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posted by martyb on Tuesday December 19 2017, @04:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the digital-divide dept.

Rick Falkvinge, founder of the original Pirate Party, now living in Germany, has published four parts so far of series on analog equivalent privacy rights. He plans to have 21 parts in all. The series starts out early on with the point that there is no reason for the offline liberties of our parents to not be carried over into the same online liberties for our children and examines this point from different directions. So far he has posted in detail on the following topics over at Private Internet Access' blog:

Rick will post more over the next few weeks. The current batch of adults and teenagers are likely the last generation to have any choice in the matter. Apathy and ignorance abound and deciding not to decide is still, sadly, a choice.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @12:12PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @12:12PM (#611781)

    Others have addressed this but I'll add my own angle: the huge difference is the level of effort involved.

    If you are a suspected criminal, the police or the FBI or their foreign equivalents in other nations can set resources to track you specifically. That has always been true, from the equivalent of police in ancient Mesopotamia until today.

    When I was a kid, grocery stores didn't have loyalty programs. Now they do, and if you're not a member you pay 50% extra for your groceries. Unless you have plenty of money to spare for the sake of privacy, you're forced to let the grocery store company - and anyone they sell the data to - know where you live, what you buy, what kind of pets you have.

    Even if you turn off the GPS on your phone your wireless carrier can use cell tower connection triangulation to figure out where you are all of the time with a decent level of accuracy. They can sell that information too.

    And of course your credit or debit card is a giant mix of convenience. Convenient alternative to cash for you, convenient vehicle for tracking all of your financial habits for the company that supplies the card - and again, anyone they sell it to.

    We don't have a police state in the US. Not yet. But in countries like China it's being built as we speak and we are laying all of the groundwork for one here.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @01:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @01:09PM (#611788)

    > When I was a kid, grocery stores didn't have loyalty programs. Now they do, and if you're not a member you pay 50% extra for your groceries.

    Either you are big on exaggeration or you don't live around here. My grocery loyalty cards (NE USA) are sometimes worth a buck or two off, on certain specials -- perhaps 20% discount on that item. Overall it might be a few % over the year. If there are none of these specials in my purchase, I don't give them the card.