Re: No
No, the worst offenders are the ones above the law. Then there are some criminals who would track people regardless, but they would be investigated by the law and brought to justice. That's what laws are for.
Let me put this another way. In Canada there is a phone register where you put your phone number ever 3 or so years and you are on the list for "do not telemarket to me you poxy whoresons". Only newspapers registered charities (usually "can we pick up used household items") and political campaigns are exempt from this law.
Immediately after implementation the number of irritating phone calls dropped to about 10%. Of those, the "can we pick up used household items" folks are useful because they send a truck round twice a year to pick up stuff you've no use for. Newspapers could fuck off any time - as could politicians - but a call a week from those groups is way better than the 10-20 a night of telemarketers we were getting before.
Now, there are scammers - mostly based out of the US and India - but you know that they are scammers because they are not respecting the do not call list. You can just hang up on them.
Most individuals and companies obey the law. They don't want to pay fines or end up in jail. Some organizations (newspapers in this case, technology companies in the case of online advertising) try to have the laws drafted so as not to affect them.
Only governments and politicians think themselves truly above the law. Everyone else are criminals, and you can ignore them because they are criminals.
In the case of DNT and online advertising there are whitelists that are assembled and can be fed into things like AdBlock. Compliance with the initative gets you on the white list. Non compliance gets you blocked. One day we may be able to take a blacklist approach, and that would be nice...but it would require laws and proven enforcement before we go there.
But therein lies the problem: the corrupt governments - namely the US - that won't look after individual liberties. Most especially because they are the worst offenders for infringing on civil liberties.
So because the almighty US of A refuses to not be a worthless sack of fetid shit, ordinary citizens need to take their own liberties into their own hands. In this case, through methods like Adblock.
Were laws in place legitimate companies would follow them. Period. They might rail and moan and lobby and campaign, but when all is said and done they'd obey. The risks of not doing so are just too high.
Unfortunately we can't get laws put in place. The reason is a combination of fatalistic apathy (which the American populace excels at) and a blame-the-victim mentality that is fucking abhorrent.
We have made serious dents in these sorts of problems in other spheres. We can make serious dents in these problems online as well. Can we completely eliminate the issues? No. But we can make it obvious who are criminals and who are not and implement technologies to isolate those criminals and mitigate the damage they do.
And for the record, individuals seeking privacy are not the criminals here. Those seeking to infringe the privacy of others are. And for that matter, those who meekly accede to those who want to invade the privacy of us all should be tried as accomplices!
I wasn't too harsh on Doug at all. If anything, I was far, far too lenient.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
