Instapundit: Meet The New Oligarchs, Same as the Old Oligarchs

Glenn Reynolds surveys data
about declining public trust in social media and tech companies and
concludes that the cyber-chickens are coming home to roost.

It’s made worse by the increasing politicization of Silicon
Valley, and the transformation of its leaders from rebels into what
Joel Kotkin calls “the new oligarchs,” people who once talked about
technology as liberation, but who now seem more interested in using
technology as an instrument of control. It’s not just NSA spying;
it’s that the companies gather data on everyone, with comparatively
little legal oversight.

You might have been OK with that a decade or two ago, when
Silicon Valley seemed full of people who would stand up to the Man.
Now, they are The Man (or The Woman) in many ways, or in cahoots
with them. Might the information you gave to OKCupid be
used against you someday? Your only protection, really, is their
good nature. And how good is that?

Read the whole thing.

And then read Instapundit’s excellent “5
Privacy Laws I Would Put on the Books Right Now.” Snippet:

4. Emphasize Reciprocity

Private citizens should be entitled to do anything that
government entities can do without a warrant. For example, when I’m
out in public anyone can see my license plates. But I’ll bet that
police or prosecutors or judges would object if I started tracking
their “public” movements everywhere they went. If they can fly a
drone over my backyard without a warrant, then I should be able to
do the same to them. Government officials should have no more
protection from that sort of thing than the rest of us. This will
encourage both more transparency and a more serious attention to
privacy.