This week, the group Wikileaks posted on its website the entire archive of data and information stolen from Sony Pictures last fall — and it seems every day there’s a new, earth-shattering scoop...I always found it interesting that many of those who were most closely involved with the Snowden leaks (including Wikileaks) have pretty deep ties to the hacker community - people whose raison d'être is to invade privacy.
I needed only 20 minutes on the Wikileaks site to find a credit card number, medical information, private e-mail addresses, salary data, and plenty else that most people wouldn’t want available on a searchable database.
This kind of cyberattack is a greater threat to people’s privacy than anything revealed in the Snowden/NSA leaks, which became a cause celebre for some of the same people chortling over the Sony leaks...
Today, it is harder and harder to stay outside the omnipresent eye of social media, surveillance cameras, and smartphone videos. Wikileaks is only adding to the onslaught on our privacy rights — surreally, in the name of transparency.
It's true that the concerns raised by the leaks about NSA are worrisome in regards to the possibility that the government might have access to private information. But the prospects of everyone else having access is equally (if not more) concerning.
For all the crying and stressing over the NSA leaks, people still felt pretty free to post anti-government stuff and while the possibility of government abuse is there I haven't heard of anyone who has been directly harmed. The Sony leaks are different and obviously an actual invasion of privacy. I have never understood why people would immediately believe anything that "Wikileaks" is good since we don't know whothey are or what their agenda might be. It's certainly not an agenda to protect Americans. Now they are posting stuff about the trade agreement and everyone is going crazy. There is no context to these document dumps, no indication of whether the information is still valid or if this stuff is just posturing or things that the negotiators have already discarded. Some Democrats will believe anything and anyone except the president who has served them so well and faithfully for 6 years. And he will continue to serve them despite their faithlessness.
ReplyDelete