Ideas For Democracy:  Goal #22

Citizen privacy and the information machine.  Licensing and subscriptions and corporate and industrial intellectual property. 

 

Citizens who want real democracy will actively support this policy and vote for trustworthy candidates who actively support this policy.

 

IFD - policy:  Since 1944, the privacy of the individual has been steadily invaded and in the 21st century is dismissed as an obstacle to safety and security.  This is exactly what was foreseen as a possibility for America in the Federalist Papers.  Our Founding Fathers were the first to warn us not to trade freedom for a promise of security, long before H. G. Wells gave that same warning in the form of the novel with the odd title of 1984.  The rise of the Big Brother state described in that novel started twenty years early in 1964, with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and the speech of President Johnson when he told the world that the War in Vietnam would be different from other wars.  Yes, it was different from other wars, in that the American people would be in that war whether they wanted to or not.  War was no longer to be a choice exercised by the representatives of the people, but rather by an executive authority embodied in the presidency, or hiding behind the presidency.

 

Being protected by secret operations:

Wars are won by information obtained before the battles.  Gathering intelligence requires an invasion of any and all records that might contain the key to knowing the adversary better than the adversary knows you.  Disinformation is an art designed to distract the adversary and deprive them of the true facts they want.  But disinformation can grow like a cancer and infect even the institutions of science.  The invasion of all communications presents a profoundly contradictory condition of living:  we must surrender our freedom in order to be protected by secret operations.  Double irony like a double agent.       

 

The overwhelming rise of corporate power:

In 1950 I watched the film Destination Moon, and though I was only age eight an idea in the script was imprinted on my hungry little mind:  "We need to let private enterprise take on the challenging project of a rocket to the Moon.  We should not rely on government alone to accomplish such a difficult technological project."  It was in the air -- and water -- way back then:  corporations are more competent and more reliable than government.  The seeds of disrespect for government, and for democracy, were planted then, in the minds of the children of America's heroes.  The wartime agency of military intelligence led to the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency.  Ten years later, President Eisenhower, having the absolute respect of the military-industrial complex, was able to issue a clear warning against the threat to democracy that it presented to the people.  The information machine was already under construction, but we had no idea how sophisticated and insidious it would become.  The ploy that would enable prying into every corner of your private life, even your opinions, was and is marketing.

 

The savior online:  licensing and subscriptions:

There are millions of customers out there.  They want to be attractive, cool and sated.  How can we kidnap them, without breaking any laws?  Licensing is one sure way.  Another less captive but still useful method is subscription.  When you purchased software from the Microsoft Corporation, or from any other seller of software, you may recall that you clicked on "YES" to the licensing agreement.  Besides the fact that you probably signed away your rights to privacy, you also agreed that you do not own the software that you "purchased."  In reality, and according to law, you did not purchase the software.  But rather, in exchange for your payment, and years of aggravation, you were granted permission, the license, to use the software, SO LONG AS YOU USED IT ACCORDING TO THE RULES ESTABLISHED AND ENFORCED BY MICROSOFT AND OR THE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY.  In other words, your legal possession of software and computer or wireless applications is more like you have borrowed it rather than bought it.  It can be recalled at any time.  The producer of most of the software you use can send you notification at any time that your license has been terminated and you can no longer use the software.  They could electronically remove or disable it.  You could fight their action, by hiring lawyers who require a retainer of $20,000 and $200 an hour, or fraction thereof, with no promise of success.  Legally, you cannot claim that the software was your property.  It was not.  This transaction called "licensing" is spreading to other forms of commerce.  Watch for it.  Soon you may be signing a license when you buy a car or a washing machine.  Why?  Because of marketing.  Also because the corporations have used the law and technology and marketing to compel the government to allow them to use marketing to invade your home, your privacy, and your democracy.

 

Marketing is the legal justification for gathering information from you, through both cable and wireless communications.  Computers, software, electronic hardware are inserted everywhere.  Automobiles and washing machines already include computer hardware.  The software operates the mechanisms in the car, or in the washing machine.  Your television and electronic communications devices, such as tablets, cell phones and ebook readers already include computer chips that track your activities and choices that you make while using your television, tablet, and phone.  Since you are ordering things for sale online, and choosing applications and channels and services, all of your choices are being recorded and sent out to business entities, and all of this information gathering, which is essentially the equivalent of intelligence gathering, IS A RECORD OF YOUR CHOICES, YOUR LIKES AND DISLIKES, YOUR ACTIVITIES, YOUR SOCIAL LIFE AND HOME LIFE, YOUR OPINIONS AND POLITICAL VIEWPOINTS, YOUR INCOME BRACKET AND YOUR SEX LIFE.  There is not much about you that is not revealed by what you buy online and what you do online.  As computers are inserted into more and more products, more intelligence is gathered.  The washing machine could record and report that you typically do not operate the machine during the winter months, that you wash heavy loads much more than your neighbors.  If your washing machine were equipped with voice controls, like your television, that means that the microphone, if always on, could record the conversations you have in your kitchen.  Your car can maintain a record of your speed and everywhere you have been in the car, and who was in the car with you.  Do you see what is happening?  The alleged purpose of gathering marketing information, the economic choices you make, and the social preferences you reveal, are supposedly being gathered so that the commercial corporations (and military-industrial complex) CAN SERVE YOU BETTER, give you what you want.  Or, place you under arrest as an enemy combatant and deny you every civil right you heard of.  You cannot demand to know how the electronic industries burn your Bill of Rights by collecting and reporting marketing information, because their software is their intellectual property.  Their right to keep their industrial property a secret is sacred.  We are the United States of Business.

 

Inverse marketing is the fair response to the loss of privacy:

Efforts to reverse the loss of personal privacy in favor of the desire for commercial profits and materialist values are not likely to succeed.  The practice of collecting and reporting market choices and likes and dislikes is here to stay.  The people do get some benefit.  It is true that if business entities know what the people want, then they can provide what the people want.  But what if the people want privacy?

 

I recommend that all hardware devices and software that employ a means to collect and report marketing information have added to them the operation of gathering and reporting corporate information.  They would not be allowed to publish industrial secrets, but they certainly could collect and distribute information that the people want.  That's right:  the marketing information programs are all supposed to exist to improve the ability of BUSINESS to respond to the demands of the PEOPLE.  So, let's say that the people want information about corporations that are doing business in the United States.  We want to know their history, the names, addresses and phone numbers of the officers and trustees, their age, racial profile, incomes and home addresses.  They have this information about us, so on the basis of equal rights standards, we want to have the same information about them.  Further, we want to know how many times they have filed for bankruptcy, and why; where are their headquarters and other major offices located; where are their major operations located (like they know where our vacation home is located).  We want to know how many people they employ and the ranges for employee compensation.  We want to know if they employ people of many ethnic backgrounds or only one ethnic background.  Do they maintain bank accounts or investments in other countries?  Have any of the officers ever been charged with a crime?  Has the corporation been sold before; and has it purchased other corporations?  At what prices?  Has the corporation made contributions to (hired) candidates to run for office to promote their special interests in a legislative body?  All this marketing infornation and more we want to be collected and reported publicly so that we can be equal, so that individual citizens who fought and died for this country since before it was born can have the same rights of the corporations who have exploited everything within reach, the earth, the trees, the animals, the immigrants, the sky and the rivers, lakes and oceans.  We need this information so that we can make marketing choices and business decisions, like who to buy from and what to buy and who to like and dislike.  Don't take it personally; it's just business.