(2013)

I keep seeing posts from people ranting and raving about NSA spying…which is worth ranting and raving about, except that they are doing their ranting and raving on Facebook. Not that there’s any other way to rant and rave anymore (unless you can tweet and rave it in 140 characters). But there’s the irony… The Facebook collective community seem to believe deep down that Facebook is essentially a social network, but actually Facebook is the world’s greatest personal information gathering machine ever. Hence its colossal financial value. And no matter how much you think the NSA knows about you, Facebook and everyone who data mines its collected data know much more about you. Every single time you do anything on Facebook, even reading this very paragraph (this was originally a post), is additional data for Facebook that can be data mined by anyone. You are already being spied on. I don’t believe the NSA is actually spying on you through your computer..I believe that all they are doing is accessing the Facebook database and all the other databases that you have poured information into through registration, profile information, key words, liking and not liking, surveys, tags, online purchases, online browsing, online banking, online photos, comments, searches, MapQuest info, emailing, texting, you name it. There is scarcely a keystroke you make on your keyboard that does not show up in someone’s database. Data mining is one of the most sophisticated technologies the Internet industry has yet developed, and it only gets more sophisticated and refined. If any of you saw a profile of yourself based on the data obtained through  your internet usage you would be astounded at how much like you it is. And as far as the Internet is concerned, that profile is more you than you are.

Even if not everything I said here is happening right now, it almost certainly and imminently will be. The technology is so advanced. There will soon be a time when every commercial you see on your cable TV, every ad you see online when you open a website, and even junk snail mail and sales and fundraising calls will be personalized per a profile developed through extremely sophisticated data mining of your registration and online activity. It’s already started. The Obama campaign’s data mining was so sophisticated the Romney campaign had no idea what hit them. There ain’t a marketer in the country that failed to notice that one.

It seems to me that when you all entered the virtual world of the Internet, you gave up your selves. Not your corporeal self, but your virtual self. And your virtual self is far more important right now than your real self. You are what you type. And Facebook, the NSA and anyone else who has access to you online knows it. Including every law enforcement organization that has access to the internet. That is how they spy on you. They don’t have to ask you a damn thing. You already told them. And those are the entities that can reach right through the Internet and pick up your corporeal self and toss it in jail, or at least keep it off airliners. Your corporeal self may never hurt anybody, threaten anybody, or be anything but nice, but your digital self may have done something suspicious, somehow. And it’s too late to do anything about it now.

Sleep well.