I got this via I Can't Believe This Is Not a Democracy:

Spokeo.com is a new online USA phone book w/personal information: everything from pics you've posted on FB or web, your approx credit score, home value, income, age. Remove yourself by searching your name, find the URL of your page, then go to the bottom right corner of the page and click on Privacy button to remove yourself.

I just did it. You have to give them your e-mail address for the final removal process, but I searched for my name after I went through the process and I was no longer listed.

Your call on whether you want to do this. Naturally they charge users for your information. Fuck that. If they don't contact me first to ask to buy that information, then I'm removing it. Note: You may be listed a few times. There were two entries for me, one of which was over 15 years old. The removal process is quick. You'll be off the site in minutes.

I would check back every few months, just in case. I was listed twice, and a lot of the information was wrong. I don't know if bad information is a good thing or not.


 

When I saw this Murdoch Street Journal column by Peggy Noonan linked on Google News, I knew it would be fab fodder for Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors. He doesn't disappoint. (Distributor Cap did some fun illustrations too, I might add.)

However, when I saw the title of the babblethon, "We Pay Them to Be Rude to Us," I thought it might be fodder for political commentary. Noonan didn't disappoint either. So, I broke my rule about linking to Rupert Murdoch's media empire to dish her crap.

What I find so intriguing about Ms. Noonan's meandering prose in this case is that she complains about things that are the fault of the rightist era brought into place in this country by her idol, the execrable Ronald Reagan.

Once we were a great industrial nation. Now we are a service economy. Which means we are forced to interact with each other, every day, in person and by phone and email. And it's making us all a little mad.

Ronnie was the person who pushed a "free trade" agreement with Mexico that eventually was implemented by fellow rightist, Bill Clinton. Instead of calling for higher tariffs to keep corporations from exporting industry abroad. Ronnie was a cheerleader for deindustrialization. All the rightists who have been in the office have supported corporate controlled trade too. Yet, she doesn't see the connection between the right and our service oriented economy.

Noonan also complains about a letter she got a few years back.

I wrote of the same experience a few years ago and got a letter from a saleswoman in a big department store. She said, I paraphrase: "You misunderstand, it's not that we haven't been taught how to behave, it's that we have. We are trained to make and maintain eye contact, we are taught to intrude, we are instructed to act in a way that people used to recognize as rude behavior."

This is mainly the result of conservative policies. The primary cause is the draining of income from the poor and middle class and the diversion to the rich. That has increased shoplifting, whose prevention is the main goal of all that "friendly" but really watchful behavior by salespeople.

Peggy Noonan later complained about the tightened security in airports that is the result of the right's foreign policies and the efforts to create a terrorized populace at home. Her specific complaints about a screener are loaded with irony, given her position to the political right.

When I'd first gone through the machine and then been manhandled, a month before, I was so taken aback that I blurted "Wow, that was embarrassing." I said it softly, in a way that invited mild commiseration of the "I know, I'm sorry I have to do this" sort. Instead, with full Dead Face, the TSA woman said, "Have a nice day." As I walked away I thought: She has been taught by consultants how to "handle" people like me. Her instructions are that if anyone accepts her ministrations with anything but passive surrender, she is to show she is impervious and keep the line moving. She is probably taught this in a class given by government contractors who are paid by taxpayers to handle taxpayers. Meaning I pay her to be rude to me.

I'll have to number these.

1) Customer service oriented at shutting up consumers and getting them to take it is part and parcel of deregulation that has affected nearly every sector of our economy. Smiling while not giving a flying fuck has become a cultural norm in a society where corporations have way too much power. Why should corporations give a shit when government policy keeps the balance of power in their favor?

2) Contempt for consumers has grown as retail outlets consolidate. Much of the consolidation of that sector and others is illegal under antitrust law. But, conservative administrations refuse to engage in much beyond the most token enforcement of antitrust law. Corporations that don't need to fight for customers have created a situation where The Customer Is Serf, and that too has permeated the culture.

3) The excessive reliance on government contractors is the result of privatization of so much of our government, another rightist policy.

4) The disregard for privacy is one of the most prominent political tenets on the right. Ronnie's opposition to abortion was a prime example of it and set the stage for other violations of privacy. This all has gotten much worse after 911 where the right's politicians were more interested in using the attacks as an excuse to violate the privacy of innocent Americans than to actually improve our nation's defenses against terrorism. Anti regulatory sentiment also has kept regulations from being passed to restrict the voracious appetites of corporations for peoples' private information.

The Upshot

Ms. Noonan is pained by the effects on her person by living in a rightist society. I would be sympathetic towards her if not for how she has been one of the most obnoxious enablers of the very things she rails against. She recognizes that we all want an evacuation slide like the one taken by the heroic Steve Slater. But, she is so beholden to the very system that is making us all wish we could bail out sometimes.

Photo: WexDub

Update: Sean Fenley skewers Noonan for another recent column where she refuses to take responsibility for the rightist policies that are making most Americans justifiably outraged these days.

 

Sadly, it's not an April Fools Day joke. There's a lot of rightist venture capital behind Facebook too. (Hat Tip: The Peace Tree)



It's all pretty sobering.

This article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation shows how to hide your Friends list from the entire world.

However, Facebook may be revising its Privacy Policy to let websites that you go to have your Friends list and other personal information. They seem determined to force users to repeatedly opt out to protect their data, which suggests they really want to wear people down until they give up on any privacy at all.


