07-27-2017, 06:39 AM
Actaeon nailed the crux of the biscuit; "Don't get caught.
We can speak of Zoo "rights", but those, as such, are almost certainly unattainable. And as others oppressed have demonstrated, even if you do get them, rights do not necessarily manifest as useful results. Sometimes they can even work against you, making you a "target", where that did not exist before.
Pragmatically, rights are all but useless, without actual working protections to back them up. Indeed, in many, if not most or all cases, it is the protection, not the right, that means everything.
Following the imperative of "Don't get caught", it is there that we most need protection. There are the things we can do ourselves, like discretion, concealment, exclusion, and other "internal" ways of preventing ourselves from getting caught.
Then there are the "external" protections, those that are provided by ethics, traditions, custom, policy, and law.
Of all the various protections. there is only one I know of that can help us "Don't get caught"...
...Privacy.
Americans especially prize privacy, embedding it firmly into the aforementioned ethics, traditions, customs, policies, and laws. Most even presume it to be a constitutionally guaranteed right.
But everywhere, it is under attack. Not just from the usual suspects - government & law enforcement - but from business, industry, marketeers, technology, recreation, and ironically, the privacy-loving public-at-large.
Our personal data is a commodity, routinely shared and sold between various moneyed interests. Our purchases are recorded, logged, processed, and used to create personalized consumer profiles for marketeers. Our phones, cars, exercise monitors, and interactive children's toys are able to track our locations in real time, often also sending video and sound.
And just THIS day, I saw a story on the evening news that the higher end Roomba home robotic vacuum cleaners not only map your floor plan for route planning, they are "phoning home", sending this info to the parent company, iRobot, who are mulling over plans to sell the information to the highest bidder!
And then there are the hackers, breaking into web cams, nanny cams, baby monitors, Furby's, and any other device that has a camera, a microphone, or any other electronic device that receives, processes, stores, or transmits data or human-recognizable information.
And privacy is even being threatened by the very people that are threatened by its loss.
By spilling out their lives on social media sites, taking intimate market surveys in exchange for the chance to enter a contest for overinflated prizes they have little chance to win, customers signing up for retail "club cards" or "rewards" plans, in lieu of "everyday reasonable prices". Making nearly all their purchases with credit & debit cards, not only giving up information, but paying out interest & fees for the "privilege".
And these just barely scratch the surface!
This is where our interest and the interest of society in general converge; the threat to privacy and the need to preserve it. We can fight for privacy "rights" along with the rest of society, without any social repercussions, as long as we don't reveal our own particular reason.
On that front, our enemies are the common enemies of the rest of society. And it is there that we have the best chance of making the best gains.
But we must remember, privacy is both external and internal. We need to work for laws and policies that spell out and enforce rules for protection, AND we must do our own part to directly preserve our privacy at the nuts-and-bolts level.
Among the external:
Support legislation that promotes and protects privacy rights.
Vote for candidates that honestly support privacy protections.
Petition for recall or impeachment of those that have or would compromise, sell-out. or take away privacy protections.
Push for meaningful privacy policies at work, school, and other institutions.
Seek to advance guidelines to policy, and policy to law.
Among the internal:
Don't livestream anything and everything.
Don't spill your private guts out on facebook or twitter,
Robust-password your baby monitors, nannycams and other home surveillance systems and devices.
Where you can, use cash.
Disable the spyware devices in your children's toys or just don't buy them.
Shop at non club-card stores.
Don't give out valuable information for the opportunity to enter a prize contest.
Use cash.
Speak your honest mind in the appropriate forums, but don't include real-life information.
Keep your computer software updated.
USE CASH!
Those would be a start.
Our best, and probably our only "real", Zoo rights are going to be privacy rights.
And only if they are real working privacy protections, and not just symbolic "paper tiger" rights.
Those are what we need to fight for.
Resident Hyaena ^..^
