Beware those who prize online privacy

Privacy_policy The Senate has been holding hearings on privacy and online advertising. This begs a question: What do these political types have to hide, anyway? I decided to find out by Googling, because I can’t bring myself to search using MSN or Yahoo! until they do the deal. Do the damn deal, already! Googling Sen. Byron Dorgan, FTC consumer protection chief Lydia Parnes and other key players yielded eerily similar results: their Web pages, speeches and appearances on Fox News. OK, in each case I only looked at the first page of results. Well, the top half of the first page. Like all good Americans, I’m pretty darn lazy. My point: These Beltway bozos are obsessed with controlling people’s online profiles because they’re afraid we’ll all learn how God-awful boring their own lives really are. Being stalked across the Web by marketers is probably more excitement than they can handle. Frankly, I’d feel lonely if Denny’s messages didn’t pop onto my screen every now and then. They can serve me ads any time; just not their food.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

July 11, 2008 in Gianatasio | Permalink

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It's called civil liberties.

I'm sure Stalin's response was 'what do you have to hide?' too.

Every citizen should read the bill of rights and US constitution sometime.

Posted by: Mike | Jul 11, 2008 9:58:59 AM

David Gianatasio is joking right? He cant possibly be SO STUPID that he can't understand why people want privacy, can he?

Just in case he is, here is a quick reason:
What if the guy who ran your local internet company was a liberal, and decided to raise the montly internet fees just on the customers that he found were visiting rushlimbaugh.com?

Dittoheads wouldn't like that invasion of privacy, would they?

Posted by: ChrisM70 | Jul 11, 2008 4:07:41 PM

Yeah, unless this is satirical, I'm not really sure why anyone would argue against privacy. Even advertisers, who would love all kinds of spyware to be permitted would, in their personal lives, most likely be staunch proponents of strict privacy laws.

Posted by: high security shredder | Jul 14, 2008 7:47:27 PM


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