There's a reason for the octopus...With private investigators and hacking all over the news in the UK (well, most of the news media: some aren't as keen as they were over Murdoch bashing) Michele's ordeal should start to worry us all a bit: "Googling of certain things was creating a perfect storm of terrorism profiling. Because somewhere out there, someone was watching." I am sure you were already aware if not worried. Via Zerohedge we realise what Google (amongst others) knows about us: Tom Gara writing on Corporate Intelligence, the WSJ business news blog digs deeper and discovers a hackers' and hence PI's goldmine. Tom goes on to see the good side of this:
"There’s another side to this, of course. In the long run our online histories will become one of our most cherished forms of memory, in some ways far more powerful than anything our brains are capable of. Gmail was one of the first Google services we signed into, and that was less than a decade ago. The Chrome browser has been around less than half as long. Our web histories are still young.
Give them another ten years and they will paint a picture of our past — of who we were — more detailed than any memory."
There's also diaries and photographs of course but I know what he means!
2 comments:
Michele Catalano's story is worrying and disturbing although not surprising in some respects (I only say this as somebody who has done a bit of research into this).
I'm more worried about the idea that my past will be defined by my Google services profile - time to step away from the screen I think.
Incidentally regarding the Catalano story I did read the other day that you can now download a program that randomly sends out messages or phrases from your computer which identify you as a possible security threat (it's the work of some anarchist group)- although it now seems all you have to do is innocently shop online.
Yes, when I think about the travelling I do, the places I've been AND my online 'presence' I begin to suspect a large file being compiled somewhere.
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