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Activism: Big Brother
See also:
Cyber Rights,
Privacy,
Cypherpunks and
Ban Spam
In this age of information, personal information (information about a
person) is becoming at once more prevalent and more valuable.
Information about the average person in the United States is entered into
17 databases (pre-web figure from November 1994) including:
- Credit card
- Bank
- DMV
- Store (from store creditcards or credit card payments for goods)
- Federal, state & local government
- Magazine subscription lists
Using these databases, anyone interested (e.g., the Direct Marketing
Association, the FBI, etc.) can determine a huge amount about a person by
indexing this information according to (e.g.):
- where a person lives
- what magazines she reads
- what stores she frequents and products she purchases
- where she goes on vacation
Further, anyone participating on the Internet is also noted on an
uncountable number of databases, including ones such as:
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Alta Vista (web pages)
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Amazon.com (buying habits)
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DoubleClick (cross web site tracking)
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Engage (agregate user profiling)
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I/Pro (user statistics)
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www.dejanews.com (newsgroups)
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reference.com (mailing lists)
This speed, accuracy, and quantity of this information collection is
increasing at an alarming rate. Truly, Big Brother is nigh.
More links of interest:
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AdCop.org - useful anti-spyware site
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BigBrotherInside.org - Intel PIII processors with ID tracking
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DisInfo.org
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George Orwell Links
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NegativeUtopia.org
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