Unwanted thoughts about privacy relativism

These days, nearly everyone is talking about the increasing loss of privacy, including longtime Facebook users. As I just said in a Facebook post, to the extent that I care about privacy, I don’t put my private stuff on Facebook. But words are tricky in this context. When we think of privacy, we tend to think of personal, intimate things — which only an exhibitionist might put online.  Some of the Facebook and Google privacy stuff involves not so much on issues of personal intimacy, but on what I would call personal harassment. If I am interested in — or even thinking about — buying something, I might Google it to learn more about it. But if that generates an avalanche of targeted advertising and spam, then I am more and more disinclined to look for anything online, say anything about what I like online, and the overall effect is to defeat the purpose of the Internet.

Seriously, it’s not my privacy that I care about so much as my right not to be constantly annoyed. Or is there no such right?

Anyway, I was glad to see that they’ve come up with a new app which allows encrypted communications that — so they say — even the NSA can’t crack:

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Carnegie Mellon University researchers claim they have created a smartphone messaging app with security that not even the National Security Agency can break.

The app is called SafeSlinger, and is free on the iTunes store, and Google play store for Android phones.

Researchers say the app uses a passphrase which only the user, and the other party can know.

They claim messages cannot be read by a cellular carrier, internet-provider, employer, or anyone else.

The setup takes a few minutes, with the user answering security questions generated by the app that help it generate encryption and authorization credentials.

The app then works just like a regular messaging app.

Sounds like a worthwhile product to me.

Here’s the home page where you can download it.

It’s nice to think that privacy might be achievable in personal communications with friends. What I’d like to see is more anonymity in commercial dealings.

Hell, I’d be willing to pay for it.  As things are, I feel as if I am constantly being stalked by people who want my money.

Yes, stalked.

Why is it that we only call it stalking if we are being stalked by people who want sex? I may be crazy, but I would find it less annoying to be stalked by people who want sex than by people who want money, but for reasons that I cannot fathom, the former is a criminal offense, while the latter is business.