Thread:JoshuaFlynn/@comment-5122856-20140208172847/@comment-24459455-20140208204020

Whipsnade wrote: I get your point. The corporations get involved, primarily for government grants, but also as a kickback because they get part of your data, which can then be sold on to insurers, advertisers, financial companies (banks, loans, etc) and third parties (ever get those relentless spam text messages and phone calls? Those kinds of people). What they do with it isn't necessarily regulated. For example, insurance companies could blackball you based on some history of yours - a type of discrimination - but because you don't know it's occurring you can't prove it's happening.

And don't think an FOI would solve information discrimination because FOIs have limits in the document you are requesting has to be reasonably searchable: which means, if like in the foreclosure fraud cases they transfer the documents to a difficult-to-reach or undocumented, 'off-the-record' warehouse or location (which various companies and government organisations have done), then it becomes 'unreasonable' to search for the document and thus they can deny the FOI, and who is going to hold the government to account for government wrongdoing? (Bearing in mind it took Edward Snowden's leaks because the US and UK government weren't upfront about their own wrongdoing).

So, this is my verbal way of saying google is complicit, as is most, as is microsoft (you may wish to revise why Microsoft required the Kinnect - an oversized microphone and camera - to be obligatorily connected to the internet every 24 hours - note, since Edward Snowden's leaks they reversed this but why isn't it the console that has to be connected? Why the camera and microphone? Why was it even an implemented idea in the first place? Coders aren't cheap).

Counters to google?

www.startpage.com - uses google but claims to obscure information (IE it acts as a proximity between you and google).

www.duckduckgo.com - similar but it offers additional privacy.

I wouldn't recommend TOR. It was developed by the US navy. Bearing in mind the NSA built backdoors into encryption algorithms and built things like encryption SHA-256 used in bitcoin, so in all probability TOR carries the same or similar vulnerability.