Microsoft is starting to look less evil...

[Bob]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4469886.stm

Fight for your right to privacy
Media companies want to take advantage of laws designed to counter terrorism. Bill Thompson thinks they have to be stopped.

CD being placed in laptop, BBC
The music industry wants more help pursuing pirates
Before sitting down to write this morning I sent e-mails to my students at City University, the other members of the editorial team at the Working for an MP website, my editor at openDemocracy.net and my girlfriend.

And in the last 12 hours I've made four phone calls on my mobile, two to pick up voicemail, one to a conference company in Caterham and one to my mum. I haven't used my fixed-line phone.

You might as well know this, as the people providing my e-mail and phone service already have it all logged, and the mobile phone provider I use even knows roughly where I was (at the cinema, at home) when I made the calls.

I'd tell you my opinion but i dont really feel like it.

[Zslash]

That's some skynet shit man

[co_delphi]

This is not exactly new here dude..... 5 years ago when I was the acting web/system admin for a hotel I would track who visited the website by ip address and track what pages they looked at. Based upon that knowledge I would then trace their IP to verify the source and figure out who could be possibly be looking. For instance once I found that the person was checking our conference hall page, tracked the ip to a local college and identified the person as one of the ecology teachers who was doing a series of conferences in our area. Through this we learned he was considering us as a possible place to hold a conference so we sent him a brochure to consider us further.

[KiwiKitty]

I could say what I can see regarding your mobile phone as well, but I think I'd be breaking the law... no, I think only breaking it if I start spilling information about your account. But your mobile provider can read your SMSes, listen to voicemails you haven't deleted, tell the general where you made or received calls from, check your credit history, whole bunch of things. I hate it, but there's not a lot of privacy left in the world.

... of course, we do encounter a fair number of people who tin foil their heads or houses to escape our government mind control signals. Or to sneakily avoid their phone being barred because they haven't paid their bills. So I guess people would be dumb enough (or innocent, or naive, as the situation may apply) to think a lot of things they do aren't being recorded.