Now, a decade-plus later, McNealy’s prophetic words have take on a far more sinister significance than he probably intended. They are increasingly becoming the operating assumption of the digital corporate state. Whether going online, using a PC, smartphone, tablet or digital TV, users can no longer assume they have any privacy. In fact, users should assume they have absolutely no privacy.

McNealy’s and Schmidt’s words both speak to a fundamental change in the definition of privacy. Once upon a time not so long ago, a sealed letter or a personal telephone conversation was considered private, protected communications. Those days are over.

Unless you have the time or the technical know-how to encrypt your digital communications, none of what you transmit – however personal — through a digital wireline or wireless network is “private.” Rather, through the spectacle of post-modern capitalism, the private has become public, the property of the corporation that owns your keystrokes. The digital revolution has morphed the personal into an electronic commodity; the electronic commodity is the exchange currency of an encroaching, 21st-century digital feudalism.

Two complementary forces are driving this change: short-term corporate self-interest and a self-serving security-state. The ordinary American’s traditional privacy rights are giving way to the demands of the militarized corporate state. They are determining America’s digital economy and future.

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On March 1, Google introduced a new program that collects user data from its 60 services. Google stores “cookies” (i.e., code that compiles a record of an individual’s web browsing history) on a growing number of communications devices, whether a home PC, tablet, smartphone and a growing number of TV sets. These cookies track every Web site a person visits or function s/he uses.

Every time you enter a term into Google’s search engine, check out a video on YouTube, send or receive an email through Gmail (including key words in the message) or even make a call or download information on an Android-based phone, even using a third party’s phone from AT&T or Verizon, your input will be captured, stored and processed by Google. Google users can’t opt out of its data harvesting procedure; the company reports that the new procedure does not apply to Google Wallet, the Chrome browser and Google Books.

Google has been accused of hacking both Apple’s and Microsoft’s operating systems to further its data-capture practice. Jonathan Mayer, a Stanford researcher, discovered that Google could track a person’s usage of Apple’s Safari browser on an iPhone and an iPad, undercutting privacy settings. In addition, Microsoft engineers report finding that Google could bypass the privacy settings on its Internet Explorer browser. Google denies both accusations.

Google insists its data gathering practice is done for the ostensible purpose of better serving its users. It claims that by more precisely tracking a user’s inputs it can more efficiently target-market its advertising offerings. Its sophisticated artificial intelligence software enables it to “predict” individual user’s usage patterns. This is, in all likelihood, partially true as Google is estimated to control close to half of worldwide ad placements of the web.

However, Google’s long-term intentions seem more sinister. In 2010 it was revealed that Google partnered with the CIA in a venture called “Recorded Future.” Google’s vast data archive can be harnessed to meet “security” needs. This is especially troubling in light of a controversial bill being pushed through Congress, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The act would allow sharing of data between companies like Google and the National Security Agency (NSA) to combat alleged cyber-security threats.

This gets scarier in light of a recent DC Court of Appeals ruling upholding a lower court’s decision blocking a Freedom of Information request from the Electronic Privacy Information Center. EPIC sought to determine the nature of the collaboration between the NSA and Google over Chinese hacking of the company’s site. The claims of national security are increasingly trumping a citizen’s right to know and his/her notion of privacy.

Google is not alone in data harvesting of personal – and once assumed private – information. Other high-tech companies, especially social networking sites like Facebook (with Microsoft’s Bing search engine) and Twitter, are redefining, shrinking, the country’s traditional notions of private communications. Once, not long ago, letters and phone calls were private. Today, once a user inputs a keystroke on their device of choice that is connected to the Internet, whether it be a PC, smartphone, tablet or, increasingly, TV set and accessed either through a wireline or wireless network, that data becomes a “public” commodity, owned by the private corporation that facilitates the communications.

In Europe, the issue of data harvesting of “personal” information is compounded by a growing number of cases involving anti-competitive practices. As of 2012, investigations have gone forward in at least 12 countries and at least nine countries have found Google guilty of violating various anti-trust and anti-privacy laws.

A user surrenders her/his personal or private information when s/he uses a Google-enabled or other communications device. To use these services, people are required to surrender their privacy rights to the new corporate lords of the information economy. In this process, they – we! – are becoming digital serfs.

* * *
Google was founded in 1998 and its 2011 revenues were $37.9 billion; more impressive, its market cap is approximately $200 billion. It ranks 73rd on the Fortune 500 list.

