By Nathan Barton

Government and other criminals (pirates, slavers, burglars, con-artists, etc.) are not the only enemies of liberty, including our rights of privacy and many others. Consider the big, and increasingly powerful, social media, information technology companies, and food producers. In particular, consider ONE social media company and its founder and owner.

I received this e-mail from a close friend, and thought it worth passing on. It is something they posted on the same site they are writing about. (I edited it a bit.)

I am planning to stop using *acebook for several reasons, including:

1. My e-mail just got overwhelmed, yet again, because I was “tagged” on someone else’s post to the page. I can’t afford the time to go through several dozen e-mails every time this happens.

2. The Independent, a reputable British newspaper, reports that a researcher says that the site is listening to (and recording) people’s conversations (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-using-people-s-phones-to-listen-in-on-what-they-re-saying-claims-professor-a7057526.html). I value my privacy and that of my family, friends, and clients too much to let a faceless (pun intended) organization do this. If they are doing this on phones, it is reasonably logical to assume that they are doing it on tablets, laptops, and desktops as well.

3. The site continues to attack human rights in a variety of ways: free speech, right of self-defense, freedom of assembly, etc. and is squarely on the side of tyrannical government, apparently around the world. For instance, if I were to publish something that could be construed as something that either supports something that the site’s masters do not like – or opposes something that they support – they censor it. Fine. It is THEIR site, and private. But I don’t have to support it by playing their games and reading their ads and letting them target ads to me.

Enough is enough. {They put up a notice to those they are linked to but} I don’t know how long the site will allow this post to be kept up on this page. I know that other people have told me that posts like this disappear a lot, and often very quickly.

Please consider whether or not YOU can afford to put up with this for the sake of being able to socialize with people that you could just as easily call or send private e-mails.

And if they can and do get to your microphone on your phone and computers, what ELSE can they get to on those? Maybe not the company itself, but someone working for the company, or someone hacking into the company, or…?

Nathan’s afterword: We know that privacy is hard to come by today, even as we have the tools and ability to further protect privacy. And privacy is and always has been closely tied to our liberty. Convenient as things like *acebook and *witter and *inkedIn are, we give up much of value for that convenience. We must each choose for ourselves.