[Jilaris]

I understand why some people can be upset, but when i think about what I enter into websites... are people really under the impression the government doesn't have this data?

The government knows my credit card numbers, they know where I live, they know how much I make, etc. They don't give two shits that I bought new racketball glasses yesterday on Amazon, and they really, really don't care that I posted a new picture on facebook.

It seems to me the people who are really upset with this bill are the people doing the illegal activity. Everyone is torn on the whole pirating issue (probably because they love consuming for free), but the fact is that it's still illegal in the US. I imagine the opponents of this saying "Oh, well, look at these rights they're taking away from us!!" while they've got six torrents in the background in an attempt to distract from the point.

[Jach]

See: "'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy": http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565

[Jilaris]

I had a long post that talked about this paper, which you may or may not still be able to see. If not, I'm replacing it with a much shorter version:

A 28 page PDF, which is single column, and takes up about 25% of a page is an absolute joke. To think this has actually been deemed a "book" is outrageous. Also, it's padded with comments he received on HIS BLOG. He references fiction novels to prove points, and he generally skirts the question.

I read the whole thing, which honestly seemed like it had no real point, and I still say (as a business intel guy): No company- no entity care about me or you unless we do something very wrong. We're so full of ourselves thinking "The government is going to read my e-mails!" The fuck they will; in the grand scheme of things, your e-mails are as important as goose shit.

As I'm reading this PDF I get the feeling the author is under the impression that for every person on the planet there are two more in a backroom somewhere just following his life. We all need to get over ourselves. We're just not that important.