Never fear all the huge government programs to spy against you, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says. You can 
keep your privacy… just so long as you don’t include the idea of privacy within your definition of privacy.
Does that not quite make sense? Well, just catch the way that the Associated Press describes the redefinition of privacy going on over in the Bush Administration:
“Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, a deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people’s private communications and financial information.”
Let’s try to understand what Donald Kerr is saying. He says that you don’t have the right to keep the government from knowing about your private activities (what you buy, who you talk to, and what you say) any more. Rather, Kerr says that you should only have the right to be confident that, after the government has spied on your private life and assembled whatever it finds out about your private life into a giant database, they’ll keep that information from then being stolen by someone else.
It’s kind of like redefining robbery so that it’s not a crime for people to steal your property, just so long as they then keep it safe from being stolen by somebody else.
If we don’t have the right to keep government and big corporations anymore from spying on the details of our private lives any more, what kind of privacy will Donald Kerr and his colleagues in the collection of spy agencies coordinated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence allow us to keep?
(Source: Associated Press, November 11, 2007)
I was in the Walgreen’s yesterday getting a print cartridge refilled, when the clerk asked me for my zip code. I told her I didn’t want to give it to her because you never know where that information will end up..After all, the government is secretly collecting information on people who use the library.
She informed me–icy cold–that people were using the library to make bombs.
What about this, Irregular Times? I work two blocks away from a library and I pass several libraries every day. Now I’m getting scared. Are these libraries going to blow up? Are they collecting information in the Walgreens too? Is the Walgreens going to blow up?
The print cartridge didn’t work.
If people are really using all those libraries to make bombs, where are all the bombs?
Also, I’d like to know how a person can use a zip code to make a bomb.
There’s another one for the 2008 reasons list in this.
That’s a pretty good answer, but I’m afraid I was just so dumbfounded I went and got some chocolate.
Then she asked for my name–sometimes they page you if you are waiting for photos, and when I gave it to her she told me my address. As if to say WE HAVE A FILE ON YOU. WE ARE WATCHING YOU. I had a sudden impulse to curse her out in Arabic, but restrained myself. I know it was just a case of some petty person wanting to act important, but it creeped me out a little. As if now it’s the cool thing to spy on people so we’re going to do it too. Just like now it’s cool to wear camo without a good reason.
Ah yes, the devolution of civilization continues apace.
Sorry to hear about your soon-to-be normal experience at Walgreens, Iroquois, but it’s been going on since people have used credit cards to purchase products. Of course, way back when it was simply termed “marketing” and was to be benignly accepted – as it was. So the corporate sector ramped it up a notch and now we accept cameras everywhere (including dressing rooms – so you won’t steal anything, you know . . .; highways, and street corners). Just wait ’til the water shortages hit – it’ll get real interesting then!