American Privacy Is Vanishing as the Government and Corporations Raid Our Online Lives

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http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/government-and-business-raid-online-lives



Was 2013 the year online privacy died? Or was it the year that people paying attention realized that their online lives—and all their data and communications—was low-hanging fruit that was being picked and parsed by big government and big business.

Edward Snowden’s theft of what’s now said to be 1.7 million files showed the world that America’s spymasters were grabbing everything that passed between smart phones, Wi-Fi signals, laptops, and those devices’ contents: account log-ins, passwords, etc. As 2014 began, The Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency was building “a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world.”

But Big Brother is hardly the only bad actor in a world of vanishing privacy. Hackers stole 40 million credit card files from Target, including PIN numbers, between last November and December. Target’s CEO offered free credit monitoring to put his customers at ease, but technology writers mocked that effort, called cyber security the latest oxymoron—or self-contradictory phrase—and counseled people to “cancel your card, monitor your statements, create a fraud alert and move on.”

Another high-profile privacy-destroying breach involved Snapchat, the smartphone ap that allows users—mostly teens and young adults—to send photos that quickly disappear. Except they don’t. In mid-2013, Snapchat started getting reports from experts that its code was sloppy and recipients could save the photos and other user data. Snapchat executrives ignored the warning—just as they thumbed their noses at a multi-billion dollar buyout offer from FaceBook. Last month, hackers decided to teach Snapchat a lesson, and posted an online database with 4.6 million user IDs and phone numbers.