Guy Gavriel Kay Quotes

We are all victims of data mining…. We are in a data mining culture…. Americans do not place a high value on the privacy of their communications and will give up that right for modest benefit.

In the Internet age, it is inevitable that corporations and government agencies will have access to detailed information about people's lives.

You can have Google or you can have privacy but you can’t have both.

To be sure, anonymity online has it uses and is very important. Governments hoover up people's telephone and e-mail records without oversight, and companies track astonishingly granular personal information.

A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all.

The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you're going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.

Everything we do in the digital realm - from surfing the Web to sending an e-mail to conducting a credit card transaction to, yes, making a phone call - creates a data trail. And if that trail exists, chances are someone is using it - or will be soon enough.

Foreigners like me have no privacy rights whatsoever. Yet we keep using U.S.-based services all the time, making us a legal target for gathering and storing our private information. Other countries do surveillance as well. But nobody has the global visibility that United States does.

You already have zero privacy - get over it.

You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.

I never understood what the big deal is about privacy.

In America, we have bible-reading applications: every single one of those applications asks permission to turn on your microphone, your camera; it wants permission to read your e-mails and the right to send e-mails wherever it chooses.

It's interesting - what are you willing to give up in terms of your privacy for access to other people? For access to things you think you desperately need. Ultimately, it's that old saying, isn't it? If the service is free, then the product is you. The thing being sold is you. There's a product for sale in you and your data.

I'm not for the mass collection of data. I go the other way.

An Internet service provider reasonably needs to know your name and address. But it's hard to imagine why a provider would need to collect your Internet browsing habits other than to sell your data.

If your plumber or pool installer or local appliance store uses HubSpot software, HubSpot may be holding information about you without you even knowing it. We figure we're safe when we use online services. We figure we can trust the people who run them not to snoop on us. I used to believe that. I don't anymore.

Every medium by which people communicate can be subject to exploitation by those with illegal intentions. Nevertheless, this is no reason to hand Big Brother the keys to unlock our e-mail diaries, open our ATM records, read our medical records, or translate our international communications.

Call it a hunch, but I sense that many of us are not entirely comfortable with a world in which every single thing we buy creates a cloud of data. I'd like to have an option to not have a record of how much I tipped, or what I bought at 1:08 A.M. at a corner market in New York City.

I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.

Despite being in public life, I value my own privacy immensely and would be as concerned as anyone else if I thought my mobile phone records could be easily available to officials across government.

Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it's digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules - not just for governments but for private companies.

Have you noticed the people most likely to be up in arms about governments apparently spying on us tend to be the most non-private people you know? The people launching petitions and wailing about Big Brother and data collection are most likely to be the most constant self-presenters.

I do mind some of the intrusions on privacy.

I want to talk about privacy, the quality of the information you receive, whether it's neutral or commercial or pointed, bringing consciousness to the lack of neutrality in the algorithms.

Facebook is not your friend, it is a surveillance engine.