Cllr. Gavin Ayling

I wrote the following in response to another of my posts about Google Calendar. I thought it was worth promoting to a post:

Wherever you record your information, in the modern world, corporations and governments have privacy-busting access to it.

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.

Via MatGB (his post) I have found this Samizdata article on the Home Office and what should happen to it.

I agree, simply.

I just want to make a quick prediction before Evans Davies comes onto BBC Breakfast:

“Evan Davies will say that compulsion in pensions makes sense and that it is necessary.”

I will, therefore, take this opportunity to remind him that the state serves us and that individuals should have responsibility for their own actions. What the government should do is announce that there will be no state aid for today’s young people who fail to save. They won’t say that and all today’s young people will, instead, assume that the state will protect them from old-age-poverty.