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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

Anymore, it seems prudent to simply assume that if you use the internet at all, all of the details about you are available to determined individuals, public or private. Even details you've never consciously given out over the internet are available to those with the power and desire to infer from your browsing datasets (see: Target and the pregnant daughter).

Someone, please tell me I'm wrong.

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I'm afraid it's much worse than that, even. You don't even need to use the internet.

You can be walking down the street and an hour later, unbeknownst to you, your picture makes it to the front page of reddit. It could be that you were skipping work that day, and told your boss you were sick. Or perhaps picking up an engagement ring.

This sort of free-for-all will only get worse as technologies like Google Glass and the so-called "Internet of Things" become mainstream. Your life is now a commodity for internet voyeurism and, possibly, witch hunts.

The tech is ripe for turning citizens against citizens. "Turn in your neighbor for un-American activities" sort of stuff.

And it follows that if you build internet technology, you are also building surveillance infrastructure.

Somehow, people were able to convince users that something on the internet could be secure. Nothing on the internet is secret, that's not what the internet is for.

You are not wrong sadly. There are too many leaky apps, platforms, and technologies.

You are dead on.

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