Nokia's Linux strategy broadens with upcoming Maemo 5 device (ars Technica)

Good luck on that one.

If your in the USA you have to be aware that every time you do a official state or federal form that information is collected and is sold. The Post Office works with mass mail marketers to make sure they know were you are. When you get a hunting or drivers license that information is sold. etc etc.

Same thing with your phone company. Same thing with your mortgage companies. etc etc.

There is about zero chance, in my estimation, that the government will ever pass any laws protecting your privacy for anything that can't be directly used for fraud or medical records. If they do they will drill so many holes and loopholes that people still will be able to access everything. All they'll add is just red tape. There is just way to much money to be made by all sides on these sorts of issues and the government wants to be able to monitor you anyways so laws that it imposes on private enterprise will hamper it's own data collection efforts.

Everything from grocery stores to credit card companies to autopart stores.. they all collect and sell your information. Sign up for this store credit card, get this discount card, run your information through the scanner, etc etc. It's all collected, organized, and sold. And your name goes along with the data, just in case anybody cares that much to pay for it.

Unless the public gets outraged and there is enough widespread attention to get senators and whatnot to pay attention then they won't do anything about it. And you can bet that the 'Mass media' folks are going to do what they can to suppress and ignore any groundswell of opinion since their parent companies are ones that try to profit heavily from that sort of activities.

I mean look at Google. They are the ones that made the Android.. their whole purpose and goal in life is to try to figure out how to make money from the data they collect from users (and everything else). For them it's a multi-billion dollar industry and is the basic factor in every dollar they ever made.

The only one to protect your privacy is going to be you (and like minded individuals), unfortunately.

That does not mean running around and being paranoid, of course.

Sure, that'd be better.

My point, shorter, is: asserting control over users' information is bad, but is fixable; doing so in *bad faith* is worse, and may not be. The collection of location data specifically seems to suggest that we may be in the latter case :-(.