Salut, Viktor,
On Sat, 21 Aug 2010 08:24:52 +0200, Viktor Steinmann wrote:
- Facebook bashing is hip among the IT community. However on Facebook
you only share what you want to share and you can even lie about all of your personal details, even create a fake personality. If you have privacy concerns, don't put it on the Internet - be it Facebook or any other site. In any case it's in no way comparable with someone spying on your private computer, where you keep your "real" private data, not the crap you put on Facebook.
That's a nice theory you have, and I totally agree when it comes to Facebook. (Not because of my employer though, just my personal opinion.)
However, there are very legitimate reasons why people in our world may want anonymity, and this level of anonymity can only be reached on the Internet, as you cannot hide your body or your voice patterns in the real world. And some people have lived through some awful things in their lives and are in dire need for such anonymity.
You may of course claim that these people have lived before the Internet — yes, they have, and they had it much worse. I'm glad that the Internet is helping to prevent people from committing suicide or hurting and crippling themselves every day. It helps people find other people to listen to them and to confirm to them that they are valuable and that they're right when they think they're treated unacceptably. And it does all of this.
Destroying this anonymity by introducing more and more surveillance measures at large, monitoring any kind of traffic and forcing people to give away their identity with every Internet conversation is NOT helping, it is killing this amazing thing we have for, as we all know, no good reason.
Anonymity is a protecting blanket. Just saying.
Regards, Tonnerre