Comment by ataturk
8 years ago
It's so strange--I never would have expected the boot of tyranny to come from private corporations, but here we are. And what all this proves is that technology is value-neutral and can wipe us all out, or just make us incredibly miserable, if we let it.
Hopefully there will be a way to opt out. Otherwise, I should start selling faraday bags for devices. Probably should anyways.
This tracking abomination is an emergent phenomenon of the merger of private industry and government in the US. See for example both legalized bribery (a.k.a. unlimited campaign contributions by corporations thanks to Citizens United) and outright bribery (Cohen) by telecoms like AT&T, ensuring that they will have the flexibility to perpetrate such garbage as this tracking data sale.
Why not distrust both government and industry? The rule "power corrupts" holds in either case.
Are you saying AT&T bribed Cohen in order to have the Justice Dept. sue AT&T over its acquisition with Time Warner?
I'm saying AT&T bribed Cohen, which is what we have evidence for so far. Perhaps there will be additional communiques exposed later which reveal specific requests.
They did not get the outcome they wanted with the acquisition, but there was also the matter of the administration wanting to punish CNN. Maybe AT&T should have paid more.
But AT&T has still done remarkably well vis a vis the FCC's selective deregulation of net neutrality, which makes it much easier for existing ISPs to leverage their quasi-monopolies and compete unfairly within other verticals.
The American system of legalized bribery needn't produce a bill of sale for regulatory capture.
Alright, but distrusting all parties doesn't suggest a way forward.
Why not? Both government and private industry bring innumerable benefits to humanity. But we can and should view them both with constant skepticism and exercise vigilance. Why should holding one accountable mean that we can't hold the other accountable?
If you're looking for someone to root for, I'd suggest the individual citizen.
4 replies →
Why wouldn't you have expected that?
I think it depends a lot on the kind of capitalism you have. There's what I think of as small-business capitalism, where business owners in a community naturally take the community's interest into account because that's where they live.
I think that's distinct from American MBA capitalism, which is the increase-shareholder-value, up-and-to-the-right, maximize-short-term-cash-gains kind.
The former is positive-sum, the latter can easily be negative sum. And I think the latter, because it doesn't include any humanity in its calculus, is perfectly capable of profitable tyrrany.
Go read some history. Power is Power, and will wear any damned guise it wants.
Corporations, criminals, monarchies, democracies, Fascists, Communists, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Confucists, Goths, Huns, Romams, Macedonians, Persians, Greeks, Trojans, Hittites, Israelites, etc., etc., etc., have slaughtered, sacked, enslaved, oppressed, or dehumanised others, all in the name of temporary gain.
The British East India company had armies. Wyoming cattlemen funded a mercenary army in the Johnson Count War. Coal wars in Apallachia and Colorado. U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, the Pullman Company, the L.A. Times, Union Carbide in Bhopal, oil companies throughout the US, Middle-east, Indonesia, and Africa. Fruit companies in Latin America. Sugar, tobacco, and cotton plantations. Coal mines in Wales. The Kochs today.
> Hopefully there will be a way to opt out
Don't use a cellphone.
See also: the FBI can't wiretap your phone lines if you never use a telephone.
Live in a cabin in the woods and never have contact with anyone. Now your surveillance worries are solved.
We have satellites to monitor those people.