http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/business/media/17privacy.html?_r=1&ref=technology
For my last blog entry for this class I found an article about new legal problems arising from companies tracking people on the internet and seeing how they should advertise to them. The Internet policy task force is trying to make what companies can and can not do on the Internet more clear so people know what is being traced when they are on the Internet.
It is very weird to think about always being tracked on the Internet. Even if it is just putting the information through a computer system to see how many people have the same interests as me. At first thought I can not imagine what they would do with my information. Would they just see some young adult who likes crappy punk rock who will not buy anything now, so we will just disregard his information until he gets a real job and truly starts consuming? Then once my mind starts working on what kind of advantage a company gets with this information is kind of scary. Who cares if they know you as an anonymous person who goes on facebook twelve times a day. The dangerous part is that if these companies are using this technology well, they can get a great deal of information about the general public and could be able to know how to market to everyone better than everyone else. This would not be because they had a superior product, it would be because they could afford to obtain the information. Knowledge still is power and if one company makes it so only they know this Internet information no one else would be able to compete. Another unsettling part about this is that the general population does not completely understand if not know about this privacy issue at all. When it seems that something is being hidden there is a good chance it probably is and for sure it's going to be something that they know in some respect is wrong.
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