You know they are watching you, don’t you?and you're helping

Somebody is watching you and you're helping You know they are watching you, don’t you? It doesn’t matter who “they” are. Suffice it to say they know what you are doing, where you are going and what you have to say. It has been going on for some time. And, according to reports, it is only going to get worse. The watchers can be annoying. Or they can be dangerous. At Christmas somebody gave me a gift card to one of those big online bookstores. After the holidays I went online to buy a book. I had a particular history book in mind and I called it up on the screen. I thought about it, considered the price, the value, whether I would really get around to reading it – all the things you do when you are shopping. I decided against buying it. I thought that was that until a few days later when I was reading a magazine article online. On the top, right-hand side of the page was one of those distracting little ads that moved and blinked. I tried to ignore it, but then I noticed the ad was from the bookstore company. The blinking ad was the book I looked at. Dumb me. I thought it was a coincidence. But the book blinked at me on another day and on another website. In fact, the blinking book has been following me around since then. They have my number. And they are not about to forget it. Jeffrey Rosen, who has written about the law and privacy, says the Web means the “end of forgetting.” Whether it’s something frivolous like ordering a history book or something more sinister like a regrettable moment from your past, the Web – in fact, much of modern technology – makes sure it is never forgotten. Last week The Wall Street Journal reported on a group of women in Texas suing a website for publishing naked photos of them without their permission. Worse, the photos were linked to the women’s Twitter accounts and other identifying information. The photos and other information likely came from ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands. The Journal said the site was part of a new trend: revenge porn. Those once-personal photos shared with that special someone has become a way to publicly humiliate an ex. It’s the age of never forgetting. It’s also the age of big data and accurate predicting. Marketers, for example, have been compiling your shopping information and shaping a personal campaign to sell you things. The New York Times last year reported that Target has become so good at this marketing that it sent teen-age girl coupons for baby clothes and diapers before her parents knew she was pregnant. The father ranted at the local store manager when he found the coupons. But when the daughter told him she was expecting, the father called the manager back and apologized. The Obama campaign is the king when it comes to political big data. Politicians are keeping every shred of information about you, your hot buttons, your biases and your causes. They have two objectives: to get you to give and to get you (and your friends) to vote. The Obama people made brilliant use of public records, Internet tracking “cookies” and retargeting campaigns. They hired sociologists to craft appeals based on the information they obtained about would-be voters. Forbes Magazine reported at one point that both the Obama and Romney campaigns even knew which porn sites their supporters were visiting. For the record, the campaigns said they did not make much use of that information. We tend to be fairly reckless with the information we give out online. Just think what numbers crunchers will be able to do with all of the personal stuff on Facebook and Twitter. But we don’t give out all of the information “they” have on us. The federal government is watching us if we call someone overseas through its “warrantless searches” allowed in the name of combating terrorism. This week The Economist reported that Google’s must recent six-month transparency report, the U.S. government made “8,438 requests for user data, which is more than the number of requests made by the next four nosiest countries (India, France, Germany and Britain) combined.” And none of this counts the cameras trained on us in stores, on streets and at intersections. Last week the Wilmington police department said it wants to create a database of all of the private surveillance cameras in the city. The operation is called “Shared Vision.” “Shared Vision”? not mine