Regular readers — and those who notice the number at the end of this Journal post’s title — know that I am a staunch advocate of personal privacy — both online and offline.

And they know that I see Facebook as one of the biggest violators of personal privacy the world has ever known.

Not only because Facebook exploits millions of people’s private data for its own profit — but because it constantly attempts to “educate” the masses into believing that their privacy isn’t important; that they should just [more...]

For the past several years, those who make billions of dollars by exploiting everyone private information have tried to convince everyone that privacy is a thing of the past.

Of course they say that — their entire business model and personal fortunes depend of millions of people being willing to allow their personal data to be exploited.

In fact, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly made statements expressing utter disdain for [more...]

For the past many years, I used Google’s Webmaster Tools to help me optimize my various Web sites for Google’s search engine, and help me administer Google’s spidering of my sites.

In that same time frame, I’ve also sent automated nightly sitemaps of my sites to Google, to ensure that it would be aware of each day’s updates.

Over the years, I’ve also used four different Google GMail accounts as anonymous proxies, to protect my online privacy when corresponding with possibly dubious strangers — being careful not to [more...]

We’ve all read horror stories of travelers’ dealings with the TSA.

Strip-searched little old ladies.

Frisked babies.

Sexually groped children.

Humiliated disabled people.

Attractive women singled out for [more...]

Eben Moglen is a law professor at Columbia University.

As well as the Director-Counsel and Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center.

He’s also a well-known privacy advocate.

Eben Moglen is a very well respected in high-tech circles.

So why has he gotten into the habit of [more...]

It’s not a war against all computing.

But it’s definitely a war against general-purpose computing.

More and more people are buying smart phones, tablets and other special-purpose computers. Some of them have even written articles, bragging that they now do all of their computing work on those devices.

Instead of on relatively big, bulky general-purpose computers, like mine.

One result of the mobile computing movement is that [more...]

Incredible.

Unbelievable.

Yet, not surprising in the least.

Facebook has been tracking its 750 millions users as they surf to other Web sites, even when [more...]

If you’re a regular reader of this Journal, you know that, lately, there have been a whole lot of stories that have raised red flags for privacy advocates.

One of the newest is something that people are just now learning about the “Obamacare” health-care law that the U.S. Congress passed several months ago.

It turns out that the provisions of that law will violate patient confidentiality.

And will risk the [more...]