SamanthaMD commented on a different blog post, "Google is not always your friend." Of course she is right. And I'm using that prompt as a launching point for this little rant. Thanks for your indulgence.

It's a tragic consequence of our modern world that your identity is pretty much up for sale. Here in the US at least our corporate owned government pretty much ensures that anything you do on line is either at risk or has been compromised. Simply connecting your computer to "the net" more or less guarantees some degree of compromise or at least risk of compromise.

It's not just social media and the Office As A Service platforms like Office365 and Google Office. It's also every router your traffic traverses. It's the exit points for every VPN you might use. Its every virtual machine and cloud service you might use. it's even the devices you use at home. Your phone and your tablet, PC, laptop, game console, even your smart refrigerator.

It's not even intentionally nefarious. At least not most of the time. Largely it's simply the intersection of how the services work, human nature and time that cause the risk. Keeping secrets is hard. Security is hard. Privacy even harder. The fight against complacency is hardest. Especially where humans are involved and our default is to trust. Our ability to ignore chronic issues in favor of acute ones.

So what do we do about it? About the only action we have is to dis-intermediate and start taking action at our regulatory levels. The only response we can have to powers of sight is powers of oversight. We need to ensure that there are robust and transparent oversight processes for any power of sight we grant to those to whom grant access to our personal proprietary information. Unfortunately that is hard and requires vigilance and it goes against our natures.

We buy buy products and services from these companies that provide them. Often we don't have a choice. At the same time realize that these companies use some of that money we pay them to lobby for regulation and legislation that favors their interests. In the absence of meaningful input from us our legislatures tend to favor those who provide them with the means to retain their office.

Peace