Google’s enormous wealth is derived from its breakthrough search technology and how it revolutionized the advertising business. Its patented, underlying technology, PageRank, transformed Internet search. It offers this service for “free,” and according to ComScore, it accounts for about two-thirds (66.4%) of online searches.

Its smart strategic thinking and wealth has led it to introduce an ever-growing variety of capabilities, services and products. The Google octopus ranges from its search engine to Gmail, from its digitalized library of copyrighted books to the Android OS, from YouTube to its acquisition of Motorola Mobile, and from the build-out of a 1-Gig fiber network in Kansas City to a smart, self-driving car venture.

Google is a postmodern company, on its way to becoming a 21st-century version of the legendary Standard Oil Company. It is as if, a generation ago, GM had business units in cable television, office products and first-generation computer software. Google has the potential of ending the reign of the vertically integrated company. It could become the cyber GE.

Google’s dark side surfaced in 2010 when it offered a joint proposal with Verizon to the FCC on the future of the net neutrality. The Electronic Frontier Foundation warned in no uncertain terms, “Unfortunately, … [the proposal] included some really terrible ideas. It carves out exemptions from neutrality requirements for so-called ‘unlawful’ content, for wireless services, and for very vaguely-defined ‘additional online services.’ … As many, many, many have already pointed out, these exemptions threaten to completely undermine the stated goal of neutrality.”

It must be noted that Google joined other Internet companies, most notably Wikipedia, in opposing the poorly conceived MPAA-backed anti-piracy bills; the House’s SOPA and Senate’s Protect IP Act. Most dramatically, Google blacked out its site.

* * *

Not long ago, the word “google” morphed from a noun, the name of a company, to a verb that denoted search. Now, the name for an ever-growing octopus of a company has come to signify a mounting threat to competition and online personal privacy.

Last month, the Federal Communications Commission imposed a modest $25,000 fine on the company for “delaying its [FCC’s] search for and production of responsive emails and other communications, by failing to identify employees, and by withholding verification of the completeness and accuracy of its submissions.”  Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) complained that “[t]his fine is a mere slap on the wrist for Google.”

EPIC filed a suit in federal court arguing that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had failed to enforce an earlier Consent Order against Google to ensure personal online privacy. EPIC contended that Google’s new program to capture and integrate all the personal information it gathers from its various services, including its search engine, Gmail, YouTube and Android-based phones, is a threat to personal privacy. The DC court dismissed the suit.

In the face of these developments, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) warned that “Google’s interception and collection of private wireless data potentially violates the Wiretap Act or other federal statutes, and I believe the Justice Department and state attorneys general should fully investigate this matter.” In a separate matter, a U.S. federal court recently held that unencrypted wireless network communications are not exempt from the protections of the Wiretap Act. Calls for a more comprehensive investigation heated up.

Following the dismissal of EPIC’s challenge, the FTC retained Beth Wilkinson, a high-powered outside counsel, to oversee a possible anti-trust prosecution of the company. She is a former Justice Department prosecutor who played a lead role in the conviction of the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. She is only the second outside litigator retained by the FTC to oversee an investigation. As the New York Times wrote, “The case has the potential to be the biggest showdown between regulators and Silicon Valley since the government took on Microsoft 14 years ago.”

At the heart of the FCC’s (and likely the FTC’s) inquiry into Google is the Street View project. Begun in 2007, Street View uses digital cameras to collect and display street-level images. Unknown at the time, Google was also employing Wi-Fi receivers concealed in the Street View vehicles to capture what is known as MAC (Media Access Control) addresses and SSIDs (i.e., user-assigned network ID name) linked to the location. In addition, it intercepted and stored Wi-Fi transmission data, including email passwords and email content.

The company originally downplayed its collection activities, minimizing the scope of its data harvesting and blaming it on a rogue engineer. However, in the face of widespread protests, Google was forced to end the illegal collection of Wi-Fi information.

The standoff between the FCC and Google involved the company’s apparent violation of privacy and wiretapping provisions of the 1996 Communications Act. The FCC’s decision to give Google a pass was based on a technicality, that the Act did not cover Wi-Fi technology. Nevertheless, the FCC report revealed that Google’s data collection was not the act of a rogue engineer but likely a corporate program. It found that Google had intercepted the private communications of millions of Wi-Fi users and that it “clearly infringes on consumer privacy.”

The FTC’s current inquiry into Google is not the first showdown between the two entities. In 2011, the FTC brought a suit against Google Buzz, the company’s first social networking effort, for violating its stated privacy policies and for using deceptive tactics. The FTC charged Google with using information collected from Gmail users to grow its then recently established Buzz service. Google’s settlement involved not only paying an $8.5 million fine, but agreeing to undergo regular audits of its privacy practices for the next 20 years. (Under the terms of the agreement, the FTC can fine Google up to $16,000 per violation per day.)

