Tinfoil hats. Photo © teaeff, via flickr“They don’t need to read my mind,” I informed Nature Boy when he offered me his tinfoil helmet. “They can read everything else.”

What They would read are my emails, my Internet use, my cellphone data, and every other item or card on or near my person with a radio-frequency identification tag, GPS or other signal.

Every time I use a bank or credit card, turn my cellphone on, drive my GPS-enabled vehicle—even use a telephone landline—I leave a digital trail.

That trail can be tracked.

What I find truly amazing is that anyone could possibly find li’l ol’ me interesting enough to want to access the virtual banality of my existence.

Connected and ready to share (and be tracked). Photo © Nik Cubrilovic.
When former National Security Agency contractor-turned-renegade Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s Internet spying program earlier this year, the revelations threw light on who might be interested in the digital trails I and hundreds of millions of others create every day.

Compared to that, this month’s ruling by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner to uphold B.C. employers’ rights to track their workers’ whereabouts seems, well, small potatoes….

Continue reading this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….