I have been warning for years about the Orwellian machinations of tech companies. I refer you to such commentaries as “Tech Companies Worse than Snowden’s Bogeyman NSA,” March 3, 2017, and “Complaints about NSA Spying Are Schizophrenic…and Misguided,” June 8, 2013.
The latter includes the following:
In this Information Age, tech companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, and WikiLeaks are masters of the universe. But they have created a schizophrenic human species – whose members share everything about everything, yet claim to be zealous about their privacy. Only this explains the growing outrage over the government’s National Security Agency (NSA) monitoring their promiscuous and indiscriminate digital footprints.
But there’s no explaining why these nincompoops think it’s okay for tech companies to spy on them to sell them stuff, but not okay for the NSA to do so to keep them safe.
Except that the schizophrenia users evince reflects the insidious influence and control these tech companies now wield. And it speaks volumes that so many are so willing to sacrifice so much just for the human conveniences tech companies peddle as human advances.
In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin famously admonished the American people on liberty and safety as follows:
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
To admonish them on privacy and technology, I can do no better than to paraphrase Franklin as follows:
They will rue the day who give up fundamental privacy for anthropomorphic technology.
In the meantime, no tech company is profiting more from spying on the American people than Amazon.
Depending on how much you shop, watch and read with Amazon, the e-commerce behemoth may know more about you than any other company on earth.
The big picture: Naturally, they know what you’ve browsed or bought on their main service. They also know what you’ve asked Alexa, watched on Prime, and read on your Kindle. They know even more thanks to their ownership of Whole Foods, Ring, Eero, Twitch, Goodreads, IMDB and Audible.
(Axios, May 2, 2019)
Now come reports that they know not only what you’ve asked Alexa, but also whatever you’ve said within earshot of her. It turns out that she is as much of a listening device, which records and sends your private conversations to a Big-Brother data center, as she is a virtual assistant, which answers your idle-minded questions and executes your couch-potato commands.
A MailOnline investigation into these ‘secret’ archives has revealed an eerie snippets of users’ friends, families and children being recorded while they were completely unaware – and without a clear or legitimate wake word being uttered.
One user found his Alexa repeatedly activated to record the same guest in their house gossiping about work colleagues, while another was recorded in a private discussion about their insurance policy – and another about their dream job.
(MailOnline, May 8, 2019)
So, if you are among those wondering how Amazon could possibly know what you’re interested in buying even before you begin shopping, wonder no more.
Incidentally, Apple stands out among these high-tech snoopers. This, because it continually hurls self-righteous criticisms at Facebook and others for peddling their customers’ private data. But beware that Apple’s Siri eavesdrops on your personal conversations every bit as much as Amazon’s Alexa.
Alas, the only way to escape their passive-aggressive spying is to stop using their devices – assuming you’re not too addicted to do so. After all, his own disillusioned engineers have confessed that “Zuckerberg Designed Facebook ‘Like’ an Opioid,” November 13, 2017.
Apropos of this, I suspect similar disillusionment finally compelled the damning indictment Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes laid out in today’s edition of The New York Times. In calling for the government to break up Facebook, Hughes decried and warned about the control Zuckerberg wields as the wizard behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp:
Mark’s influence is staggering, far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government. … I’m angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks. … With much of the world’s personal communications in hand, it can mine that data for patterns and trends, giving it an advantage over competitors for decades to come.
With all due respect to George Orwell, more than any government, a tech company like Facebook is the Big Brother that is not just watching but controlling you. Which is why it’s only a matter of time before an equally influential voice sounds the clarion call to break up Amazon.
Related commentaries:
Tech companies worse…
Complaints about NSA spying…
Bezos exposes…
Facebook…opioid…