Prism

Von Protonet Team. Veröffentlicht 10. Juni 2013.

Last week has been one of the most shaking moments of the era of the internet society. Until then, only insiders and conspiracy theorist were wise enough to really know that big tech corporations, the new economy kids and the government are working hand in hand on undermining privacy rights. 99% of all people could only guess that we are subject to surveillance by the National Security Agency. Nobody knew what it means to type in a personal Facebook message or what it means to store a file on Google Drive or what it means to make a call on Skype. 99% of the people thought it doesn’t have any significant effect on their lifes. But – we grew wiser.

News all over the world spread the word about Prism and the NSA’s effort to screen everyone and everything moving on a digital path within US servers. 90% of the top technology corps such as Microsoft, Apple and Facebook are involved in the scandal. Whenever you would write a personal message that contained, for example, the single words “new york”, “blast” & “tomorrow” it would make you a suspect and you would be automatically screened – even if you just wrote to your girlfriend: “Have fun in New York – I hope you’ll have a blast at the show tomorrow!”. Automated of course. Crazy, huh?

But why can that happen? Easy answer: your data do not belong to you. When you go on either of the platforms above (plus many other), you trade comfort for data. Cloud computing has always existed somehow, but nowadays its easier to do than ever. 3-4 clicks, a couple lines of personal info down you can use all kinds of services. That’s cool, but now you know that “free” accounts have never really been “free”. You just pay in another currency.

Protonet is aiming to change this but we also know that it’s a long way down the road. We want people to be able to have social networks, conversations and upload files without having to give away the rights. Of course we want to earn money (that’s why we charge for it). But we believe that it’s better to pay in Euros or Dollars rather than in data. Anyhow, it’s also a cultural change that has to be done and the tech CEOs seem to shift from healers to dealers. Quite a strange way to save the world. We are up for better things!