24/08/2006
Actually I don’t, but this interesting exploit, explained badly here, suggests that anyone you visit could.
On the face of it there’s no inherent danger, sure at worst your local stat-obsessed self-publisher (ahem) or the marketing twat for a cash-starved Web 2.0 company could generate stats from this as a service, but they’re just going to be aggregated, right?
But don’t forget the environment we’re living in these days, where Gov.us is taking whole US states to court to stop them forcing telcos to admit that they spied on American citizens, Gov.uk can throw you in jail if you forget your crypto key, and of course Gov.ie sez All Yore Data Are Belong To Them (sorry) and really, eVoting is cool and you can trust them with it.
Don’t even get me started on the religious right, currently trying to stop hotels in the US from allowing their customers to view porn, and who I have no doubt will start resurfacing in a big way in Ireland Real Soon Now.
So given the way we’re going, it’s not hard to imagine one of these right-wing nutjob governments “recommending” that sites install a listener for them, monitoring at the outset for visits to known dodgy sites, say terrorist and paedophile hangouts. Then comes the black box, and we don’t know what they’re storing.
Ok, you’re right, it sounds like a stretch. But they’re already doing it with your phones in Ireland boys and girls, in fact they don’t just know who you’ve been talking to, they know where you’ve been, every hour of the day your phone is turned on.
Is it turned on now? Where have you been in the last few days?
