…when I want it, not when someone else wants it.These days we live in a world which is increasingly governed by what companies and governments want us to do for them. Every day we have our freedom infringed by privacy invasions and having to deal with companies owning stuff that altered the in the public domain. They monitor our phones; they monitor our web traffic down to the most minute details, and they govern the choices we have in our daily lives. Yet our choices are freedom. Therefore these companies are limiting freedom to what they deem to be appropriate for them. This must end.
Examples of companies who are lamenting the way we can exercise their freedom are banks, death companies like filmmakers software makers and ISPs. In some ways they are like new governments, they have the right to determine what you can do with their platform while at the same time being dependent on those platforms for performing your daily tasks and for your interactions with others in the broadest sense of the word (communications, payments, etc).
Today marks the day that the new Telecom Law becomes applicable in the Netherlands. It already has forced me to abandon one site which forced its users to give up all its private data in order to continue to function. After a discussion with the operators of that site I was thrown out for being a nasty ass who complained too much. The aforementioned case is a perfect example of how companies are not willing to deal with people more complaining too much because they feel that their rights are infringed. While the operator of the site I just mentioned felt compelled to do this because of the law and a lack of means to update his site, companies like Facebook and Google are infringing on a large scale by design. I find it very troublesome that I cannot evade these companies altogether because they have a dominant position in today’s markets when it comes to interacting with other people. Google has almost cornered the search market, and finding a good alternative is very hard. (I haven’t found a good alternative to Google yet) they do not want to comply because it hurts their business potential. I find it very disturbing that I cannot opt out and that my government is not backing me in this. The new Telecom all his posts do this, but it has so many loopholes that basically leaves the current practice intact. I hate it.
just as a banks forcing us to use certain technologies because it is cheaper for them while at the same time it is more cumbersome for us if we choose not to participate in the way they want us to. Cash is being outlawed more or less. The last few years there are many voices from the banking sector saying that we should abandon cash and make everything digital, which to me means traceable. If I choose to go off the grid I want to be able to.
In this digital age, going off the grid and erasing your traces is becoming impossible. The companies running the world in this digital age are taking away our freedom, and they’re replacing it with their own controlling grasp instead.
The government is even worse in this respect: They steal the right to be private at our own will though the power of law, such as the wide scale evesdropping that is happening in the interest of so called “public safety” which they are intrinsically incapable of providing in the first place because everyone knows they’re being evesdropped, and therefore the bad guys have inventive scemes to avoid sharing their info with everyone.
It is time for us as consumers and citizens to take back what was ours he first place: our freedom to choose and our privacy if we choose not to share. It is time for services like diaspora and open and privacy safe search to