I would still recommend using a pseudonym if you go on Facebook at all.

 

This 8/19/09 Career Builder press release shows a relatively new and growing area of corporate misconduct.

Forty-five Percent of Employers Use Social Networking Sites to Research Job Candidates, CareerBuilder Survey Finds
Career Expert Provides DOs and DON'Ts for Job Seekers on Social Networking

Forty-five Percent of Employers Use Social Networking Sites to Research Job Candidates, CareerBuilder Survey Finds

CHICAGO, Aug. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- As social networking grows increasingly pervasive, more employers are utilizing these sites to screen potential employees. Forty-five percent of employers reported in a recent CareerBuilder survey that they use social networking sites to research job candidates, a big jump from 22 percent last year. Another 11 percent plan to start using social networking sites for screening. More than 2,600 hiring managers participated in the survey, which was completed in June 2009.

Of those who conduct online searches/background checks of job candidates, 29 percent use Facebook, 26 percent use LinkedIn and 21 percent use MySpace. One-in-ten (11 percent) search blogs while 7 percent follow candidates on Twitter.

The top industries most likely to screen job candidates via social networking sites or online search engines include those that specialize in technology and sensitive information: Information Technology (63 percent) and Professional & Business Services (53 percent).

The press release is written in neutral language, but this is really disturbing. Career Builder is focused more on helping job seekers cope with this environment, but civil liberties supporters should work to change that environment. Corporations seem to think they have more and more of an entitlement to snoop into employees' private lives. Now, they extend that to new hires. Privacy is eroding in an era of growing corporate power. Here's more:

Why Employers Disregarded Candidates After Screening Online

Job seekers are cautioned to be mindful of the information they post online and how they communicate directly with employers. Thirty-five percent of employers reported they have found content on social networking sites that caused them not to hire the candidate. The top examples cited include:

* Candidate posted provocative or inappropriate photographs or information - 53 percent
* Candidate posted content about them drinking or using drugs - 44 percent
* Candidate bad-mouthed their previous employer, co-workers or clients - 35 percent
* Candidate showed poor communication skills - 29 percent
* Candidate made discriminatory comments - 26 percent
* Candidate lied about qualifications - 24 percent
* Candidate shared confidential information from previous employer - 20 percent

The first three are incredibly disturbing. Now, corporations feel entitled to have control over what people say to their friends. The fourth is bizarre. Why should someone supposed to devote a lot of effort to highly skilled communication in an informal medium that is for people who are close to them?

There need to be much stronger privacy laws in the online era. Employers and interviewers should be prohibited by law from doing any of the following:

1) Making friends requests, either overtly or covertly.

2) Googling current or potential employees.

3) Asking for any social networking information not available to the general public.

Also, any hiring, promotional, and firing decisions based on these privacy violations should be subject to wrongful termination and invasion of privacy suits.

I've heard that young people are leaving Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace in droves. I'm beginning to see why.

 

Hat tip to Bloodless Coup for pointing out this one.

Members of Congress take an oath of office to "uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States" in solemn looking ceremonies, yet most of them are voting for blatantly unconstitutional spying programs. And, the illegal spying is creating an information overload that makes it more difficult for real intelligence to be seen in an ever-increasing fog of the irrelevant.

Corporations constantly come up with ways to screw consumers over. One of their favorites is tracking customer information in databases. These databases serve no beneficial purpose for consumers, but do drive up corporate profits in a disreputable fashion. This has some obvious consequences such as loss of privacy and far more identity theft.

However, this is not the only problem. Corporations misuse personal data they should not even have to try to get people to buy more than they planned and to pay more than they should for products. Also, this kind of customer data is done to increase sales instead of using reputable tactics like improving products, improving services, and charging fair prices.

The prominent cases of identity theft are of no concern to the corporations that illegitimately track the personal data of you and me. If you lose your good credit and thousands of dollars, it does not effect them. They keep making bigger and bigger profits at the expense of identity theft victims.

Even worse, corporations routinely sell your and my personal customer data to other corporations, creating security holes and a loss of privacy involving companies that we have not chosen to do business with and may not even have heard of.

We need strong criminal law to ban this disreputable and dangerous practice.

• E-commerce sites should not be allowed to keep accounts for customers. All purchases should be separate events, and all customer data destroyed after the products are delivered and the credit card transactions are complete. Brick and mortar establishments should have the same rules barring permanent customer records.
  Keeping records past this point should be a felony with a minimum 10 year prison sentence.


• Selling any customer data should be an even more serious felony, with a minimum 20 year prison sentence.


• Grocery stores should face similar prohibitions against the so-called “discount cards” which are used to hold manufacturer discounts hostage to a loss of customer privacy. The criminal penalties in this case should be at least 10 years.


• Credit card companies should be required to delete all purchase records as soon as those purchases are paid for by the customer. Failure to do so should result in at least a 15 year prison sentence.

The criminal penalties for the executives responsible for this and the other employees are not enough. There need to be devastating civil penalties for the corporate entities too. All the corporations that break these laws should also lose their corporate charters and have their assets liquidated if they are based in the US. All foreign corporations engaging in this behavior should be barred permanently from doing business in the US.

We need to stop coddling corporations and crack down on their misconduct.