All your thoughts are belong to us.
Schmidt's new motto.
Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt has told an audience in India that China is the worst example of a nation trying to take over and censor the internet. "As the internet has emerged in many of these different countries, there's quite a few countries that have no laws that pertain to the internet at all and those …
It's about time all you hacks started telling the world the truth, loudly and very publicly. There is no privacy on the internet, there won't ever be again, because it's to easy to collect and coallate information about people. Then use that information for targeted advertising.
Even being `amanfrrommars` or any other pseudonym you can think of doesn't prevent them from grouping you, and if you really are 'amanfrommars' that group will be a very small one. So they'll gather fairly accurate information for their targeted advertising.
Joe Bloggs is out there listening to all you hacks reporting that people like Mark, and Eric care about their privacy, when you know damned well they don't.
Dave: "There is no privacy on the internet, there won't ever be again, because it's to easy to collect and coallate information about people. "
That doesn't mean we have to facilitate man + dog to access what is being collected and collated about individuals or groups. The cat might be out of the bag now but it might still need spaying....
I agree with the spirit of your post, but I don't think it's necessarily that easy for them to gather accurate information - unless you willingly allow it by using the same name on different sites or (really dumb from this point of view) sign in with Facebook credentials, or whatever.
Even where they ought to know something about me, I've found advertising to be anything but targeted.
Privacy isn't dead, but it's true that Google (in particular) don't half make preserving it a chore.
Eric Schmidt doesn't give a damn about Internet users' privacy, and he's famously said so in as many words.
As a good American billionare, what bothers him about China is that it's the *government* trying to control the Internet and remove any expectation of privacy, whereas by rights it ought to be big *business* controlling the 'net and *monetising* user privacy, while allowing them to retain the illusion of privacy.
At least the Chinese government's actions derive from a (IMO misguided) patriarchal notion of what is best for Chinese society, while Schmidt can't even pretend that Google's privacy grab benefits anyone but advertisers and Google shareholders.
but at least they can't arrest me based upon what they perceive as inappropriate, or literally hold a gun to my head. They'll merely try to profit from my depravity. If a corporation is bad, then we at least have a chance of punishing them via the government or lawsuit (courts), while if the government is bad what recourse do we have... especially in a totalitarian government?
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@Graham Marsden
Upvoted. But do you know if NoScript is effective against complex tracking....? For example tracking that revives deleted 'zombie' cookies using Flash & ETAGS (cached sessions) as reported regarding Hulu :-
http://www.adotas.com/2011/08/hulu-caught-respawning-cookies-as-etags-enter-tracking-fray/
.. but I may just put some effort into getting his.
I'm intrigued that this chap can just uncontrolled waltz in and out of restricted countries. Wasn't there some trivial stuff like becoming a government official via a voting process or export of US technology to worry about?
Oh, no, wait. It's Google. Rules and laws do not apply..