White Civil Rights : The Website for Europeans and Americans Wherever They May Live

by Jeff Davis

It isn’t just what books we’re checking out of the library or what kind of soup we buy at the Safeway that’s being recorded forever into a hundred different databases. Our preference for certain youtube videos is soon to be recorded.

A New York Times article reports “A federal judge in New York has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom a database linking users of YouTube, the Web’s largest video site by far, with every clip they have watched there. The order raised concerns among users and privacy advocates that the online video viewing habits of tens of millions of people could be exposed. But Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of YouTube viewers.”

How can Google turn over a list of names while “protecting their privacy?” That’s oxymoronic babble. It can’t be done. It’s like being a little bit pregnant.

The Times goes on: “Viacom said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside advisers, who will use it solely to press Viacom’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google… Still, the judge’s order, which was made public late Wednesday, renewed concerns among privacy advocates that Internet companies like Google are collecting unprecedented amounts of private information that could be misused or could unexpectedly fall into the hands of third parties.”

So only a couple of hundred lawyers, techies, secretaries and miscellaneous computer geeks will have access to the list? Oh, that makes me feel secure. This kind of information collecting already happens on a fairly regular basis, what with criminals and fraudsters hacking databases and stealing identities. Nothing is being done about it.

The same article continues “For every video on YouTube, the judge required Google to turn over to Viacom the login name of every user who watched it, and the address of their computer, known as an I.P., or Internet protocol, address. Both companies have argued that such data cannot be used to unmask the identities of individual users with certainty… But in many cases, technology experts and others have been able to link I.P. addresses to individuals using records of their online activities. Google and Viacom said they had had discussions about ways to ensure the data is further protected to assure anonymity.”

If they want to assure anonymity, then why is Viacom asking for all that data to begin with? Why is it necessary to know the names and IP addresses of millions of people the world over for some kind of copyright suit? Is Viacom going to be calling 200 million witnesses?

This is one more step towards the Total Surveillance State, a 1984-like surreal future world where the Thought Police and the authorities watch everyone, all the time, and monitor every single minor action of our lives, from buying a sandwich in a restaurant to going to the bathroom to what books we read (those of us who still read), what programs (or in this case computer videos) we watch, and every word we say to everyone from the moment we get up in the morning until we go to bed at night. Maybe even our every single thought, if the technology ever advances that far, as it most likely will, the way things are going.