[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] ooofest:
Good grief.

Maybe look up John Poindexter, the "Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program" and who blocked its funding after the Patriot Act enabled its initial startup. Then, work backwards from there for loads of other, invasive data collection examples that have nothing to do with "socialist" claims - quite the opposite.

But here, we're talking about a public business.

. . .

Yes, there are all sorts of monitoring, at various levels. In the case of this topic, aggregate data handling is a relative common level of user information that businesses share about their sites and/or networks, so long as their privacy policies cover the types of reporting they may offer. Users must accept (and keep up with, as the policies are updated - sometimes without explicit notification) those policies to register with websites and many apps, generally.

But, businesses have a tendency to push the boundaries of what is legally acceptable for sharing with a mind towards business revenue, regardless of their privacy policy (e.g., crossing into wiretap territory or similar), so I'm glad that Verizon's current policy and practice is being investigated.

In general, I don't worry about cookie tracking and the like - that's usually a benefit for reasonable web businesses and not a detriment or danger to visitors, IMHO (and, I speak purely from personal experience and knowledge here - not representing the opinion or status of my employer in any way, even though I acknowledge that they have a web presence). So, I am not too concerned if Verizon is only tracking basic web/app usage at a high level. At a lower level? I would think that violates their stated privacy policies.

- ooofest

---------- Post added at 10:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:42 PM ----------

Here's national debt stats. You accumulate debt because you're spending on some mix of wrong things and right things.

With a recession this deep, the government should be spending to help local businesses and governments generate more jobs and growth, which then feeds into eventually turning things around as businesses (in theory) finally expand while people spend all that money locally, banks lend more, confidence rises, innovation gets funding to get off the ground, etc. That's simple economics.

Or, you can spend most of your debt money on tax breaks for rich folks, no-bid defense contractors/wars, oil industry giveaways, etc. and never give a dang about the rest of the country while the wealthiest folks generally hoard their winnings. Look at Verizon's Board, for example. We've had many years to see how that plan goes for the country (any country, actually). So-called "austerity spending" is more or less following this model, btw - governments can't grow out of a recession very easily when they force too much austerity on the masses and local governments (fair and graduated shared sacrifice is a different matter).

Oh, and the Obama Administration has been waiting for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire while winding down investments in two wars, which - combined with interest on that prior debt - is related to the stats you seeked to cite. Context always matters.

Easy to blame immigrants or people trying to make their way in the USA a bit more humane than, let's say, the government Arizona will treat them. What you just spouted is nonsense - then again, if you want their typically thankless jobs, you should go out and compete for the same positions.

- ooofest