1329 Computer Safe?

I was reading a science magazine the other day and came across two disturbing things.
First, in an article on improving traffic, the writer mentioned that now that we all carry cellphones, navigation folks are collecting flow data from them. Some 4 million phones now report speed and position to Nokia-owned Navtec. If you’ve used a location service of any sort, you’ve been pinged without your knowledge.
Kind of scary. Right now, the info is going directly to the navigation service companies. But how long before Big Brother wants to know when you’re leaving the bar...or the library?
We can only hope that terrorists get lost and ask their smartphone for directions.
The other disturbing thing was about a company that backs up your computer automatically. Kind of like a computer safe to keep your computer safe. It does this by going into your computer periodically, backing up all your files, and then storing them at an offsite data center. Their offsite center.
Their off-site “secure” center.
Uh huh...
Somehow the idea of someone coming in daily and rooting around in my computer, making a copy of everything, then taking it away to someplace else, seems unsettling.
I wouldn’t let them do that with my desk files. Or my picture collection. Sure it’s a good idea to store important documents in a bank safety deposit box. But the bank doesn’t come in and rummage around in my house to find them every day.
Still, every time I go online, I run the risk of some dastardly hacker doing the same thing without my permission. Maybe I just don’t like the idea of all that stuff sitting on somebody else’s server.
Where Big Brother can find it all in one place.
And he won’t even have to fight traffic...
America, ya gotta love it.