Dang.
As a long time reader of LewRockwell.com, I was pleasantly surprised to find a trackback from my last post to the LRC blog today. Somebody over there has come across my humble little outpost here on the fringes of teh interwebz....and included a link in his post, Extremely Serious Privacy Problem in America.
Than I read what he had to say about my piece:
"Here is a libertarian who recognizes the end of privacy and sees it as a foregone conclusion. His pessimism is total. He offers no defense of privacy at all." - Micheal S. Rozeff, The LRC Blog
Is it pessimism to point out the truth?
The loss of our privacy from the Surveillance State's intrusions IS a forgone conclusion.
Has been since October 26, 2001, when the PATRIOT act was signed into law.
If you have healthcare insurance, you already have no privacy here in the Land of the Fee and Home of the Tax and Credit-Debt Slaves.
What defense can I, an anonymous blogger on teh interwebz, offer for this now obsolete concept of privacy?
I merely belabor to point out the truth, because from where I'm sitting, it seems to me that 90% of the people in this Country are oblivious to this ongoing destruction of what used to be a Constitutionally recognized right to privacy.
Most people go along with it, without a second thought.
Worse still, most people are too absorbed and preoccupied with the 21st centuries version of bread and circuses entertainment to care.
And when they aren't staring at the Tell-A-Vision, breathlessly awaiting which contestant is going to win on The Voice, or which ball team is going to make it to the playoffs (hey, I'm not judging anyone, I do it too), most are too busy to notice. We all have more important things to do with out time, like staring at our palms at one of the biggest catalysts in this ongoing loss of our privacy - the Mobile Affirmation Devices, which also certainly serve as Personal Information Harvesting Devices for our Corporate Data Plan Providers.
Offering a defense for Privacy? We're long past that point. Privacy WAS an 19th to 20th century concept, now obsolete. Welcome to the 21st century!
What's left to defend? Total Information Awareness is already here.
To paraphrase something I wrote on a different topic previously:
There is no candidate running for office that you can vote for to defend privacy.
There is no political party you can join, no "tea party" or "Occupy" rally you can attend or no organization or cause that you can donate your money to that is going to make a damn bit of difference in our current state of affairs.
There is no possibility of working within our current system to "fix" what's wrong.
That's because there's nothing to fix.
From the view of those who have implemented the system and constructed our current situation, this shit is going off exactly as planned.
There is only one thing left to do for those of us who still care about obsolete concepts like freedom, privacy, and a non-intrusive Government.
Refuse and Resist, wherever we can, whenever we can..
How?
In small ways. Engage in subterfuge. A personal mis-info and dis-info guerilla campaign.
Examples?
* When your at a check out at one of the box store Corporate retail outlets in your area, and they ask you for your name and phone number, give the checkout person deliberately false info. That's not against the law. Yet.
* Never say anything into a cell phone, nor text anything, nor blog, vlog, post, email, write, tweet, instagram or comment anything that you wouldn't be comfortable with having total strangers read, see or hear....because all forms of electronic communications ARE stored and can and will be used against you should the need for authorities to do so, arise.
* If at all possible, use cash for your purchases. Try and stick to stores and farmer's markets where a "club" card is not required, for as many purchases as you possibly can. If you must, try and use other people's club cards and pay with cash. I have the club cards from several deceased friends and family that I use whenever I shop at such stores.
* If you find it necessary to have a smart phone or some other mobile data device, figure out how to disable GPS applications. And if for whatever reason you ever find yourself being pursued by the authorities for any reason whatsoever, don't forget to shut off your "smart" phone. Hell, just to be certain, remove the battery. If your situation is really serious, than leave it on and ditch it hidden on a bus or another vehicle heading somewhere far away.
* Don't buy any new vehicles with the OnStar or other perpetual tracking devices built into it.
* If you MUST have a social media profile, fill it full of false or ambiguous information...especially use a fake name. If you insist on posting pictures to your social media pages, don't use pictures taken with your smart phones, as they are now designed to automatically include hidden data embedded in the pics and vids themselves, revealing the time, location and other personal details of where and when that photo was taken.
* If you really want to get off grid, only blog or update your social media pages or check your web based email on public computers and internet cafe's and other such places.
* Another strategy would be to have a wireless laptop or other device that does not have your personal info stored in it at all, and use it only at free Wi-Fi hotspots.
* Whenever you're doing an online search, use only the search engines and proxy server sites that provide anonymity. Search engines like DuckDuckGo and StartPage.com.
* Don't buy appliances that have internet connection features built in.
* Minimize your use of Debt Enslavement Cartel member establishments...aka Banks. Don't use debit cards or credit cards as much as possible.
These are all ideas I myself practice as much as possible. Does this make me paranoid? All of these things I now do, come from the inspiration of a guy in the UK back in 2010 who decided to see if he could elude the surveillance State just as an experiment.
“A lot of people are giving information away voluntarily,” says Gowlett. “Look how many young children are giving up their whole lives on Facebook and Twitter – everything, their date of birth, the names of relatives and friends, where they live, when they’re going on holiday and what their political views are.
“People should think carefully how data is going to be used. Some are careful enough to opt out of the electoral roll, but when they have a baby and a nappy company comes round they give every piece of information they’re asked for. And that will be used to tie up with other databases.” Databases such as Tesco’s, which holds information on virtually every adult in the country, regardless of where they shop.
