blog 10 – They’re Listening

Upon the recent repeal of a monumental policy in the net neutrality war with the government and ISPs, the policy which protected our (the customers) data from being sold to other companies for a monetary gain.Now, the ISPs will be able to sell peoples data in bulk to the highest bidder and we cant do anything about it at the moment. There options that can protect us from being directly spied on and monitored such as having a VPN, being on TOR, or creating false traffic in which they can’t tell what websites we actually visited or if it was just generated randomly which renders the data pointless.

By creating ‘noise’ they cannot use the ‘real’ data because it will be so hard to identify with the fake blot-data thus making both you individually, and collectively harder to analyze us. This i think is a great idea and only helps more and more if everybody, who is not using TOR or a VPN, would use it because it would render the policy being repealed null. The simple idea that the government is ok with ISPs selling off the citizens personal data is extremely concerning. A simply research on who passed this repeal brings up the votes, and to no surprise all were republicans in which were donated by these ISPs such as Time Warner Cable, Comcast, etc. which ‘helped’ them make this decision to pass the repeal. This brings up another huge ethical dilemma on the simple grounds of if this counts as bribery as well as if it is morally ok for these people. My opinion is that it is simple greed and turning the blind eye to the common man and his struggles. People vote blindly for these people and I simply can’t fathom why even. It hurts me to see this country deteriorate like this to the point where facts become pointless because it is simply whoever is shouting the loudest. I digress, this plugin nonetheless i see as a great tool to combat the control of our lives and will not feed the big companies as well as be another source to black mail easier in such cruel ways.