Joseph Cannon - June 20, 2009

After I wrote this diatribe against social networking tools, I decided to put matters to the test. More at less at random, I picked out the MySpace page of a young woman I’ve never met, who lives in another state. The goal: Find out everything I could about her, using the info on that page plus Google and some elementary-my-dear-Watson deduction. Every technique I used was quite legal.

Within about half an hour, I had this girl’s entire life. I had her real name, her many photos, her place of work, her life history, her parents, her family, her home address, a picture of her front porch (by way of Google Maps Street View), her favorite drink, her schooling, her religious views, her tastes in the arts, her ambitions, her complete itinerary for that day — and of course (since all of America’s daughters nowadays feel compelled to present like mandrills), her measurements, kinks and fellatio depth. But I didn’t get her telephone number, so don’t ask for it.

For half a century, people have fretted about governmental theft of our privacy. That may no longer be a worry. Why should Uncle Sam steal something we’re willing to give away?

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Tags: Surveillance Society

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Big Brother. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.