[victork2]

Interesting. On the other hand it shows a very American reality distortion field: the government is the main threat to privacy.

Two things:

The biggest threats are probably coming from private companies and private initiatives such as Google, Facebook because of the extent of the data they gather about you. The most worrying part about these kind of threats is that they can be kept secret and can be passed by just one manager.

These bills are backed up or even pushed by the companies mentioned in the previous point. It's not the result of some crazy politician trying to restrain your freedom on the internet but these bills are very often the result of lobbying. It's because the government is not implicated enough in the internet that this happens. Private interest with (relative) little efforts can go in this breach and push for legislation because the politicians are very mildly interested and think it's not a big deal.

If you want to win this war, it's really necessary to identify the real threats and enemies without any knee jerk reaction of typical internet crowds.

[rohern]

This is spot on. There was a certain irony to the outcry over employers demanding Facebook logins when the victims had already volunteered all of their information over to another company, Facebook.

On the other hand, these bills are disastrous and need to be beaten and destroyed with fire. The politicians behind them need to be evicted in November.

[amirmc]

> "There was a certain irony to the outcry over employers demanding Facebook logins when the victims had already volunteered all of their information over to another company, Facebook"

I understand the point but FB 'knowing' about you isn't the same as your employer 'knowing' about you. People spend time cultivating a professional persona (via CVs, how they interact with peers at work etc) and all of this could be damaged by an unsympathetic employer seeing a drunken pic on FB (which your friend probably uploaded/tagged).

It's the 'intent' that's different. FB doesn't single people out. Your employer (by asking for FB access) is explicitly singling people out.

[m_for_monkey]

"The biggest threats are [...] Google, Facebook because of the extent of the data they gather about you."

What if the government has the power to gain access to all the data gathered by Google and Facebook and every other company?

[rjsamson]

Yes - its a bit of a cultural difference - there's is a tendency in Europe for privacy to be a concern regarding private companies, but not as much regarding government, while in the US the opposite is true. There's apparently been some interesting work done on the subject - spent a bit of time on it in an information public policy class in grad school a few years back.

[yuhong]

IMO the truth varies depend on the company and country. For example, Facebook is worse than Google (which fought some of the laws listed, BTW). And China is worse than the US, thus it is not hypocrisy for the US to oppose internet censorship.

[csmeder]

Huh? The real threats are the threats you have to opt in to use?

This doesn't make sense to me. I can use DuckDuckGo if I don't want google to track me. However, I would have to gain citizenship in another country and then move there to evade the laws these bills put in place.

Laws that allow US politicians and their corporate friends to record me, suppress my free speech, and put me in prison for 5 years. A longer sentence time than the man who killed Michael Jackson (4 years). For simply sharing a music file.

Wow, am I missing something? Really, am I miss understanding what you wrote because I don't see how these bills are not the real threat? How can you say Google and FB are the real threat compared to these bills?

[Estragon]

How much does google know about you because your friends use gmail? It knows quite a lot about me.