The National Health Service is unrolling a multibillion-pound IT project that will upload millions of patients’ medical records on to a database, freely accessed by 250,000 NHS staff and, to a lesser degree, by private health companies, council workers, commercial researchers and ambulance staff. Letters are going out now, strongly urging us all to allow this and making it as hard as possible to opt out.
The detectives are appalled. “That will have all your medical history on it, your date of birth and everything that has happened to you,” says Gowlett. “It’s vulnerable, and people will be able to get all that information on you in one go.”
Every product or service you buy from a large, national Corporation (like Tesco's in the UK) has personal info about you on file. You may have no need to ever worry that such info could ever be used against you. I don't care to take that chance.
Does that make me paranoid?
I don't think so. I like to think it just makes me aware of how much I value my personal privacy. Shouldn't I not be concerned about all this or go through all this unnecessary hassles if I have nothing to hide?
As far as I'm concerned, that's nobody's business to decide but mine.
You value your privacy? Then guard it, because the State is certainly coming for it whether you like it or not.
13 comments:
Great article.
If anything though you're underselling the invasion of our privacy, and much worse is to come soon, if it's not already here.
I mean, what difference will it make that you pay in cash, if various RFID readers glean your personal information from your driver's license, credit card, etc... when you get close enough to a reader.
So you place your wallet in a hard drive bag, which shields such information, but biometric cameras on every corner coordinate with license plate reading traffic cameras and other such stuff.
If you truly value your privacy, you have to go to more primitive surroundings that don't have money to finance all this crap. Great excuse to emigrate to a tropical locale if you can afford it, or perhaps the pampas of Argentina.
Just in time for your article is this from the Boston Herald:
New rules issued by the Obama administration “allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.”
Yes, anonymity is effectively over. I wouldn't say *privacy* is over yet, in the sense that we don't yet have cameras in our houses, or an implanted microchip that record everything we say or every time we pee, but I'm sure there are those who want that.
All of this is why I'm a great proponent of starving the beast by becoming as self-sufficient as possible, so you can live on a lower taxable income, rather than trying to achieve conventional success. The machinery of modern society wants to own you in three different ways:
1. Economically, through use of the Federal Reserve, taxation, social security, etc...
2. Medically, obviously through the consistent centralization of everything medical
3. Nutritionally, via the industrial food supply.
In each of these, there has been a concerted effort to make us dependent. For #1 we are dependent on easy credit and willingly sign our lives away, #2 we eagerly accept every promise that some new medication will cure the health problems brought on by lives of sloth and bad eating (50% of Americans are on some medication), and #3 of course dependent on ever-more-convenient means of getting a glucose rush through our veins, or some empty promise of health through fad diet foods.
So the obvious way to fight that is to make as little money as possible, and live as much by your own hand as possible. Buy furniture and tools second-hand via cash, garden, raise chickens or other livestock if you have room, learn how to do without most of the modern conveniences like disposable razors, shaving cream, shampoos, over-the-counter medications, vitamins, etc... learn how to live as healthily as possible without the usual medical interventions we see all around us. If you get away from the idiocy, it is amazing how little of the modern crap of life you need.
While technology has brought us plenty of evil, it has given us easy access to an amazing amount of information about how to do all of the above--in come cases incredibly more efficiently than has been thought possible.
You're publishing a blog.
We already know everything we need to know about you.
You can get "club" cards at grocery stores without storing personal data most of the time. Just tell them you want the card, but that you don't have time to fill out the personal information. They'll say, "That's fine, just bring it back filled out when you can."
I used a club card for a year this way without ever giving them any information.
The heads of "your" CIA said earlier this year, "we can now listen to you through your appliances". No doubt part of the "smart"(spy) grid. Not allowing smart meters also works.
Benjamin Franklin said "Those who give up liberty for security, will get neither". He may have also said they don't deserve neither.
Good post HL
It is very worrisome as technology is making the absolute slavery of every person on the planet a very real possibility. "Person of Interest" isn't just a TV show. It is imperative that we produce more engineers, programmers, and inventors to create effective counters to the government's powers of information gathering. Very soon dropping out won't be an option. The system must be destroyed or neutralized or else Orwell's worst nightmare will be a pleasant daydream.
I pray that God would not allow it, but his history seems to be to allow us to suffer from our mistakes.
Not to rain on your parade but the idea of police surveillance for 99% of their work is to ELIMINATE suspects from the list. Closed circuit TV cameras and other methods prove INNOCENCE too.
I have no problem with the state of privacy today; the gov't can legislate anything it wants but until it can enforce it - it is just posturing by politicians - and I keep a damned close eye on them too.
The answer is simple, boys. Buy guns. Buy them for your family. If America's military and law enforcement turned on it's citizens, they have enough firepower to send them all to hell along with their ass hats in the brass.
Stock up on ammo too.
JM
'Any government that doesn't trust anybody ought not be trusted by anybody.'---Lysander Spooner
It should be obvious to anyone that personal, private information in public hands has only one possible use: to be used against the people whose information it is.
The Onion did a video where the CIA was grateful for people putting ALL their info into Facebook. Not so satirical now.
"If you MUST have a social media profile, fill it full of false or ambiguous information...especially use a fake name."
Creepy thing about facebook is I used a fake name but I can't register because facebook knows its not my real name.
all possible, use cash for your purchases. Try and stick to stores and farmer's markets where a "club" card is not required, for as many purchases as you possibly can. If you must, try and use other people's club cards and pay with cash. I have the club cards from several deceased friends and family that I use whenever I shop at such stores. cara memperbaiki laptop
Thank For Information
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