PRIVACY pondering

By now, talking about data is passé and the cloud, simply yawn.

That made me realize, that besides the odd news story, there isn’t more noise and clucking about PRIVACY.

It wasn’t a television or radio ad either.

The race for our almighty dollars has started, without a start horn,  we are meekly falling into a deep trap door that narrowly funnels towards brand popularity and premium choice.

Who is their voice?

WHO’s Responsible for PRIVACY breaches?

As more privacy channels chain of command paths are broken, more and more incidents and varying degrees of alarm.

Definitely the United States lead the world with paranoias surrounding being under attack.  Deservedly so.  Simply because they’ve been attacked in many forms, for example:

On soil:  Pearl Harbour > World War II

World Trade Center 9/11

Russian Interference 2016 Election 

However, are they fulfilling their own profecy?

I personally can’t decide which is worse because they are equally horrible: greed and corruption.  It must be said, clarified, that I am a Canadian, representative of where Baby Boomers stop, a parent of Millennial children, all successfully employed and tumbling throug “adulting”, providing a safe landing when they veer off course, and championing & cheering them on to accomplish their own dreams in their own way.

Who owns your data? Your employer, your providers, or the government?

If you ask most people, I’m sure they would say they do.  It’s personal, thus it belongs to you.

YET, while you are at work, your everything belongs to your employer: calls are recorded for “coaching” purposes.  Nobody can notice a grumpy boss who tenaciously goes through all employee’s communications to find something, anything, that they can use to discipline or fire someone.  You’d think by now from the abundance of data, employers might track supervisors who have a lot of people quitting, transferring or being fired and a red flag would go up.

WHEN it’s your personal time: lunch, breaks, off time, your information is your own.  Not likely, before you can even have a cell phone, you have to share your private information: age, income, employment, education and credit score to the provider who may have a system that rates those things on a numerical score.

ONCE your smartphone is in hand, what you text, click on is registered in some way.  That’s long before you start adding apps.  If you subscribe to any media outlet, you release information, if you use a credit card, they can save for convenience or even pay for stuff.

If you click or swipe, you are sprinkling your data around.

DATA REALLY IS INFORMATION

About you, your likes, your weaknesses, your monetary strength or weakness.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR HEALTH?

When my husband was in the hospital, a friend of the kids knew about him before the ambulance had arrived to the neurological medical center, worked on his ward, even though it violated health center regulations.  Our medical charts seamlessly pop up between medical centres, physicians, specialists, etc.  That’s a lot of places where leaks can happen.

BODYGUARD on NETFLIX: a must see

Timely, yes.  There are many excellent examples of why you may want to watch this stunning cinematic TV drama.  However, if you happen to have PRIVACY as a hot button of late, you may register how much the main character’s privacy is disregarded in all forms by government, employers, clients, security sectors, and on and on.

I want to avoid spoilers but I hope someone does comment, to begin a real discussion of value.

I got more on a tangent about PRIVACY on my blog: YUPPYdom from @WordPress