With data mining and cookies from websites becoming common knowledge, the issue of privacy not being private anymore concerns most people and would drive some of them up a wall. From my perspective, I have these things to share: the government has been gathering our personal information since post WWII, the Patriot Act after 9/11 is a policy that granted access to this black hole for the 21st century, and you don't need to feel like a vulnerable victim when you participate.
"An Intranet is a company's private data network that uses Internet standards and technology.13 The information on an Intranet—data, graphics, video, and voice—is available only inside the organization or to those individuals whom the organization deems as appropriate participants. Thus, a key difference between the Internet and an Intranet is that security software programs, or “firewalls,” are installed to limit access to only those employees authorized to enter the system. Intranets then serve as secure knowledge portals that contain substantial amounts of organizational memory and can integrate it with information from outside sources."
Since WWII ended and the baby boomer generation it should be no shock that this group of people, who control most of the government and election ballots, are the ones driving the steering wheel of wanting to know who's around them. A paranoid bunch of old people in Congress, reminding the youngsters of how not knowing who your enemy could be, may have sparked a concern of wanting to know more about the private life of others. If I saw Hitler, I might be a bit scared as well.
"Cookies, in computer terminology, are small data files that record a user's Web usage history. If a person looks up a weather report by keying in a zip code into a personalized Web page, the fact that the user visited the Web site and the zip code entered are recorded in the cookie. This is a clue that tells where the person lives (or maybe where he or she may be planning to visit)."
This activity on escalated and became public after the 9/11 terrorist attacks by Al Quaida, who was at the time lead by Osama Bin Ladin. Though the US tensions between this organization began in the late 1970s with the first President Bush (George W. Bush), it really hit home when the World Trade Center was attacked. With the second President Bush (George H.W. Bush) passing the Patriot Act, out of rash fear, what we deal with today at a micro level (like website cookies and having to choose incognito windows) is the end result of a strain of fear and tension from US enemy countries.
"Data and information can be delivered to consumers or other end users via either pull technology or push technology. Conventionally, consumers request information from a Web page and the browser then determines a response. Thus, the consumer is essentially asking for the data. In this case, it is said to be pulled through the channel. The opposite of pull is push. Push technology sends data to a user's computer without a request being made."
What it's developed into today and how detailed it is, as the WSJ article has entailed, it is no mistake that it's quite dangerous having such information of you being sold without your knowledge. There is a reason why Facebook was sued by the US Government $17 billion for privacy invasion for the sake of advertising. If that doesn't scream that you are a product, then I don't know what will. How I feel about it is that the government listening into our personal lives is not new and very out of our control. And honestly, the only way to get rid of this problem is by eliminating the Patriot Act, on which a decision will be made in June 2015 of if this type of activity should resume or cease.
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