Corporate surveillance reaches a new low (from above)

[golinux]

Billboards invading your privacy. There's no place to hide folks . . .

[edbarx]

Money argues, money wins, money decides, money rules, money governs.

How are you going to change reality?

[golinux]

How are you going to change reality?

What is is. What a sad state our species is in . . .

[tomazzi]

Money argues, money wins, money decides, money rules, money governs.

How are you going to change reality?

Oh, don't be such pessimistic
That "problem" is in fact easily solvable... through education.

I'll give You an example:
Most of people are earning only as much money as they need to survive (this is in fact controlled)
So: what if those people discover a way to vote with their wallets? - they will start to control the market.

In my country, there's an old saying: "poor people just can't afford buying a cheapest things" - why? - because by buying cheapest products You pay for a total crap, which has no guarantees to work or it's of the worst quality - so You'll need to buy it twice (or more), and it's only a matter of luck if it will at all work for You...

A real life example:
I've just bought a laser printer. 2 times more expensive than normally - why?
Because in my country people are (usually) reading the specifications:
Cheap printer - so called "GDI" or a "dumb windows printer" - is a crap. No standards. All the processing of the image is done on the main CPU and then it is sent to a printer in some bogus format which sometimes fails even on winblows....
By paying for 2 times more expensive printer I've got a device, which is 4 times faster, suppoorts *ALL* the standards (like the HP PCL, PostScript, PDF, PrintServer, etc).

The problem is in education: don't buy crap - because You'll need to buy it twice (or more) - without any guarantee of quality...

And although it is not strictly related to this topic, I think that the message is clear - fight with those motherfuckers with Your wallet - this is most effective.

Regards.

[edbarx]

Money argues, money wins, money decides, money rules, money governs.

How are you going to change reality?

Oh, don't be such pessimistic
That "problem" is in fact easily solvable... through education.

Tomazzi, you know on a global level that what I said is true. It is all about money and whether one has the courage to admit or not does not make any difference to reality. What I said is so true, that even in the administration of justice, where fairness should be the governing value, money still rules. Ask anyone who was denied justice for not being able to pay for the best lawyer. In my little pebble of a country, a monument was built in front of the national courts building for a lawyer famous for defending murderers. Ask the families of the murder victims whether justice was administered in their case when one of their loved ones was murdered. Presently a nationally renown lawyer who defends murderers get themselves paid by asking for buildings as a payment. This means, most middle class and definitely working class cannot afford her.

Tomazzi, money, wealth, call it whatever you like, has been ruling the world's history since time immemorial and it is continuing to do so. Therefore, the only 'solution' is for individuals like yourself to avoid being bit as much as they can, but they still get bitten, as the vast majority of situations do not depend on them.

[rovernut]

I despise billboards. That's one thing (among many) I loved about living in Vermont, billboards were banned. Businesses can only have signs on their own property and the size is very restricted. Hopefully that hasn't changed since I left. Even though I don't live there anymore, it's nice to know there's a little spot of sanity.

Compare that with where I live now, in Georgia, near Atlanta.
Some years back the Georgia legislature, after heaving lobbying by companies like Clear Channel, passed laws that allowed billboard owners to cut down trees along roads for a certain distance on either side of their billboards so people can see them better.
In the same legislation they established the minimum distance between billboards at twice the distance from each billboard that trees are allowed to be cut down.
No one seemed to see a problem with that.

As for the OP, hopefully someone will shortly come up with a method for blocking it from working (short of taking out your phone's battery).

I would suggest anyone who is an AT&T customer to start calling AT&T support and asking how to block the "service". I bet they'll get the message if enough people call.
I'm doing it right now.

[tomazzi]

Tomazzi, you know on a global level that what I said is true. It is all about money and whether one has the courage to admit or not does not make any difference to reality. What I said is so true, that even in the administration of justice, where fairness should be the governing value, money still rules. Ask anyone who was denied justice for not being able to pay for the best lawyer. In my little pebble of a country, a monument was built in front of the national courts building for a lawyer famous for defending murderers. Ask the families of the murder victims whether justice was administered in their case when one of their loved ones was murdered. Presently a nationally renown lawyer who defends murderers get themselves paid by asking for buildings as a payment. This means, most middle class and definitely working class cannot afford her.

Tomazzi, money, wealth, call it whatever you like, has been ruling the world's history since time immemorial and it is continuing to do so. Therefore, the only 'solution' is for individuals like yourself to avoid being bit as much as they can, but they still get bitten, as the vast majority of situations do not depend on them.

It may seem that You're right when we look at the current status quo - but it's exactly what I'm trying to say: we need to change the situation. Of course most of people today are thinking this way - what can I do?, I'm not able to change anything... etc.
In fact, we can do a lot - many of us - the key factor is exactly how many of us, the people, will do something. Large number of people can change the the world.

Corporations are like a cancer - there are greedy and mindless - they will suck the money and resources until the host will die.
The antidote in the form of law systems have failed long ago - and this is where You're are absolutely right - corporate criminals are out of range of any law system.

What is left is us - normal people. And our only weapon is knowledge of how corporotions are ****** us - because only then we can know how to avoid this and how to kick them out of this planet...

...

Today we are about to start World War 3, which will wipe most of humanity from the surface of the earth:
1. New Cold War with Russia, with the Iron Courtanin hanging this time over Ukraine.
2. Iraq was destroyed by the US, and that action was based on a lie regarding the presence of chemical weapons.
3. A new "terrorists" country was settled in the middle weast, thanks to US "intervention" in the Iraq.
4. Hundreds of thousants of "emigrants" are coming to Europe - and what's really strange, those "emigrants" are dressed better than average working man in in my country, each of them has an iPhone and they're claiming that they have paid 5000 US dollars for the illegal transport to the EU. Apparently, they have started to collect the money long before the attack on the WTC had place ... (20$ per month is an average salary there)
5. New version of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact has ben settled between Germany and Russia, but this time it is called NordStream2 (bypassing embargo put on Russia)
6. North Korea leaded by a crazy man have successfully launched their nuclear project, where the most important thing is that they have ballistic rockets.
6. Bombs are exploding in the biggest and most important cities in the Europe.

...that's a short, not chronological and incomplete list of recent facts, but there is one more, the most cruitial one:

In this moment of history, when the world is shaking, the US have "proposed" the TTIP act to EU (quotes are axactly where they should be), which is even worse than ACTA and probably even more destructive than NAFTA for Mexico. It is targeted to destroy European markets by allowing corporations like f.e. Monsanto to flood the EU markets with cheap but crappy GMO-based food, just as they did in the US.

Of course, I can provide a lot more examples, but but the most important is the conclusion:

Corporations today are international - they are no longer representing interests of particular countries.
They are not paying taxes and they are corrupting governments, even in such a big countries like US - they are a cancer.

And Yes, they are extremely powerful and dangerous.

However, there is a paradox of the Elephant and the Ant: Elephant can't kill the ant, even if he will step on it, because the ant is simply too small. Milion of ants can eat the elephant.

Vote with Your wallets, learn as much as You can about the products You're going to buy.

Regards.

[golinux]

Here's another idea of how to right the sinking ship.

[rovernut]

As expected, the person I spoke with at AT&T had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. In theory a manager is going to call me back.

[edbarx]

Vote with Your wallets, learn as much as You can about the products You're going to buy.

My digestive system does not allow me to eat everything, especially modified crops. This reason was why at the ripe age of 48 I started to cultivate my own food. That way, although very laborious, at least I don't suffer from incessant abdominal pain anymore.