As the pressure mounts on Google in the U.S., a growing chorus of challenges is being raised in Europe and in other countries, including over alleged anti-trust violations, and Google’s new integrated data harvesting practice. EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding called it an “Orwellian surveillance apparatus,” adding, “My impression is that Google has trampled European data-protection legislation.”

France’s privacy watchdog CNIL determined, “Preliminary findings show that Google’s new policy fails to meet the requirements of the European Data Protection Directive (95/46/CE) regarding the information that must be provided to data subjects.” It urged a “pause” in the rollout of Google’s new data harvesting program.

Other investigations of Google’s new data-gathering practice are underway in Argentina and South Korea.

David Rosen writes the blog, Media Current, for Filmmaker and regularly contributes to CounterPunch and the Brooklyn Rail; he can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net.

Chapman is just one of a growing number of wrongfully convicted inmates who have been cleared thanks to criminal justice reforms and new DNA testing laws put in place over the last decade. But oftentimes the hardship doesn’t end there.

In 2007, the New York Times interviewed 137 former prisoners exonerated by modern DNA testing methods and found that half were “struggling — drifting from job to job, dependent on others for housing or battling deep emotional scars. More than two dozen ended up back in prison or addicted to drugs or alcohol.”

According to a 2009 report by the Innocence Project, an organization devoted to exonerating the wrongfully convicted, an astounding 40 percent of people exonerated by DNA testing have received zero compensation, due in part to the 23 states around the country that do not offer assistance to the wrongfully convicted. That leaves exonerees like Alan Northrop, who lost 17 years behind bars in the state of Washington, with little to no help in rebuilding their lives.

Even in states that do offer compensation, the amount is often woefully inadequate in helping exonerees reestablish themselves, though compensation varies by state ranging from $20,000 in New Hampshire regardless of the years spent behind bars to $80,000 per year of wrongful imprisonment in Texas.

Most state compensation statutes, however, include conditions for eligibility. Last year, Texas refused to compensate Anthony Graves the $1.4 million he would have received for the 18 years he spent on death row because the judge did not include the words “actual innocence” on the document ordering his release. Texas reversed its decision only after nationwide media attention led to a massive public outcry.

In North Carolina, the exonerated are eligible to receive $50,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment capping out at $750,000 but only if they are granted a pardon of innocence by the governor who is not required to give a reason for her decision. Chapman filed a pardon request in 2009 but a decision has yet to be made. The office of North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue did not respond to a request for comment.

Chapman’s experience is consistent with statistics from the Innocence Project that show it takes an average of three years to secure compensation. Meanwhile, the wrongfully imprisoned face an uphill battle almost immediately upon release, starting with where they will sleep that night and how they will get their next meal. Only 10 states even offer the kinds of services — housing, transportation, education, healthcare, job placement, etc. — crucial to helping exonerees transition back into society as free citizens.

Chapman was not notified he was going to be released until the day he was freed. On April 2, 2008, a guard told him to “Pack up” and 10 minutes later he was out the door.  No one asked if he had a ride or a place to stay.

Luckily he had help from Pamela Laughon, a college professor and chairwoman of the psychology department at the University of North Carolina, who spent eight years working on Chapman’s appeal as a court-appointed investigator. The two immediately clicked when they met and have been inseparable since.

Laughon told Salon she was shocked her client was released with just 10 minutes’ notice and no ride or money. “Years ago they used to let them out with at least a bus ticket,” she says. Nevertheless, the two had already decided that if and when Chapman was released he would live with Laughon until he got on his feet.

That meant Chapman would have to move to Asheville, N.C., which worked out for the best because he did not want to return to Hickory. “When I go back to Hickory the hair on my neck stands up,” says Chapman. The town reminds him of the trauma from his trial when family members testified against him and the time he spent incarcerated instead of watching his two young sons grow up.

Laughon was happy to help. “I had lawyers calling me from all over the state asking me if I was nuts. I spent eight years trying to get this man released. There was no way I was going to drop him off at a homeless shelter or the projects where he grew up,” she told Salon.

With Laughon’s assistance, Chapman set up a checking account, got a driver’s license for the first time, found housing, learned how to use a cellphone and more.

