Security → Can an ISP Employee Spy on Me at Will?

Excellent column on privacy by of all people John C. Dvorak last week:

On Privacy: It's Not What I'm Hiding (Or Not Hiding) That Matters | PCMag.com
»www.pcmag.com/article2/0 ··· 1,00.asp
Just because you aren't doing something wrong doesn't mean you shouldn't protect your privacy rights.

By John C. Dvorak // December 6, 2012

I see that Eric Schmidt is back in the news with an erroneous assertion that if you've got nothing to hide, you should not worry about your privacy.

I'm always stunned when a billionaire with a private life goes on about how trivial privacy is. And he is not the only one. I often hear people say, "if you are not doing anything wrong, then what's the fear?" Scott McNealy famously said, "Privacy is dead. Get over it."

All these folks miss the point time and time again. Privacy is not about just you and me. It in itself is a milieu—one that needs nurturing, not a lax attitude.

Privacy is not important because I do or do not have something to hide. I would argue that lack of privacy regulations, whether by rule or agreement, creates total societal corruption. A Soviet-style state. Orwellian, like 1984.

...

a VPN cannot be accessed so that is safe. You can think of the VPN like a truck with a locked trailer. People know a truck went by but have no way to know what it carried. The normal internet is more like a flat bed trailer on the semi, Everybody on the freeway can see the cargo if they turn and look.

And without that VPN or HTTPS never consider any form of wireless link to even be remotely safe. Funny thing about the airwaves is "once its beamed its for me" Or in short any body in range can pick up the signal, And it is pretty much impossible to know if someone receives a signal that was sent broadly.(I am sure letter agencies can though.) Back in early 1990s my middle school had a radio lab, We used to listen to things from the bus CB radio network(which I think was actually licensed on its on freqency) to analog cell phones on the scanner equipment. we would hit scan and see what we got when it stopped.