I have resisted mixing politics and technology on this blog. But there are times when they just seem to mix them selves. The other day I was at a luncheon, and heard Jeff Besos speak. I have met Jeff a number of times, and he’s a very smart guy. He gave a great talk about Amazon and when the Q&A came up, wrote down a question that I wanted him to answer. The question didn’t get presented, but it was something like: “Has the Federal Government ever asked you (Amazon) for customer data?”
My good friend Mitch Ratcliffe has written a very powerful and thoughtful post on a parallel topic, i.e. Surveillance society: Growing daily?
Read it, and think about it. And think about the implications. If the Federal Government could see what you do on the web, see who you call, and possibly see what you buy, it wouldn’t be very hard to create a profile using data mining tools, and once that profile is created, our world as we know it is over.
But as one of my conservative friends noted to me, after I articulated my concerns, ….. “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about!”
That whole "if you're not doing anything wrong..." argument misses the point. I've written about this before.
http://slashstar.com/blogs/tim/archive/2006/02/28/police_cameras.aspx
It's ironic that in order to protect our society, we are relinquishing the very liberties that supposedly define it.
Posted by: Tim Marman | May 21, 2006 at 06:40 AM
Also of interest, Schneier's wonderful essay on privacy posted on Friday.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_pr.html
Posted by: Tim Marman | May 21, 2006 at 07:04 AM
Thanks for bringing it up, Buzz. As a classic "progressive liberal" I have a tremendous problem with giving away our liberties, even if we *did* trust the government. Ugh!
Posted by: Matthew Cornell | May 21, 2006 at 02:28 PM
yeah Buzz, I'm with Tim. The whole "if you're not doing anything wrong..." argument is a classic diversionary tactic by the forces that want us to reside in complacency as the basic freedoms our ancestors fought and died for are being whittled away.
It's like the old story about how to boil a frog. If you throw a live frog into a pot of boiling water, it jumps back out. But throw it in a pot of cold water, and gradually turn up the heat, and it doesn't notice, and gets cooked alive. That's how freedom is taken away as well. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, etc etc.
On another note, I laughed when you said Bezos is a smart guy. I was like "duh!".
BTW, Belinda was reading We The Media in bed tonight and called out to me "Hey! Did you know your friend Buzz is in this?"
I think she was impressed that I have a famous friend!
Posted by: Cameron Reilly | May 22, 2006 at 06:00 AM