She helped him manage his finances, which quickly dwindled given that he hadn’t received an income in 15 years. Over a decade in prison led him to mishandle the money he did have because, Chapman says, “I was so unused to having things that I wanted to buy everything. I went shopping crazy.” It was moments like this that having Laughon’s support was crucial to Chapman’s ability to readjust to society as a free man.

Laughon also went on job interviews with him to help explain his background to prospective employers. “I’m a college professor and chair of a department, so I have some cred,” she says. “He’s a black guy in the south. If he told an employer ‘by the way I was wrongfully convicted and spent the last 15 years on death row,’ people would look at him like he was crazy and laugh.”

With help from one of Laughon’s students, Chapman found a job at a hotel a few weeks after his release. Four years later, he still works there, which he says is the longest he’s ever held a job.

Still, life is a struggle. Laughon argues that Chapman needs the compensation because, “He’s stuck in minimum wage, being paid the lowest legal amounts you can pay a human being.”

The pardon of innocence pending before Gov. Perdue is important to Chapman not just for the compensation but also because it would be an official declaration of innocence. Laughon calls his current predicament “a no man’s land between not being guilty or innocent.”

Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, a pastor in Hickory and third vice president of the North Carolina NAACP, points out that without an official declaration of innocence, “His family is still at odds with him, not knowing whether he’s a criminal or not. The stigma of being a felon is still on him.”

Spearman went on to compare wrongful conviction to a crime in and of itself. “To be incarcerated, locked up for 15 years wrongfully, is to me a criminal act and the state needs to make up for that,” he told Salon. “The government needs to go head over heals to make sure these men receive apologies and make sure that they can get on with their lives meaning compensation, education, whatever they need to survive.”

Jean Parks, an active member of Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation (her sister was murdered) and People of Faith Against the Death Penalty in Asheville, agrees that Chapman needs be pardoned but feels that monetary compensation for the wrongfully convicted does not go far enough. “Money should be a part of it to help cover for lost wages and lost opportunities but the state’s response should go beyond that,” says Parks. “It should include an official apology and some social services to help the person get reacclimated to society, find a job, and reestablish oneself as a productive member of the community.”

Laughon argues that states should provide a “life coach” to do for the exonerated what she did for Chapman, which she describes as “somebody that’s going to navigate all the many day-to-day things like managing a bank account, how paychecks will be taxed, and the other kinds of life skills you and I do second nature.” She believes her experience with Chapman serves as a successful case study of the “life coach” approach.

In the meantime, Chapman has an interview with the clemency office on May 30, a signal that Gov. Perdue will likely come to a decision soon. He is determined to stay positive no matter what the outcome and insists he has no bitterness toward the people who put him on death row. “I can forgive. That doesn’t mean I have to forget,” says Chapman.

He upholds that principle by traveling across the state when he can to speak about his exoneration and bring awareness to the flaws in the criminal justice system. He admits he was not aware of the death penalty before his conviction but “now that I do know, I’m going to do everything I can to put an end to it.”

Since his exoneration, Chapman has written a book called “Life After Death Row.” His next book, “Within These Walls,” will be released later this year and includes his diary entries from death row. He says, “It’s going to be a tear-jerker.” Chapman will also be featured in an upcoming episode of B.E.T.’s “Vindicated,” a documentary-style television show that tells the stories of exonerated prisoners.

If he receives compensation, Chapman hopes to open a bed and breakfast. He also dreams of one day opening a shelter for at-risk women.

Chapman acknowledges that none of this would be possible without someone like Laughon in his life. “When I first met Pam it was like meeting an old friend for the first time. To this day, she’s like my big sister,” he says. “She’s been there for me from start to finish. I don’t think I would have made it without her.”

Zarate declined to provide details of the investigation.

Melissa Bowerman, whose late father-in-law invented the waffle-soled running shoe and co-founded Nike with Phil Knight, said attending the Condon High School prom with a boy from the track team was an error in judgment. But she said the pair did not have an inappropriate relationship. She said they danced to a few slow songs but mostly played ping pong and foosball.

Melissa Bowerman, who has a son on the track team, said she went to the prom because the boy felt bad that he lacked a date and had been struggling in English class.

“If they go on (academic) probation and suspension, then they can’t go to the track meets,” Melissa Bowerman said. “I said, ‘OK, I will go with you, but we’ve got to talk about English first. You’re going to do better in English.”

Gilliam County Sheriff Gary Bettencourt, who received a complaint from a chaperone, said he has found no evidence that Melissa Bowerman broke the law.

The boy’s father, meanwhile, said he gave Melissa Bowerman permission to take his son to the dance.

