back later. The NOW generation will never accept this but I would be perfectly satisfied if we went right back to the slow life or at the very least make mobile phones to work only when you are standing in a spot and not walking down the street or driving down the road and that includes texting while moving. Big tech with all of their info gathering and how they use and abuse the intrusion into our basic privacy is way out of control but putting that Genie back in the bottle will never happen. They know where you are, when you were there and probably know where you are going. They know what toilet paper we all use and as far as I'm concerned they can use a big flush.

I never willingly provide info but they have it, as you said.

I am not on FB or any other social platform. Recently I switched off Google and purged it from all my searches. Still, I am sure they have a file on me.

It's a great thought experiment. On the one hand, they have abused their public trust. On the other, they are a private corporation and should be able to do what they want.

I think really all they can be hit for is false advertising. They proclaim that they are non-biased, but then they are forced to admit that they are about as intellectually biased as one can be. Given that, I think all one can reasonably do is to force them to put on all their products and advertising that they are biased so that everyone has full disclosure.

With dependence on electronics and computers to do daily business it is now nearly impossible to not surrender your data somewhere that it then becomes immediately accessible to all. Because tax money was used to create this and violence is used to impose its use it is nearly impossible to avoid. What many fail to realize is that all programs and apps are mandated to be written with a back door for the government. It doesn't matter if you encrypt if the spies have access to your encryption. It isn't that the technology is flawed, it is the use by flawed slavers (those who would control individuals) that is dangerous.

Start with a false premise and building toward the desired results will lead to faulty conclusions. If you are a turkey being supplied with free food and no effort on your part don't assume it will continue, search for the reason it is happening. When google started controlling the data allowed their reasoning is irrelevant, people began searching for alternatives. When Henry Ford determined that his company was too big and didn't need to innovate with new colors and styles GM did and Ford fell to second place and began following the others in order to survive. IBM became complacent thinking they did not need to innovate and Bill Gates came along (working from his garage) and determined that his market was individuals and worked to sell to them. IBM did not change because a government forced them to innovate, others brought about the change with a market that was free enough to allow it (America is not a free market capitalist society but it does fail to see innovation and only controls it later). One company can become very large and seem to be the only one in the market and in control. When free other innovators are always working around the edge and the least suspected are those who are developing something entirely new.
The reference to 'owning' your phone number that you are renting from the company who owns it is misplaced control. Using the mob to demand that others cannot control the property they have is not adding to the free market but detracting from it and competition. Adding violence to the equation results in its abuse, restriction of competition, loss of value of property and destroys innovation. When builders have to work with invented rules instead of reality all suffer except those in charge of writing the rules. Then rulemaking becomes the place to earn money (not make it) and ruling becomes the vocation of choice.

They did not come out of nowhere.
They were created by the CIA.