Snowden says he could see what I do on the web.

[MineralMan]

76. No. I won't do that. Nobody on DU has any need for that information.

But I'm not anonymous, nor do I attempt to be. Lots of people have access to all of that information, though. Anyone with $50 can get much of it online. The Social Security Administration and the IRS has most of that information, too. My bank, a non-profit organization I once volunteered for has much of it as well, since they did a thorough background check. My car insurance company has looked at my "arrest record," which is empty, since I have not been arrested. Blue Cross and my medical clinic has all of my medical records. The phone company knows every phone call I make. My cable company can look at my browsing history, and Google can see where I go on the Internet.

But, I'm not going to volunteer any of that information to anyone I don't know. Why would I do that? A lot of it is available to anyone with a little looking, though, and that's not a problem for me. I'm not anonymous. Nobody really is if they're active on the Internet. In most cases, it is a trivial matter to find our who is behind a screen name, even for amateurs. For government agencies, it's even more trivial. The fact is that a lot of people have access to mass quantities of information about me, you, and everyone else here on DU. We give permission for them to have it, even if we don't realize that we've given that permission.

Beyond that, with a court order, any number of government agencies can access it all. If they're interested, of course. Mostly, they're not interested, though. Most people just aren't that interesting, and it costs money to get all that information. I'm active on DU, and so are you. Everything I've posted here is in the DU database, and is easily searched, using Google. Most of that isn't of interest to anyone, really, though. It's all just political discussion. Nobody really cares about public political discussion, because it has no real effect on anything.

We no longer really have much privacy. Mostly because we've given up on having privacy. We've volunteered to allow people to collect information on us. The government has always had a vast store of information on all of us. But, we're uninteresting. We aren't a threat to anything. We go about our lives, pay taxes, own stuff, and are just people who happen to live in the US. Beyond that, we're almost universally boring to the government. The government doesn't care.

But corporations do care, and they know even more information, because they collect it, store it and share it on a daily basis. If you're really concerned about your privacy, that's where your concern should be aimed.