Bonus: I hate to say I told you so

But … I told you so.

I told you years ago that cloud computing was a bad idea. And not just because I remember the days of the dumb terminal, and the technical nightmare they implied.

But also because I personally consider it quite foolish to dump your information — personal or otherwise — into the hands of a corporation.

And now we have the lovely scenario where a major government is sifting through data (you can call it “metadata” if it helps you rationalize) — apparently not because someone did something wrong, but because apparently it can do so, unhindered.

I don’t need to repeat the details, mostly because I’d probably get the information wrong. I do feel the need to gloat though. I did tell you so.

And people ask me why I don’t use Facebook. … 😈

It’s true, if you’ve e-mailed me, you know I use GMail for correspondence here, and Google is among the guilty.

But I’ve known since 2007 or earlier that Google was pulling data from my e-mails and using it for their own nefarious plots.

So I’ve made it a point to use gnupg any time I need to communicate anything more sensitive than “Hello, world!”

Is that the answer? Beats me. I get a weak sense of security using that … and things like HTTPS Everywhere, or DoNotTrackMe and pidgin-encryption.

The sad part is that we feel it’s necessary at all. 😦