Welcome To The New Improved Video Protection Privacy Act

This is one of the best reports on social media privacy that I have ever heard or read:

Well think twice about watching that subversive documentary about the weather, underground or whatever. If the Republicans have their way you might just end up on a watch list somewhere.

This week the House passed an amendment to the nineteen eighty eight Video Protection Privacy Act which forbids mobile rental companies in sharing or selling their customers viewing history … If this passes what you watch on Netflix may soon become public information that your friends, employers and even the government will have access to.

Netflix favors the law change because it’ll help them branch into social media and connect Facebook customers to each other based on their similar tastes in films. Unmentioned by Netflix is the enormous profit potential selling your viewing history to advertisers who can target specific demographics based on your preferences in movies. Also unmentioned by Netflix is who might get this information once it is taken out of that privacy lock box.

It goes on to echo what I have been saying for years, that the younger generation is especially unaware how much our privacy is in danger. Like when we plug into the internet and agree to those boring terms and conditions that we never read to get onto sites like Facebook. Sacrificing our personal privacy just for the convenience of interconnecting.

Our personal information on social media networks is being monitored by advertisers, employers, and law enforcement as online data collection is now a billion dollar industry. Today we are becoming conditioned to accept these invasions of our privacy as the new normal which will have tragic consequences for democracy.

That’s because without privacy, without the ability to be anonymous our ability to plan peaceful revolution or nonviolent social change is radically scaled back. Big corporations are big brother watching and they can block or sabotage efforts before they become public.

A massive surveillance system has been constructed in america post nine eleven. The NSA  is building an enormous spy center in Utah … collecting data including emails, phone calls text messages and perhaps now even Netflix viewing history .. so that it’s easily analyzed.

But here is what is most important to remember:

As our privacy goes by the wayside social change hinges upon privacy and in some cases even total privacy — anonymity. This goes all the way back to the Boston tea party when an anonymous activist … posted flyers around Boston that led directly to the Boston Tea Party.

In today’s America … the plan would have been shut down before it even started. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks may have been stopped before they could move civil rights into the spotlight. We might even still be fighting wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

The fight for privacy will be one of the signature battles moving forward during these uncertain times. Without privacy and the ability to remain anonymous genuine democracy will never again flourish.

So the next time some idiot guru tries to tell you to forget about online privacy and sell you insecure cloud services or some stoopid book on social media .. tell them to go take a flying leap.

And tell them the Blog Bloke says so.

Filed under: Blog Tips, Privacy Tips, Security Tips, Video facebook

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