Even if our government pretends to care modestly about human rights, they wouldn’t be averse to collecting information from you by using the CIA or China as an intermediary.

Ultimately if you use Outlook, Windows Calendar (in Vista), Google Calendar or Yahoo Mail’s built-in calendar then your information is accessible. My suggestion:

Use a filofax to plan that murder!

Aside from that rather flippant comment, though, there are serious privacy concerns. I use SearchHistory in Google so:

- They know what I search for and when
- They know where I travel when I use Google Maps to garner a route
- They know where I log on to the internet because wherever I log on, I use Google’s customised homepage and they can obtain my IP
- They know my politics (from this page and every other that their pages crawl and find information on me from)
- They know who I know from my contacts list in Google Mail (previously known as Gmail).

But, and this isn’t anything more than a pragmatic lament, there’s nothing that can be done about that in today’s world. I don’t have to use any of these Google tools — they’re just convenient. What I do have to do, though, is use the software that my employer provides for e-mail and calendar functions at work; I do have to have a bank account and no matter how I withdraw my money, corporations have to know where I am (CCTV in branches or location data from cash-machine withdrawals or cash-back collections).

Privacy is something that should be guaranteed by the state, but ultimately we’re all vulnerable to a less-than-scrupulous government.

In the meantime, worth a play, it’s got to be better than Outlook.