Well now that technology “allows” me to whip out a cell phone to pay my cell phone bill while waiting in the dentist’s office this “convienience comes at a price. It is apparently so convienient most of the internet connected world has their hand in your pocketbook. For a price these two companies will ask the question for you, “Did I Steal Myself”.
http://www.lifelock.com/
https://www.identitytruth.com/…
Now the added bonus in all this is secondary. They are getting you to pay to advance the science of data mining.
http://www.commondreams.org/he…
http://www.noahshachtman.com/a…
http://csdl2.computer.org/pers…
And you thought FISA was bad?
Anyway I think it just illustrates the principle of how some retarded ideas come to be institutionalized. People are trusting their most intimate details by loading them into a toy, a toy which has to “update” itself every five minutes because there is a “security alert”. And no, I don’t know anyone in Nigeria so I do not believe their government owes me 10 million dollars, Oh, and I don’t have an account with Bank of America.
OK, so you might say big deal, I’m not doing anything illegal so I don’t have a care right? Required homework assignment. Study fully this site. Click on it associated links, peruse the content and absorb the true evil.
Yes the three links starting with the commondreams one have been historized. Well when I learned Boston was getting it’s very own bio-safety level 4 lab there were many sites about the dangers of ebola but as time marched on in this era of Homeboy Security they magically disappeared.
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p>All three of these middle links spoke out against a DARPA project called Life Log. Life Log consisted of electronically cataloging as much of a human life and as intrusively as possible. I can only imagine the AI computer intelligence military possibilities in this.
I was told this DARPA project was “shelved”, I doubt that and even so private industry can do so much better without all that pesky oversight nonsense.
http://www.autonomy.com
…there is a web site called “memory hole” that purports to archive a number of pages that are likely to be deleted. Frankly, the google cache does, too.
Paying bills, making reservations, buying concert and opera tickets and so forth, via cell phone, have been available in, for example Finland (home of Nokia) for years. I would not do that unless there is at least 128 bit encryption, and probably not even then.
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p>I prefer the old-fashioned method: Bargeld (cash money) or at least paper checks. That is what they do in Germany. When my mother-in-law needs to pay a bill, she goes up to the bank, fills out an Ueberweisung (money transfer authorization) to the benefit of the merchant, and voila!, the money is transferred directly from her account to the merchant’s. No Social Security number involved. When we’re over in Germany, we pay for everything in Bar.
Hold onto your cash and your RIGHT to pay only in cash. Electronic transfers, credit cards, debit cards all associate you with what was purchased, when, where, how, thus building a marketing database straight to your door.
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p>The problem comes when the majority accept these things and merchants start refusing to take cash money. Not long ago paychecks mean receiving a real physical piece of paper, not so anymore. What I earn is electronically available on the company net. That makes my life LESS secure, and a retarded/Satanic/destruction of America type theme in my book. Little things still mean alot to me, it’s the principle involved. In Germany the banks can transfer money, here in America anybody can do it. That brings up the need for a company who will “protect” you.