Hi all,
just yesterday I was interviewed for a statistical program (chat-interview, about an hour, I applied for it). The interviewer asked me about a new web feature and if I would like it: it was a little something which ought to save your personal information and make it accessible to the services you want to access. I kind of liked the idea (no more writing down your personal stuff, ged rid of routine, decide who knows what, protect your emailadress from crawlers) and I also said that I would sacrifice some privacy for the convenience.
This also occurs to what jipman is talking about:
I use a convenient service, which offers me a lot of possibilities, but all my information is linked together (makes it easier for me to be tracked down, if I'm involved in illegal activites. not only terrorism...)
But shouldn't the focus here be on the law? I mean instead of using ten anonymous remailers, going into internet over a proxy and whatever paranoid people and terrorists do, you could try to get a right for privacy.
In Germany we have something like this, I don't know the exact conditions but not everyone can be monitored by the BND (BundesNachrichtenDienst, secret service) if he wasn't involved in crimes or something (I guess they spent some thinking on this).
So as a German citizien I do not feel as if I had to protect my privacy, because they can not take it that easily.
If you are living in a country where you do not have privacy as a spotless person, then you are living under the wrong law!
When you have to be worried because the Feds (they monitor Netherland citiziens too? they have a big budget and catch few if this the case

) know where you are going and who your friends are? Sorry, but then you are probably involved in illegal activites or paranoid.
The only thing I would be worried about is the Email, this is really personal, but I sure hope, that no one reads me emails without me knowing. If that is the case again: wrong law!
I don't want to have to protect my privacy by technical means, it should (and is here) be covered by the law.
So the punchline is: If you live in china, don't execute google-services, you might get executed yourself

Might apply to other privacy-unfriendly countries too (jipman mentioned the USA).
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Opensource software:
Well I use Firefox, Adium X and Azureus and aMule (maybe some other apps that I'm not sure about and I don't use often) as a normal user. But I wouldn't say the trend goes to open soure. There ARE some terribly good apps out there like Firefox, that just go without concurrence, but I still think other apps are more popular and unlikely to be beaten.
A lot of the cases, where people (I ^^) use open source software, is filesharing. Because by a minor change of law, an app might become obsolete/forbidden (and the responsibles busted), no one (of the good companies) considers making a filesharing app anymore.
Another field of use is where opensource is used, is the internet, probably because it is developing so fast

damn huge post ^^ but I think a lot about these issues.
Ruben
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