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Comment by fetbaffe | Hacker News Reader

My Ghostery browser addon reports that blog has 18 trackers. I guess tracking is a one way street then.

There is a gulf of a difference between a private business tracking its users and customers for business purposes, which you may opt out of by not dealing with said business, and your government tracking its citizens for criminal purposes, which you don't have the option of electing out of.

Where have you been the past few weeks? The US government uses private business to track people.

Surely you're not suggesting that the government's secret tracking weapon is Google Analytics. The tracking that the government is doing is not going to be visible to or blockable by end users. But hey, if it makes you feel safe, use ghostery and clear your cookies every hour. There's no way they can track you then!

Illicit tracking by the government is a definite problem. I think that even in these times, you have to have your tinfoil hat on a little too tight to think that advertising cookies are the bogeyman here.

Did I say it was the only tracking method they use? Of course the US government also uses non-blocking techniques like wire tapping, snooping, hacking etc.

However, today Google has all the information about users that the US government can use as a good complement to an already vast spying organization.

Google has information about your emails, friends, search queries, page you visit, documents and files you store, clips you watch, medical records etc.

Are you telling me that the US government is not interested in this information and the reports of NSA plugging its system into private businesses was just a hoax?

Is the secret FISA hearings just tin foil bait?

I cannot speak for the OP, but it seems entirely clear to me that one of the government's secret tracking weapons is by acquiring access to data collected by facebook, google and every other US company out there.

Are you suggesting that this is not the case? that seems to me to be a remarkable conclusion to draw?

Surely you're not suggesting that the government and corporate interests are completely unrelated, and no money ever goes back and forth for good or services?

Wasn't it Google that optimized the NSA datacenters as early as 2005? I think its safe to assume that many of Google analytics' bigger customers are not corporate. Not to mention, of course, Google Earth which was developed with CIA money... but also needed some optimization (read, better developers). I am pretty sure that Google Earth was not a loss leader for the company ;)

I think that, amazingly in these times, you're sucking down your naivety cool aid a little too plaicidly to think that advertising cookies are not the optimal tracking method for both corp and govt.

While I agree that there is a "gulf of difference" between tracking people by private business and by the NSA, I trust private business much less than I trust the NSA.

And I trust the NSA barely at all.

Most users don't realize they are being tracked, and it's not trivial to opt out of it in any case.

Such web sites can not arrest, render, kidnap, or torture me. The US gov can. I get a little icon telling me when and how I'm being tracked by websites, I do not have one that tells me the NSA is tracking me.

Somewhere in there is a bit of a difference.

Of course it is. That is why the US government goes to the private company to get your information instead of going to you directly, because that would be a violation of privacy.

The economic model for this is called corporatism, which incidentally is the same as for fascism.

Depends on the site. Talk to Steve Jackson. Or Aaron Swartz (better hire a psychic, he's dead). Or Weev.

And if you think that private companies and/or web sites didn't play a huge role in any of the above cases ... well, you and I inhabit different universes.

As others have pointed out: private companies can collect and/or process information that governments uses. They're also susceptible to hacking by government or rogue agents: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Apple have all been targeted by Chinese government-related hackers (mostly looking for Faulun Gong and Tibetian activists).

Other companies such as Cisco simply hand over the tools authoritarian states request.

Indeed, but to be fair those are standard for dailydot pages, I don't think they have a way for an author to opt out of the tracking for any specific page.

How many of them read your email?

Hopefully zero, however everyone of them uses cookies and when I do read my email or use some other confidential service I can be sure that trackers is included there as well. That is how it works.

google/google analyitics does

before sombody mentions that its not reading your email if an automatic script does it, that sounds suspiciously like the argument that the NSA is not intercepting communications until they are viewed.

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