Hakawai
State War Academy
Caldari State
43
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Posted - 2017.01.20 06:59:46 -
[1] - Quote
Kenneth Endashi wrote:There are changes on the horizon in the USA (which are already in full effect elsewhere) that are going to necessitate the use of a VPN in the future.
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... while we are still in the relatively early days of Big Data, because the internet plays such an important role in our lives and society.
[...]
"Big Data" already works well enough to track and categorize everyone who uses the Internet. Everyone.
There are limits to the level of detail that can be saved (for example it's not currently practical to save a copy of every graphic everyone looks at), but as you say in your post - the tech gets better all the time. It's already well past any "reasonable" level of tracking of non-criminal individuals. And there's no practical way to wind it back.
BTW it's an illusion that consumer-grade VPNs (actually any consumer-grade encryption technology) are secure from Government-level surveillance.
There will probably never again be a combination of convenience and privacy available on public networks. Nor will it ever be possible to live as normal life and be anonymous on the public networks, no matter how hard you try.
A general comment based on some loose comments earlier:
Many components in network-capable consumer electronic devices have unique ids. Consumer software does not offer the possibility of hiding these unique ids from being queried and recorded. This includes multiple parts in your computers and phones, and also much of the gear that provides local wireless communication. A lot of the ISP and public network gear that private equipment connects to can provide quite accurate information about user location (both "home" and when you moving around using a mobile network.
Move, take *any* piece of equipment with a queriable unique id, and your new location it attached to all the personal data already recorded. Similarly new phone/old number has no masking effect at all, nor does new number/old phone. Or new computer/old userid, or new computer/phone old broadband connection device, or old broadband supplier.
It's not practical for normal people to "hide" or "disappear" from this. Of course it can be done in special cases, but only a tiny minority (which of course will come to include all the really dangerous people in the world, along with the more "privileged".
But it takes a lot - most people simply aren't prepared or able to ditch all of family, friends, job, every aspect of their opline identities and activities, etc.
In general, the horse has already bolted long ago, we're standing in the open stable doorway, looking at our feet, and debating whether the door is open or not. |