Choosing not to use a technology - impossible?

[iron_jones]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Here is another really good short article on this topic (in a way, mostly it focuses on surveillance by technology, but it also explains that one can hardly avoid this technology) by famous security technologist Bruce Schneier:

Opinion: The Internet is a surveillance state - CNN.com

Basically it says that evedn if you, under great expense and social/economic cost manage to get rid of most of the technologies that can be used to track you, it is next to impossible to become completely free and unsurveilled, as other people will still help to track you. As he said - Orwells fictional dictators would be proud of this...

There's a difference between surveillance and being tracked. Unless there's a reason for someone to be keeping tabs on you other than choosing what advertisements you see on your side bars, no one cares about you. People use this technology to catch people sharing child pornography and other illegal activities. You think anyone gives a **** if you're on Tree Of Souls?

[Moco Loco]

I think it's a matter of principle for some people, but I don't feel that way and completely agree.

[auroraglacialis]

No, Jones, this is not a difference if the data is stored, as such data can at any time be resurrected and used for any purpose. The data does not care if it is used in a relatively harmless but annoying way as selling advertisements or if the police uses it to track criminal activity or some malovelent state or agency uses it to control the public in some ways. Do you really think, if there would be a widespread demand of the US or European public for a deep change in the political or economic system - as it was in the "Arab Spring" - that this data would not be used against "dissidents"? Or that that data is not in part already used against people who demand more democracy or want to organize against corporate power, fossil fuels etc? Or do you think if for some reason the government in any country turns into an openly fascist regime, they would not use it to root out opposition? In fact in some of the North Aftican countries that happened and facebook acoounts and profiles were used to identify and then arrest protesters. Anyone from Hitler to Stalin or the famous East German "STASI" would have loved to have this ability. They would not have needed to send spies and state employees to surveil the citizens - its all nicely automated. The internet in the hands of large corporations are an Orwellian nightmare - and make no mistake - most of the internet is part of corporate structures. Youtube, facebook, twitter, wordpress and blogspot and of course google and skype... The relative usage of really free webspace is IMO in decline. Besides - with google ads and facebook like-buttons they factually have access to the visitors of these sites as well if the blogger or forum puts them on the page.

So it is not about who would care about what I do now on ToS or not. But lets say at some time there is an act of sabotage near where I live and police investigates, they may find out that a video of the incident was posted on youtube by a user that can be tracked to a user account in a forum which was linked to a facebook account with photos of the real person. Then that persons cellphone is looked at and it happens that he was sitting for an hour in the same cafe as I did, traceable from my own cellphone records. Then the police looks at my facebook account and finds that I post in this forum and that I seem to have radical ideas, making it worthwile to take a look at my home sometime. This is a bit far fetched? Maybe it is - because I dont have facebook - But seriously something similar happened to some people in Berlin some years ago and I think this is pretty scary. And that is only a case derived from misunderstanding and a possibly illegal act. But what if that act would be the ethical thing to do, like a protest against an unjust war in Vietnam, but it would officially be illegal because people involved defected from the military or did not get a permit for the demonstration - the way the internet works nowadays in many cases makes it far too easy to track and arrest these people beforehand. I would say that if these structures would have been in place in the 1960ies already, the opposition against the Vietnam war would not have been as large and effective as they were and they may not have spurred the hippie movement and the ecological movement because much of what people did back then was considered illegal by those in power at that time.