[SGVLUG] Microsoft's nightmare inches closer to reality

[John E. Kreznar]

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Dustin <laurence at alice.caltech.edu> writes:

> But the underlying problem is the web becoming capable of deploying
> better and better applications.

That's the road to the privacy give-away that Google is paving.  Note
that even more dramatic than the increasing capability of the Web is
the escalating capability of the PRIVATE computing power available to
the user.  But instead of using it, forces like Google are seducing
people into walking on the Web with their minds hanging out naked
(much more serious than the usual kind of nakedness).

It might be argued that it's only that user's privacy that's being
lost, and that that's her business.  Unfortunately, privacy give-away
is becoming so pervasive that those of us who try to keep it are
becoming ever more conspicuous, and therefore in danger of loosing our
privacy as well.

Example: For maybe ten years, from the time I first became aware that
the Internet is the most powerful surveillance tool ever invented and
ironically simultaneously the most powerful tool for protecting
personal privacy, I meticulously kept my street address off of the
Internet.  But when I needed a new ISP last year, one prospect
promptly stopped talking to me when they discovered my privacy
penchant.  Now, the monthly electronic account statement from my ISP
has street address in plaintext and I flinch from trying to change
that.

> ... Google is simply the currently most visible company taking
> advantage of an opportunity that FOSS created and still sustains.

Well, yes, that's the rosy side of things.

> A non-Google example: you can use TurboTax on Linux just
> great--because they have a web version.  The web is a good enough
> platform that you don't have to buy it at all, just pay to use it on
> their server.

Another example of privacy give-away.  You get the service, they get
your dossier.

- -- 
 John E. Kreznar jek at ininx.com 9F1148454619A5F08550 705961A47CC541AFEF13
  "[What open source is actually achieving is to reduce] the ability of
   proprietary companies to collect secrecy rent."  -- Eric S. Raymond

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