Instapundit: Meet The New Oligarchs, Same as the Old Oligarchs
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds surveys data about declining public trust in social media and tech companies and concludes that the cyber-chickens are coming home to roost.
It's made worse by the increasing politicization of Silicon Valley, and the transformation of its leaders from rebels into what Joel Kotkin calls "the new oligarchs," people who once talked about technology as liberation, but who now seem more interested in using technology as an instrument of control. It's not just NSA spying; it's that the companies gather data on everyone, with comparatively little legal oversight.
You might have been OK with that a decade or two ago, when Silicon Valley seemed full of people who would stand up to the Man. Now, they are The Man (or The Woman) in many ways, or in cahoots with them. Might the information you gave to OKCupid be used against you someday? Your only protection, really, is their good nature. And how good is that?
And then read Instapundit's excellent "5 Privacy Laws I Would Put on the Books Right Now." Snippet:
4. Emphasize Reciprocity
Private citizens should be entitled to do anything that government entities can do without a warrant. For example, when I'm out in public anyone can see my license plates. But I'll bet that police or prosecutors or judges would object if I started tracking their "public" movements everywhere they went. If they can fly a drone over my backyard without a warrant, then I should be able to do the same to them. Government officials should have no more protection from that sort of thing than the rest of us. This will encourage both more transparency and a more serious attention to privacy.
