The One Percent Have Privately Disappeared
December 8, 2016
People like to think that their lives are not always monitored, especially inside their domiciles. However, if you have installed any type of security camera, especially a baby monitor, the bad news is that they are easily hacked. Malware can also be downloaded onto a computer to spy on you through the built-in camera. Mark Zuckerberg coves his laptop’s camera with a piece of electrical tape. With all the conveniences to spy on the average individual, it is not surprising that the rich one percent are literally buying their privacy by disappearing. FT.com takes a look about, “How The Super-Rich Are Making Their Homes ‘Invisible.’”
The article opens with a description about how an entire high-end California neighborhood exists, but it is digitally “invisible” on Google Street View. Celebrities live in this affluent California neighborhood and the management company does not even give interviews. Privacy is one of the greatest luxuries one can buy in this age and the demand will grow as mobile Internet usages increases. The use of cameras is proportional to Internet usage.
People who buy privacy by hiding their homes want to avoid prying eyes, such a paparazzi and protect themselves from burglars. The same type of people who buy privacy are also being discreet about their wealth. They do not flaunt it, unlike previous eras. In the business sector, more and more clients want to remain anonymous so corporations are creating shell businesses to protect their identities.
There is an entire market for home designs that hide the actual building from prying eyes. The ultimate way to disappear, however, is to live off the grid:
For extra stealth, property owners can take their homes off the grid — generating their own electricity and water supply avoids tell-tale pipes and wires heading on to their land. Self-sufficient communities have become increasingly popular for privacy, as well as ecological, reasons; some estimates suggest that 180,000 households are living off the grid in the US alone.
Those people who live off the grid will also survive during a zombie apocalypse, but I digress.
It is understandable that celebrities and others in the public eye require more privacy than the average citizen, but we all deserve the same privacy rights. But it brings up another question: information needs to be found in order to be used. Why should some be able to disappear while others cannot?
Whitney Grace, December 8, 2016
Critics Blast Zuckerbergs Free Internet
January 26, 2016
Mark Zuckerberg is giving the subcontinent India access to free Internet. In some eyes Zuckerberg is being generous, but his critics are saying he’s doing it to gain control of a 1.2 billion untapped market. The New York Post shares Zuckerberg’s magnanimous act in “Mark Zuckerberg Defends His Free Internet Bid In India.”
Zuckerberg’s free Internet in India is dubbed “Free Basics” and it offers full access to Facebook and other affiliated sites, while blocking access to Google, Twitter, and other rivals. Free Basics’s partner Indian telecom partner Reliance Communication was forced to temporarily shut down service.
Critics are angry with Zuckerberg, claiming he is violating net neutrality and it comes as a slap in the face after he defended it within the United States. Free Basics could potentially ruin Internet competition in India and gain an iron grasp on a developing market. An even more intriguing piece to the story is that Free Basics was formerly named Internet.org, but Zuckerberg was forced to change it so new Internet users would not think that Facebook and related Web sites were all that existed.
“The local tech entrepreneur warned that ‘the incentive to invest in better, faster and cheaper access to the entire Internet will be replaced with one of providing better, faster and cheaper access to [Facebook’s] websites and apps’…In his Monday op-ed piece, Zuckerberg at times sounded exasperated as he insisted that the limited access provided by Free Basics was better than no access at all.”
Free Basics has already been deployed in thirty-five countries and provides free Internet for fifteen million people.
What’s the problem with wanting one’s way like blocking our competitors’ services? Absolutely nothing, if you rule the world. If not, there may be push back. I learned this in kindergarten. Zuckerberg can expect lots of push back.
Whitney Grace, January 26, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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