Lounge

 Good points made here about privacy issues in general. As computers become truly ubiquitous we should try and remind ourselves, and each other, occasionally, that information is power and power is currency. He who collects the most data and organizes it in such a way as to be retrievable wins the game.

 Imagine for a moment some entity that knows almost as much about you as you do. I would suggest that they may have little difficulty establishing a dialogue with you that would be fairly agreeable to them.

 Imagine the worst employer you've ever worked for. Now try and imagine this employer having access to your most important personal information. This combined with your identity documentation, financial information, buying habits, entertainment preferrences, family ties etc. and you will work that overtime shift, anytime he demands it of you.

 Imagine a political party with unfettered access to every piece of data that exists in any database anywhere. How much of a majority do they need in the election? If they've got enough money  they've got it, and anything else they want.

 Now imagine the same scenario except this time replace yourself with a loved one. If you aren't paranoid enough, yet, does the thought of a loved one being manipulated by this entity work better at arrousing your paranoia. This scenario will be played out in our lifetimes.

 This amount of knowledge/power/control in the hands of a benevolant entity would be bad. In the hands of a tyrant/corporation/government this would be catastrophic. Period.

 As I write this I'm firmly convinced that I've gone off the deep end except that I don't think I have. I'm just extrapolating and hypothesizing. Why wouldn't some entity use data this way? The ways we're manipulated already lead me to believe that these things will happen in the near future and the data that will be needed to do this is being gathered, organized, copied and shared already.

 If this all sounds ridiculous why would businesses use loyalty programs? To make sure that you get free stuff? I don't think so. Loyalty programs allow them to, with your blessing, build databases on willing victims. The free toaster or trip to Vegas will cost you, no doubt. Information is very valuable or there wouldn't be so many ways to buy and sell it.

 A single bit of data isn't, in itself, a threat. A collection like nothing we've ever seen before may be.

 This is not a game. This is freedom, democracy, free speech and human rights dissolving in front of us.

Good luck,

John

Sorry, guys. I don't have any more at the moment.

I don't know how Google decides when to give you more invitations. When I first got the account, I got two invitations, then I got three more quite recently (all spoken for, alas).

I don't actually use Gmail very much, although I keep meaning to do so. I guess I'm not a big fan of web mail in general, although the Gmail interface is definitely less obnoxious than most.

No, I don't, but someone works out what is needed I can make sure it's added to email the headers.

Maybe it needs these:

In-Reply-To:
References:

Me please,

Thanks,

Bernard