But it’s true, understanding that money is how we allocate power and resources. The NSA does it on behalf of the government for power, while Facebook is grasping higher, for money that brings power and more.

I think how you define “world domination” is a matter of context; place and time. Nobody in their right mind today would attempt literal world domination; if even successful, control would begin to decay a microsecond after formation. And why would you want the migraines?

But given the fungibility of money, it’s demonstrably smarter to try to amass the biggest pile of it, and call that good enough for even a Bond villain.

But why power and resources? Existential angst, a fearful craving for security, for ensuring the survival of one’s self and spawn.

We all want to quiet that primal fear, so we all need money to some degree. A system that gives a few security at the cost of inflicting existential angst on the many is an evil system. From the perspective of a social primate, we’ve made the mistake of letting some pathological alphas act to the detriment of the tribe as a whole.

That’s why Trump, that’s why Bernie. We’ll get Hillary. Ain’t life a bitch? Pass me a banana.

I guess this is what they mean by “The banality of evil.”

It reminds me of an old joke that reportedly used to circulate in wartime Europe. A Nazi collaborator suddenly finds himself under arrest by the SS, and for no apparent reason, stuffed into a railroad car packed with other prisoners and shipped off to a concentration camp.

He complains to his fellow prisoners, “What is happening to me? Why have I been arrested and condemned to imprisonment? I support the Nazis.” One of his fellow prisoners responds, “You have been designated a danger to the State, and not fit to live, just like the rest of us. You might want to reflect on that as your fate is decided and consider whether or not you picked the wrong side.”

The collaborator responds. “Ah, yes. But what happened to you is an injustice. What happened to me is a mistake.”

I checked my smartphone after reading your post. It’s an Android with the Facebook app built in, and by “built-in”, I mean it’s marked “system” and I cannot remove it. I’ve never logged in to Facebook through the app, yet it’s running and has consumed 303 megabytes doing…nothing? It gets better–I’m fooling with it as I write– If I can’t remove it, I can at least trim it back…I cleared memory, but it’s holding on to 249 megs. Jeez. I can’t remove it, only uninstall updates. OK. Then I try to “Force Stop”, but of course, it refuses to stop. Finally, there’s a “Disable” button that seems new to Android. It seems to work–trustingly, judging by the fact that the legend changed to “Enabled”…but how do I know for sure if I can’t remove the damn thing?

That Facebook app is scary. If I had logged in, the app would have been able to access my phone’s contact list, which is synced by Google between all my Android devices. Any contact anywhere would have been sucked up by Facebook.

I can’t get nearly as far away from Facebook as I’d like. I haven’t even logged in to FB in years, but they’re still aggressively intruding on my privacy.

But you’re pretty sure they didn’t get your contact list through your app. Could be you’re just seeing “big data” at work–if you have a big enough data set, you can reveal anything, through patterns or through connections, or both. Facebook’s whole existence is predicated on building “social networks” (that’s actually a technical term, not just the title of a movie), and with a couple of billion registered users plus sensors installed on the majority of web sites, you can bet that Facebook is in the same league as the NSA when it comes to mining the take from a Niagra of surreptitiously-acquired data about billions of people.

So they simply put two and two together, and linked you with other people.

I see it all the time when they send me those chillingly-accurate suggestions about “friends”, people I’m careful to ensure never meet in real life (c’mon, we all have people in our lives like that). I never told Facebook about those people, and I’ve checked, and in most cases they didn’t either, but it doesn’t matter. Facebook sniffs the internet, and it just knows.

The pressure to opt in is pervasive. As a Web designer, nowadays I’m being asked to set up login through Facebook or Twitter, because it saves a little money and there’s some kind of cachet to the blue logos, as if you’ve joined an elite club. Bullshit, of course, it just means you’ve given them permission to set up sensor outposts on your web site, to track not only their registered users logging in, but anybody passing through. Of course it’s free…to the web site owner. You and me pay the heavy price.

This is how a panopticon society is born, creeping tendrils of surveillance always sold as beneficial to us. Give up your privacy, and be safer, and a more efficient consumer, and a more pliable voter.

Seems like a fair trade, right?

But in either case, the community, the commonwealth, the people, must be involved in the process and be allowed a say in how it works and how far it can go. And most of all, they must be fully informed about how it works. We give the sheriff a gun, but we give him a uniform and a badge, too, so we know exactly who he is. He also has to answer to a judge, and we get to vote for new ones if either doesn’t work out.

The vote, the law and the constitution cannot guarantee a government won’t slide into corruption and tyranny. But lack of regulation and control WILL guarantee that the merchants will do so.

I really don’t mind some surveillance by government. There is a camera system at the stateline 6 miles from my house. Every time I drive into the neighboring state my license plate is read and recorded in a database, then checked against another database. Its done by computer, and I highly doubt my license plate number is deleted once cleared.

Is this an invasion of my privacy? Not in my opinion. It is a tool to catch criminals and it works, which is why I am ok with it. When you get an amber alert on your phone, the reason they know the general area to look is because of systems like this one. Unlike the ludicrous rules of the TSA, systems like this do actually make us safer for pennies on the dollar. (The TSA minutia may actually make us safer, I don’t know, but it isn’t cheap and certainly is disruptive.)

The data is not my own, it belongs to Law Enforcement and probably the state’s Dept of Transportation. I actually am more comfortable in this regard than if a private company were collecting it, since the likelihood of that data remaining private is higher.

Were a private company collecting this data without any benefit to me,I would not be ok with it at all.

Lets take another example. The State of Oregon is currently testing out a fitbit device for cars. It is opt in and people that have the device do not pay gas tax at the pump, instead they are taxed per mile. The device collects a lot more data than odometer readings though. Some of that data might be necessary, such as a GPS reading. Why? Because the driver would not want to be taxed for miles driven outside of the state. That would be a double tax were they ever to fill up out of state. What about other data. Ever drive over the speed limit in Oregon? What could they eventually do with that data. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to realize that the data could be used to automatically ticket speeders as well. At what point does it become tyranny? That mile marker is probably different for different people.

This isn’t black and white. We can’t look at it as a simple 4 legs good 2 legs bad argument. We need to accept that some surveillance is fine and some isn’t by both state and enterprise. Where to draw the line is open to debate.

But when business does it, its fine, because, after all, we are all businessmen, aren’t we?

I guess that is the fundamental difference between Conservative and Liberal.

Advertising is the fuel of the internet. Targetted advertising is jet fuel. Do I want to go back to the olden days when a “punch the monkey” banner ad showed up on every site I visit? Hell no. Do I long for the news article where the text disappears as a cartoon ad floats across the website? Absolutely not. How about pop-up ads? Anybody have an itch to close ten windows for every link you click?

The truth is I prefer the more subtle advertising of today over the brute force ads of the early days. Seeing ads for products I’m interested in or some of my hobbies in the sidebar is far preferable to the other junk.

Truth is I do let Google track me on my phone GPS. Why? Because its data I can use. It becomes part of my historical record. When I have relaxed on getting my timesheets filled out and need to reproduce what I did on a certain day, Google timelines tells me when and where I was down to the minute. Its my data and its useful. Could that data be used against me at some point, probably, but if you know how it works you can turn it off when needed or leave the phone at home. Far from being creeped out by it, I’ve embraced it and use it for my own good.

I benefit immensely from the internet. Do I want to be nickel and dimed for the parts of the internet that make my life more productive? Absolutely not, the data they take from me is a small price to pay for the benefits I get in return. Probably this will not be a popular opinion on this board, but really what can you do besides unplug? Better to stop worrying and acknowledge it is a 2 way street.