The Privacy Project
 

The New York Times is running this series on privacy in the digital age. Interesting--and scary--how minutely our movements can be tracked through smart phone pings. Combine that with facial recognition, stir in a little AI, and you have the ability to surveil the activities of the populace. Imagine if OJ's phone had pinged from that courtyard at the time the killings took place.

From the first part:

Modern data surveillance relies on the ease of gathering but also the capacity to analyze giant sets of numbers. Run a set of numbers through a computer and the data becomes far more personal and invasive. Data points become a diary. A cluster of pings inside a secure facility reveals clues to the secretive role of an aerospace engineer. Visits to places of worship, trips to Planned Parenthood, a late-night visit to a bail bondsman — all collected in perpetuity and logged forever to be analyzed, traded and monetized. Each mark of latitude and longitude tells the story of the triumphs and tribulations of a life.

Americans would never consent to a government directive that all citizens carry a device that broadcast, in real time, their physical location and archived that information in repositories that could be shared among powerful, faceless institutions. Instead, Americans have been lulled into doing it voluntarily by misleading companies.

Orwell was truly genius.

Indeed he was. But there are a few tricks even he didn't think of.

So, the FBI and Vlad Putin know I walked from the garage to the chicken barn about 50 times today. I hope my boring life clogs their computers with trivia.