The Piracy of Privacy - The Looting of Privacy in America

Privacy Lost (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Hector Cisneros

In case you haven't noticed, personal privacy, for the most part, does not exist anymore. Most large retail businesses have full surveillance systems. The highways and roads are replete with traffic cameras. Satellites watch all of our streets; our government is recording and storing our emails, texts, and phone conversations; and criminals are having a hack-a-thon on our computers and smart devices for fun and ill-gotten gains. Heck, if you have a smart watch on, Google knows when you go to the bathroom! In the book, and then movie, “Minority Report.” by Philip K. Dick and the popular science fiction TV show, “Continuum,” created by Simon Barry both forecast a world where government and business combine to produce a society where many freedoms and privacy issues are expensed in the name of the greater good. Unfortunately, the greater good is defined by a union of few powerful government officials, politicians and rich corporate executives.

Who’s Watching the Watchers?

By Carl Weiss

Courtesy of Flickr

Like him or loathe him, Edward Snowden let the cat out of the bag when he revealed that the NSA was using digital surveillance including phone and internet monitoring of millions of Americans.  While some people label him a traitor, others including Rep. Justin Amash(R-Mich.) call him a whistleblower. The Michigan Republican himself admitted that were it not for Snowden’s revelations, Congress as well as the public was in the dark as to the breadth and scope of the NSA’s nefarious activities.

What Does the Public’s Uncontrollable App-etite Mean to You?

By Carl Weiss

“There’s an app for that.” How many times have we all heard that phrase during the past couple of years? Allow me to put it into better perspective for you. During the last week of 2011, 1.2 billion apps were downloaded, with 242 million apps being downloaded on Christmas day alone. While that number may seem staggering, it is even more so when one considers that less than 11 billion apps were downloaded in all of 2010. Add to that the fact that it is predicted that the number of mobile apps offered by companies will increase by a factor of 10 in 2012, and it is clear that the public’s App-etite is clearly uncontrollable.