( A two-minute read)

Online privacy and surveillance are one of the defining issues of our age.

Or is it?

When one looks at deforestation, glacier recession, ocean acidification, plastic suffocation, climate change, Putin, Trump, not to mention the current wars, Brexit, and whether China will rule the world perhaps it is only a drop in the ocean of problems we have.

In the proverbial fog of technology, most of us it seems could not care less.

Who cares if some agency is reading our emails, on the other hand, we would be pretty naive to think that intelligence agencies would not jump at the chance to read the world’s emails.

Countries have and will always spy on each other.

You would also be blinkered to think those big multinationals don’t do the same thing.

Given the choice of making money and doing the right thing, listed companies are bound to make money.

IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO PROJECT OUR LIBERAL WISH LIST ON ANY OF THESE TITANS OF CAPITALISM.

WE ARE THE PRODUCT BEING SOLD.

The fact is that we can do virtually nothing about any of this, except live off -grid which will probably make your data more valuable.

WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE THE EU GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATIONS?

IF YOU ASK ME THEY WILL NOT MADE A FIDDLERS DIFFERENCE TO ANY OF US.

DATA IS BEING COLLECTED WILLY NILLY INSIDE THE EU AND OUTSIDE.

How can anyone complain or sue about violations of the new rules when they are totally incomprehensible to the ordinary punter.

SINCE THEIR ARRIVAL WE NOW HAVE CORPORATIONS ON THE WEB ASKING US TO READ VOLUMES OF AMENDED PRIVACY POLICY.

BUT HAS IT CHANGED ANYTHING.

NO.  OUR BASIC DATA IS MORE VALUABLE THAN OUR PRIVATE LIVES.

Maybe we should stop blindly trusting algorithms that are exploiting us.

The conversations we’re now having will form the foundations of the future and the owners of this data will have the knowledge makes us all short on knowledge, and rest assured that knowledge is not the same as information.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.