I stopped even
thinking about who had data about me when 20 years ago I tried to apply for a
JC Penney card in order to get some discount or another, and was told that the
social security number I gave them was different than what my credit report
informed them it was. I informed them
that the computer was wrong. I knew then
that data about me, right or wrong, was electronically floating around the universe
and paradigms had shifted, at least they had in “the free world”.
I’m not much for social media, since as it is, I waste enough time emailing and
occasionally putting words on this here nowhere place whose bits and bytes are being "monitored" as I type (delicious). But at one point in time, I did put my profile on LinkedIn, whose function in my life I am still unsure
of; I probably don’t use it as I should.
I was job hunting and figured “why not?”
As with any social media, being on LinkedIn means that one gets invited to
“connect” with people. If I know the person who "invites" me, I accept; and when I “accept”, LinkedIn automatically routes me to a page with several profiles it thinks I might want to invite to connect with me. I've noticed that as time has progressed and I have accepted more and
more invitations on LinkedIn, the page it sends me to in order to invite people
to connect with me is starting to get crowded with people I've never met and
who have very little in common with me. Ok, the premise of social
media seems to be that it is a forum where one connects with known people, as well as, a place to meet strangers and make new "friends"; but LinkedIn is not a social site, it is a professional one, and to link with people who don’t know me from Adam and with whom I
have nothing in common makes no contextual sense to
me.
This morning, when I accepted one more connection and was
sent to my “invite” page, I noticed I knew no one on it. For “fun”, I spent some time scrolling down
and still did not find any familiar face.
Like I said, I see no reason to connect with strangers in industries I
know nothing about in a professional site, but it got me thinking of the
metadata the NSA has been warehousing.
Warehousing info and being able to use it effectively, much less
nefariously, are two very different things.
My husband might be right that one political party or another could get hold of some piece of data in order to pull “a Nixon” or “an Obama” and use the information contained in it to benefit their own
party somehow; but it seems to me that there are easier ways to be dirty. Maybe it is a good thing that the fact of the
surveillance has come to light; but as far as I’m concerned: File away. Paradigm shift or not, there is safety in numbers.…
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