STEPHEN FRY

Alot of the recent hubbub has to do, too, with the lack of transparency to users beforehand. Using the 'you get it for free' argument isn't much of an arguement when what is at stake is their ability and practice to permanently keep your tweets as tehir property, or FB contents as FB's for resale. Why not mention this in plainer view versus burying it in 20 pages of small print that has only the 'i agree' or 'i reject' button before proceeding? Particularly because if the FBI do go to them and want their logs, tehy'll be handing them over and you could be woken up for questioning one morning because it winds up one of your friends didn't tell you they were involved in some crime, but you're now in a guilt by association situation and having to answer uncomftorable questions.

I forget which country he's in, Germany I think, but a man finally decided to test FB's policy that they will send you everything they have on you for your review. Not many people do this and, in fact, I think he's the first one. Now, first I must say here he is not a heavy FB user. He says once a week maybe.

He got back from FB 1,024 pages of information they had on him!!! He's still going through most of it. The worst part, imho, of the information was that EXACT geolocation of the last computer he used. The specific coordinates for THAT computer. And, they had hundreds of pages on sites he'd browsed to OUTSIDE of FB. If that doesn't tell you they leaving a tracking cooking in your browser, I don't know what else can.

I'm relieved that Europe has stiffer laws about what FB and Twitter can get away with. FB is just too far off in right field running that service like the chinese run their people,"WE KNOW WHAT'S BEST FOR YOU!!"

Plans to 'control' and 'organize' the internet have been afoot since Microsoft's Windows/cheap pc's exponentially changed the consumption rate of the interwebz. The problem for extremists is always the laws on the books that restrict their plans, so they have to first go about getting those laws changed and then replaced by more stringent ones that suit their goals.

It doesn't help that some of our best network security systems inside gov agencies have been repeatedly hacked by the Chinese, who are easily 30 years ahead of most of the West when it comes to 'cracking'. There ARE people who lay awake at night thinking about how to break security systems. So there have to be people whose career it is to defeat and foil them.

And it's that sort of spook stuff that is used to justify control of the data flowing into and out of the millions of computers worldwide. Previous to that, the battle cry was about sexual deviants being a terrible threat. Thankfully, there are law enforcement agencies who work together now to put the baby rapers and such behind bars or at least bust up their bot rings for awhile.

I don't support the 'well if you don't have anything to hide, what's the big deal?' form of illogic used to handle what's going on. The spooky people absolutely do need to do their jobs, but if it means doing it at the expense of civil freedoms that a majority of people enjoy and depend on, I just have to say they need to find another way.

These are scary times in terms of this subject and proposed laws and the big tech folks who work in collusion with one hand and cries of 'freedom!' for their customers in the other. I'd have a lot more respect, though I'd still disagree with, Google and Apple and FaceBook if they just demonstrated some balls and said,"We plan to work in partnership with Agency X to defeat Enemy Y anytime they tell us to." than their continual shadow boxing around the truth.

Facebook and Twitter both are going to remain targets of undoing by nefarious types. For all their money, it's surprising they've been hacked at all, but they have been.

They count on the willfull suspension of disbelief by their users in regards to privacy intrusion and security issues.

I've been asked by people before to 'check out their computers' for vunerabilities and when I tell them they already have boatloads of spyware on it, they just want it removed and then to continue carrying on as they do. If I mention the potential impact on their lives as a result of certain types of information of theirs being stolen, and how it's just a hop,skip, and a jump from one type of superficial data to the kind that's life altering, they are stubborn and will say,"Meh!! I'm not worried about it. Let 'em try. I don't have anything to steal." and variants of that statement.

I don't answer the call for help from users like this anymore and doubly so as it's not the way I make a living. So it's kind of useless when a story about Facebook creating email accounts for their users and then making those email accounts THE DEFAULT email setting for users without their consent; that Facebook has embedded, ( though now retracted supposedly ), geolocation tracing on users WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT; and that Facebook actually assists the efforts of peoples stalkers rather than helping them stay safe; when these facts hit the mainstream news, which usually means the info is rather late, people STILL ignore it. And what I've mentioned is just the short list.

Twitter's policy now is to hand over any and all information on its users when the authorities make a request for documentation, and this is also done without their consent nor foreknowledge. They don't even get the courtesy of a warning.

Have at it folks and good luck with that...