indefatigablog

Today i say goodbye to social networking. I no longer wish to opt-in to additional consumer surveillance.

If i had an office job that bored me to tears, i would surely feel differently and continue to click my way through mob, zombie and other such mindless *wars*.

Alas, i have no such job and after a discussion about its pros and cons, it is undeniably clear that the cons ruthlessly outweigh the pros.

After using the features that Facebook provides *free* to users for the past couple of years, in all fairness it was fun to occasionally find a long, lost pal.

However, given the amount of information Facebook sells about me and anyone else who uses it, I began to think this way : “They’re making lots of money off of tracking what I spend and where and potentially using my words and images without my knowledge. Is that such a great deal for anyone else?”

To boot, I was friends with a lot of people who I never see or actually have much in common with [towards the end i actually started removing "friends"].

As for the friends i see on a regular basis, i don’t need such a tool to stay in contact with them.

So — so long, social-networking-disguised-as-data-mining-and-profiling sites!

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As if the infiltration of our privacy by advertisers hasn’t been bane enough, we no longer have to fear *the cookie* as the new evil is deep packet filtering being conducted by many ISPs into the activities of their customers, relaying this info to marketers’ and advertisers’ perusal.

I can’t even begin to express my distaste at such actions and wonder if it was exactly this kind of scenario the people who run this country had in mind when they decided to start treating all of us like energizer batteries for their marketing machine.

UGH :

The Washington Post is reporting that some Internet Service Providers (ISP) have been using deep-packet inspection to spy on the communications of US customers. Deep packet inspection allows the ISP to read the content of communications including every Web page visited, every e-mail sent and every search entered, in short every click and keystroke that comes down the line. The companies involved assert that customers’ privacy is protected because no personally identifying details are released, but they make money from selling the information to advertisers who use the information to target their online pitches. Deep packet inspection is a significant expansion over tools like cookies in the ability to track users.

You can liken it to a phone company listening in on your conversations.

Read the New York Times article on the same controversy here.

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The leading supplier of school uniforms in the United Kingdom, Lancashire-based manufacturer Trutex, has announced it is “seriously considering” including GPS tracking devices in future ranges of its uniform products after conducting an online survey of both parents and children.

The survey questioned 809 parents and 444 children aged nine to 16. It showed that 44% of parents were worried about the safety of pre-teen children, and 59% wanted tracking devices installed in school apparel. 39% of children aged nine to 12 were prepared to wear clothing with tracking devices in them, while teenagers were notably less enthusiastic and more wary of what Trutex has admitted they see as a “big brother” concept.

However, Trutex has claimed the tracking devices would bring about worthwhile benefits, including being a valuable resource for parents who wanted to keep a close eye on where their children were at all times.

Each year, Trutex supplies 1 million blouses, 1.1 million shirts, 250,000 pairs of trousers, 20,000 blazers, 60,000 skirts and 110,000 pieces of knitwear to the UK.

It is not the first company to manufacture school uniforms with a central focus on child safety; last week Essex firm BladeRunner revealed it was selling stab-proof school blazers to parents concerned about violence against their children. The blazers were outfitted with Kevlar, a synthetic fibre used in body armour. It has already received orders internationally, including Australia.

If the Trutex tracking devices go ahead, it is unclear where in the uniform they will be located.

You don’t think kids will learn to disable these?

the traps get better, the mice get smarter, the traps get better, the mice get smarter…

and thank the GODS for that.

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A case that attracted nationwide attention has ended with the dropping of a felony wiretapping charge against a Carlisle, PA man who recorded a police officer during a traffic stop.

Cumberland County District Attorney David Freed said his decision will affect not only Brian Kelly, 18, but also will establish a policy for other police departments.

“When police are audio and video-recording traffic stops with notice to the subjects, similar actions by citizens, even if done in secret, will not result in criminal charges,” Freed said yesterday. “I intend to communicate this decision to all police agencies within the county so that officers on the street are better-prepared to handle a similar situation should it arise again.”

Freed’s decision came a week after the story caused a storm of criticism over Kelly’s May 24 arrest by a Carlisle police officer on the wiretapping charge, which carries a penalty of up to seven years in prison upon conviction.

What a relief : they can watch us but we can watch them, too. Good to hear “fair” is still somewhat fair.

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