Random thoughts and delusional momements from history, computers, metrication and other bits of nonsense I chose to prattle on about.
Well, my warning was too late. There is already a mainstream data mining firm selling information that can be harvested from the www.
Check out www.abika.com and see what they sell.
Don't say I didn't tell you so!
tw
posted by Thomas @ 8:14 AM
March 2020 I moved to Salmon Arm, BC. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since I started this blog. Hopefully I can recover my old stuff and get it updated . But I still say I have abandoned my search for truth and am now willing to settle for a good fantasy.
12 Comments:
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Unrestricted flow of information is the life of democracies. Our founding fathers emphasized on the freedom of speech so that there is enough discussion and information available to people when making a choice to elect who will govern and that those who are elected stay honest and transparent and it has worked. If it works on the macro level it sure can work on the micro level. The only way there can be a big brother institution is if information is only available to a select few. If information if widely available to everyone then there cannot be any big brother institution. The more information available about people the lower the risk in dealing with other people. In most instances little information is more harmful than full information. If information is widely available then facts can generally be verified through many different sources and there are less chances of inaccuracies.
Excerpt of a ruling by 10th Circuit Court Judge Deanell Tacha:
"Although we may feel uncomfortable knowing that our personal information is circulating in the world, we live in an open society where information may usually pass freely," wrote 10th Circuit Court Judge Deanell Tacha. "A general level of discomfort from knowing that people can readily access information about us does not necessarily rise to the level of a substantial state interest ... for it is not based on an identified harm," Tacha wrote.
What scares me more than the proliferation of information is the abuse when a priveledged few are given access to this information. I persoanlly have no problem untill this few turns it into a "For Profit" situation. This can be use for money or advantage!
Money is a great equalizer. There are costs involved in searching, compiling and locating and someone has to pay for the costs. And its accessibility that is important. As long as every citizen has the right to access and obtain information its a great equalizer. The elite want information to be private as they have too many things to hide. The honest comman man wants information to be free as he has nothing to hide.
Human beings should be free to learn about each other, as they always have been. Consumers do not need a law to protect them from people trying to develop and offer goods and services. "Bad guy" behavior like fraud and identity theft is already illegal. A top-down regulatory approach to privacy threatens electronic commerce. An established shopkeeper on main street can see and speak to his customers. He can get an idea by just looking if they are regulars or newcomers, locals or tourists; he can chat with them and learn why they decided to buy or not to by a tempting item. By contrast, an electronic commerce merchant working from the web is blind and deaf. He is a stranger dealing with strangers over vast distances. Are his customers one-time visitors or are they more loyal? Are they young or old, male or female? If they fill out an order form and abandon it, why? Under these circumstances, its natural for a web site to try to learn more about its visitors. Regulations that would make it harder for businesses to collect information about markets threaten small business, in particular. Big companies already know who their customers are and can afford expensive lawyers to comply with complicated new rules. Small businesses would be hit harder.
You are starting a new business selling pets and pet supplies. Your competitors are big, well-established chains. You have no customers, and no way to find them. You can't afford television advertising. Your mass mailings have only a 2 percent response rate--the costs are far exceeding the benefits. You want to rent a mailing list from an established company in order to reach only customers who are interested in pets in your area. Then you discover that the only mailing list available is tiny, outdated, and very expensive. Fearing liability, many companies have stopped trading information about pet supply purchases. You decide that you just cannot afford to be in the pet business. Over the next decades, entrepreneurs will experiment and discover many amazing new things to do with information. Consumers will be able to get up-to-date information tailored to their tastes and preferences. The wasteful practice of sending out thousands of flyers to discover only a bare handful of interested customers will end. Prices will fall. New companies can benefit from what older companies have learned about what consumers really buy to start new businesses and offer new products. This means more choice and lower prices for consumers.
Sometimes companies and their employees will make mistakes. But that doesn't mean we need top-down regulation. In the age of the Internet, consumers can easily find what company offers the lowest prices and best service. Businesses with the best reputation for giving customers what they want--privacy, low prices, or anything else--will do best. In competitive markets, companies have every reason to respond to a real customer demand for confidentiality. Markets means that problems will be fixed from the bottom-up, in an endless and flexible process of learning and experimentation.
This bottom-up process is the only way to address concerns about privacy without strangling the development of the economy with red tape. It's one thing for a company to try to respond to their customer's demands voluntarily. It's another thing entirely for an army of lawyers to force entire industry to implement a one-size-fits all privacy policy.
Thomas in your own words. "What good is a soul if kept hidden to the world?"
Money is not the only great equalizer. Advantage can have an even more powerful effect. In the realm of data access, we are individually at the bottom of the food chain as we do not possess the resources to aquire the same information as those at the top. My complaint here is that those at the top can exploit a situation. This exploitation can generate both money and advantage.
Those with the advantage will exploite those without. That I see as the greatest evil here.
There is no advantage to one specific entity. Anyone can get what is out there is if they know how to search. Companies like Abika fill that void by providing the search services. If you dont want to pay money you can always search yourself by getting the skills and knowledge on how to search.
Our society has one great knack above all others -- one that no other ever managed -- that of holding the mighty accountable. Although elites of all kinds still have many advantages over commonfolk, never before have citizens been so empowered. And history shows that this didn't happen by blinding the mighty -- a futile endeavor that has never worked. It happened by insisting that everybody get to see. By citizens demanding the power to know. The important thing to remember is that anyone who claims a right to keep something private is also claiming a right to deny knowledge to others, to blind others. Freedom thrives when there is openness and accountability. Elites will always have some advantages, but we're all better protected by knowing than by forbidding others to know. (It is far easier to verify that you know something, than to verify that someone else is ignorant.)
-- David Brin Ph.D, Renowned Author & Astrophysicist.
PRIVACY PERPETUATES VIOLENCE AND SUBORDINATION AGAINST WOMEN, CHILDREN, AND THE ELDERLY. Vulnerable citizens cannot be protected from domestic violence if unbreachable boundaries of legally sanctioned privacy surround the family. The worthiness of the privacy ideal has been called into question as problems of domestic violence suggest a need for more, rather than less, involvement in the traditionally "private" spheres of home and family life.
-- Anita L. Allen, Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Law
Heather Mac Donald who is a John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute calls far left and loony activists Privocrats who put privacy ahead of national security. A honest person has nothing to fear from the free flow of information as they have nothing to hide. Our society has prospered and thrived by learning about each other, not by hiding from each other.
Autocrats control and oppress people by tyranny and Privocrats control and oppress people by secrecy.
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