Car parks and Governments

I remember some years ago our local council decided to put charges on the local carparks which were at that time free.  They said it would be just 10p an hour and would always remain that way.   I'm sure people didn't really buy that,  but it happened anyway.  What made me think of this?  The first thing was putting £1.40 into the carpark machine, the second last weeks announcements about internet traffic monitoring.

Initial intentions have a way of changing to be replaced by the needs of the moment.  In this case these requirements are apparently aimed at crime and terrorism, but there is nothing to say this won't change. Sometimes things are added, sometimes definitions are changed.   Many of us are aware of this and the resistance to this new law has demonstrated we are not alone.  

At the same time other notables of the internet such as Tim Burners-Lee and Larry Paige are expressing concerns about the direction the development of the internet is taking  with regard to walled gardens.   By this they mean systems such as Facebooks and  Apple that lock you in to a particular environment.

It is understandable that governments and large companys want to control us, feeding us the information that shows them in the best light.   It is also understandable that even the most up right of citizens will have some things they would prefer others not to know.  These secrets don't have to be world shattering or illegal but they are personal and the thought of someone else knowing them could drive them into different behaviours. For example maybe someone likes to write poetry but knows that what they write is really bad.

These new behaviours could have an effect on cloud services, boosting stand alone computing. After all the best way to keep something personal would be not to put it on a network. This in turn means not putting it in a cloud service.  This means you can't write bad poetry on Google docs as the government may see it. It is  therefore best to use word and save it to an encrypted local storage device, and only share it with close friends via physical media.