“The first thing I thought, ‘Maybe this isn’t a good idea.’ But Melissa has been like a surrogate mom to these kids for years,” Bob Thomas said.

The track and field program has ballooned from six athletes to more than 30 in just four years under the Bowermans’ watch, and the Condon/Wheeler girls team won its first state title Saturday.

As the team prepared to depart for the state track meet last week, Condon athletic director Ron Kopp told the Bowermans that Melissa would not be allowed to ride on the team’s charter bus with the athletes. With the bus only half full, parents have historically accompanied their sons and daughters for the ride.

Jon Bowerman said he might resign because of the situation, and possibly sell his family’s ranch near Fossil.

“The only thing we’ve done wrong is build them a new track and get uniforms and build them a powerhouse program,” he said. “If she doesn’t come back, I’m not coming back.”

Besides co-founding Nike, Bill Bowerman coached track at the University of Oregon from 1949 to 1972, winning four national titles. His relationship with track great Steve Prefontaine has been featured in two films.

Ken Vogel has the scoop in Politico, based on some very intriguing INFOWARS reporting.

Everyone knows that the elite secret society known as the Bilderberg Group is one of the means by which the Lizard People exert their control over the shadow World Government. As hero journalist Alex Jones told independent cable news network Russia Today, the elite will decide at the coming Bilderberg Conference in Virginia whether to support Obama or Romney in 2012.

That, says Jones, is just a sampling of what else he expects to be discussed. Other items, he speculates, involve the upcoming presidential race.

“Should the elite get behind Mitt Romney or Barack Obama?” is a question Jones predicts to be among those discussed. “Both men are bought and paid for by the same financial interests, and so the discussion will be which candidate can basically con the American people to lay down the tyranny for another four years.”

Jones adds that, only four years earlier, Bilderberg was the locale where America’s elite decided to back President Obama as the Democratic nominee.

But deciding the next puppet leader of the one world global fascist government is just one agenda item: They’ll also have to decide who will be the puppet leader’s puppet running mate. Rubio will not be attending (this year, anyway), but Al Kamen, journalist at the Bilderberg-sponsored Washington Post, reported that Marco Rubio’s trip to attend the Summit of the Americas in April was analogous to John Edwards’ 2004 lecture at the Bilderberg Conference, which some credited with winning him the second spot on the Democratic ticket that year. Kamen’s column was obviously meant to signal that the Bilderbergers are currently leaning toward Rubio.

But what if Rob Portman goes to Bohemian Grove? What then, Fascist World Government?

The pithy description fueled an uproar that resulted in the main company behind the filler, Beef Products Inc., closing three meat plants this month. The controversy over the filler, which is made of fatty bits of beef that are heated and treated with ammonium to kill bacteria, shows how a simple nickname can forever change an entire industry.

In fact, beef filler had been used for decades before the nickname came about. But most Americans didn’t know — or care — about it before Zirnstein’s vivid moniker was quoted in a 2009 article by The New York Times on the safety of meat processing methods.

Soon afterward, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver began railing against it. McDonald’s and other fast food companies later discontinued their use of it. And major supermarket chains including Kroger and Stop & Shop vowed to stop selling beef with the low-cost filler.

Bettina Siegel, a food blogger who posted an online petition asking the USDA to stop using the filler in school lunches, said the controversy isn’t based on the term alone. She said consumers are just upset that the filler is not what they think they’re getting when they buy “100 percent ground beef.”

But Siegel acknowledges that the name doesn’t hurt her cause, either. She said the term “filled a vacuum” in the public arena about the filler; her petition, “Tell the USDA to STOP Using Pink Slime in School Food” had more than 200,000 signatures within a week.

Beef Products, which makes the filler, blames its plant closings on what it calls unfounded attacks. About 650 jobs will be lost when plants in Amarillo, Texas, Garden City, Kansas, and Waterloo, Iowa close on Friday. Another plant in South Sioux City, Neb., will remain open but run at reduced capacity.

Still, the company, based in South Dakota, said it’s not considering changing the filler’s name. Instead, Beef Products set up a website, beefisbeef.com, to combat what it calls “media-perpetuated myths” about the filler.

Meanwhile, the author of the term “pink slime” makes no apologies about his creation. Zirnstein, who has since left the USDA, said he thinks “pink slime” is a better descriptor than “lean finely textured beef.”

“It says it’s lean. Great. But it doesn’t describe what kind of lean it is,” said Zirnstein, who doesn’t think the product should be mixed into beef. “Textured. What does that mean?”