iSpy, with my little eye, big brother invadin' my space!

In the first part of Mark Andrejevic's book iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era, Andrejevic brings some insightful points to the table regarding corporate surveillance of civilian personal information. He proposes his theory of a digital enclosure. Digital enclosure, what he defines as, "the creation of an interactive realm wherein every action and transaction generates information about it-self." Roughly put, it is the result of personal technology sending personal information about the individual back to the mother company, who in turn stores all that information in databases that the consumer will never see. The interactivity of our electronic devices is slowly gathering information, personal information that we won't ever see. This is a scary thought. I have always have the naive view that our technologies were made to help make our lives easier but in reality they are turning our lives into open books. Mobile phones, iPods, iPads and virtually every other product with the patented Apple "i", are gathering information, essentially being spies for Big Brother. Andrejevic says that

                   "There is a pattern here: the use of interactive technologies-new media- lends itself to the       generation of cybernetic information: feedback about transactions themselves. This feedback becomes the property of private companies that can store, aggregate, sort, and, in many cases, sell the information to others in the form of a database or a cybernetic commodity."

Did I read that right? He said say "sell"? My PERSONAL information can be sold? Now I'm all for companies using their technology to help with market research and further development that can later benefit me but the sale of my information is where I draw the line. I mean damn, we lost our privacy under the Patriot Act, but I never thought that our information could be sold to the highest bidder. Maybe I am understanding this wrong, which is not unusual, but I just don't see how a country that uses the motto, "Land of the FREE..." can sell information at a whim. They are gathering information at the cost of our freedom. I don't see the need for someone too need to where I am at all times, though my cell phone provider seems to think differently. Adrejevic also says that,

"it's true that citizens and consumers are losing control over information about themselves, that increasingly their movements and purchases, the details of their lives, are being recorded, gathered, and sorted. In this respect, it's also true that the public can no longer nurture one of the characteristics of mass society:..being able to pass relatively unnoticed in a crowd,...to fly below the radar of surveillance."



   Adrejevic knows that we are moving inexorably towards total corporate domination of information. Corporations use the term "market research" to get away with the invasion of privacy. How do you think Verizon gets its information that they so love to display on commercicals. They love to say it, "97% of all Americans are covered by Verizon Wireless" or "WE have the Nation's largest network of reception" or something along those lines. Our phones are constantly sending our information about or location to our provider.

I dont know if its just me but I dont like the way we are headed. This information that these companies has is borderline unconstitutional and maybe it has even crossed infor the realm of unconstitutional, but either way its wrong. Information like this has the potential to make its way into the hands of politicans and the government as a whole. So I ask these two questions. When, if ever, does information make the jump from personal to public information? And, who has the right to decide what information is OK to make public?