Dragnet Nation

A lengthy excerpt from Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance by Julia Angwin, Pulitzer Prize winner, WSJ biz and tech writer, and now an investigative reporter for Pro Publica :
 Here’s How You May Already Be Getting Hacked

It's one thing to take for granted that we are all now being tracked via our cel phones, online banking and forums, voter lists, health file records, Google searches, Whole Foods digital signs that are actually facial recognition scanners,  etc.
Verizon even sells a product that allows businesses to track cell phone users in malls.

But it's quite another to read the stories of innocent people including minors who have found themselves outed, in virtual police line-ups, photographed in their bathrooms and while they were sleeping, blackmailed - all without their knowledge or being sloppy about their online privacy. 
The teenagers who were spied on at home by their school via webcam spyware installed on the laptops given out by the school - neither they nor their parents signed up for or knew about it.

News to me was that if you go online price shopping, retailers vary their prices to you depending on their assessment of your financial worth based on your geographic location.

Angwin's book primarily addresses privacy considerations in the US but as Steve is fond of saying - the War on Drugs and the GWOT, those bullshit policies and programs which fueled these invasions of our privacy right alongside the tech that made that made them possible, know no national boundaries.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is hosting a symposium : "Helping Canadians Find Pathways to Privacy" at UofT on March 20 and 21. Free to public but you have to register. To be webcast later.
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