Is online privacy dead?

I don't know.  But if it is, it had already died well before Google announced its new privacy policy, set to take effect March 1.  And if it's not, I don't think we're all going to look back on March 1, 2012 as the day when we lost our footing and rolled all the way to the bottom of the slippery slope.  

I'm not saying that Google isn't fucked up.  Their hollow "Don't be evil" motto has long made me roll my eyes (Were we really to believe that they'd be any more or less evil than any other big, rich company?), and their cutesy PR campaign coinciding with the announcement of the new privacy policy made me nauseous on the subway to work the other day. 

I'm not crazy about the personal data gathering that Google (and lots of other companies) does, but I've found a couple articles making good arguments that my life is not going to get that much worse when Google flips the switch on March 1 and, importantly, that all the hubbub surrounding the issue is bullshit. 

I have a pet theory that when a scientifically or technically complex issue (and perhaps others) starts to get major public attention and politicians start to grandstand about it, there will soon be (if there isn't already) such a shitstorm of soundbites, sensationalism and open warfare between competing agendas that reaching a facts-in-their-proper-context-based consensus on the most efficient and effective way to address the issue - or even a reasonably efficient and effective way - will be damn near an impossibility.   And this is irrespective of whether or not the issue is actually that big a deal in reality.  


So there you have my standard "I don't know the answer, but I do know that I wish eternal damnation upon those who are self-servingly turning this into a total clusterfuck" mantra.


Online privacy is an issue that does concern me and that I've done a lot to learn about over the last year or so, so I will return to it again later.  In the meantime, if you want to start to learn about how to exert some control over the information collected about you online, I suggest you begin with this article on search engine privacy, and for more information - both policy and practical - on a broad array of related issues, check out the Privacy, Internet Freedom and Cyber Security section of my online resources page.