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This is absurd. It has been public knowledge for years that Facebook and Google -- just to take two cases -- use user information to learn about them in order t
by buenavista 13y ago
This is absurd. It has been public knowledge for years that Facebook and Google -- just to take two cases -- use user information to learn about them in order to make money. Install Ghostery and see how many trackers one encounters on nytimes.com or cnn.com. There is no expectation of privacy in these activities at all.
Moreover, anyone who knows about how the internet works knows that packets travel over public and private lines and are routed through public and private computers. By design these machines read the headers of packets to know where to direct them. Computation is done on the contents of packets to ensure checksum validity.
One may strongly dislike the NSA's activities, but this is a specious argument.
- Amadou 13y agoI am wondering if you read the Techdirt article. It isn't about what Google, et al do. It is about what the government does. While it is true that the targeted advertising business model which dominates the modern internet greatly facilitates the NSA's spying activities the article's complaint is not about that.
- nitrogen 13y agoThere is no expectation of privacy in these activities at all. Tell that to anyone who doesn't know what a "tracking cookie" is. A normal, non-technical, rational person will have an expectation of privacy with regard to their Internet browsing habits.
- buenavista 13y agoAnd a normal, non-technical, rational 5-year-old has an expectation of Santa Claus.
- hobs 13y agoI know that anyone in the know wouldn't know, but how can you know what you don't know when normally what you know is that you do have an expectation of privacy when you are by yourself.