Wifey B: It's all a matter of who has access and who doesn't. In March, 2000, I relinquished all privacy to a couple of government agencies and my future (at that time, but now present) hubby had to follow suit as it was a cost of being with me. Also meant some risk to his life. Regardless of administrations, the ground roots people you deal with have continued to do their duty the same way.
It's scary but having the good guys monitor you is preferable to the bad guys getting you. We only have direct contact now once a year, but they could be monitoring this post or my next phone call for all I know. I know they monitored heavily in the first few years as they'd remark about something I'd done or someone I'd talked to. Even when we moved to Fort Lauderdale and bought a boat, the next day we get a call to check on us and a comment on how beautiful our boat we bought yesterday is and our name was nowhere on the purchase so clearly they saw us. These are incredible people I'd trust, well, I did trust with my life. Yet, especially during the early years, I had to remain very protective of my privacy otherwise.
The points are:
1. The powers to track you they have are amazing and even more so with facial recognition today. Even then though, some had it, hence my reason for never having a photo online. Anything you imagine can be done, I assure you it can be.
2. The information in the right hands can be what protects you and protects us all. There have been terrorists on trains stopped at the destination and arrested before they could do anything, businesses shut down because they were fronts, and murderers caught in amazing ways.
3. The information in the wrong hands is terrifying. I often thought if the good guys saw this, what about the bad guys. I never saw a sign of the bad guys after going for help and to help as I had to trust the good guys to watch and take care of them. I'd get updates on them feeling the risk was lessened and feeling now it's virtually non-existent. Still I always thought if the people wanting me dead had been doing what the people protecting me were, then could have been the end of me.
As a society, a civilization (although I'm using that word very loosely), as a world, we weren't prepared for this age of technology. We didn't understand it's potential. We didn't move quickly enough to manage it. Decisions were made to allow most anything to transpire as we rejected thoughts of regulation. I think now we're understanding there must be limits, but we have no idea how to put the right limits in place. All the privacy policies in the world aren't accomplishing anything. We need cyber security we don't have, that we haven't even yet imagined. And somehow we need that while maintaining freedoms to a reasonable, but not unlimited extent. Freedom of speech was never unlimited. The most used example was you couldn't yell "Fire" in a crowded theater. Yet, now people are yelling "fire" on a world stage and people and companies are tracking your every move online. I grew up loving cookies, especially chocolate chip, but now I fear what information is being stored in cookies. Pilou's in a field constantly concerned. If I end up in ER I'd love for them to know my entire medical history, although it's quite boring. But then we've had to put in all sorts of laws to keep the information protected and that's only a fantasy we have. The horse hasn't just left the barn, it's run miles out of the gate. Somehow we must figure this out. Another simple example is your bank. They must have information. Easy to say no third parties, but suddenly your bank is owned or owns and all these you might have thought were third parties are the same organization. And that's what has happened to WhatsApp.
