How to Track the Tech That’s Tracking You Every Day - Gizmodo: “It’s easy to feel helplessright now. Cities across the country are seeing unarmed protesters maimed by police officers who enjoy both the full support of the currentpresidential administration and of the American legal system itself. Congress is, in 2020, debatingwhether to make lynching a federal hate crime. And there’s still a pandemic happening! Meanwhile, even the people who emerge from this moment unscathed physically will, undoubtedly, find their digital lives compromised in more ways than we can possibly fathom. This last bit, at least, is something we can make meaningful progress on without risking life and limb. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy. One of the cruelest ironies is that the more you learn about digital privacy, the more helpless you feel. We’re told that the privacy-protecting laws passed both here and abroad will actually protect us from data-hoovering tech, but a bit of research shows that they actually don’t. We’re told that wearing a mask—the way many of us are right now—is a simple enough trick to throw off facial recognition systems, but a bit of reading shows that companies are actively trying to subvert that limitation. A bit of digging shows that every major tech company preaching privacy ideals is, in fact, full of shit…”
“I think of the garden after the rain;
And hope to my heart comes singing,
At morn the cherry-blooms will be white,
And the Easter bells be ringing!”
– Edna Dean Proctor, Easter Bells