About Us
Who are we? We're every day folks fed up with the arrogant invasion of privacy in world communities. We're technologists tired of seeing the exploitation of those lacking technical skills. We're hospital workers, secretaries, University admission clerks, store clerks, small business owners, students and more that are tired of being manipulated and exploited. We're anyone that simply wants to be left to use the Internet alone or with friends, without being watched like a case study subject.
The Technology Advocates project is founded by Steve Cichosz with a vision of anyone in the world being able to Interact on-line with their individualism remaining intact and their privacy no more at risk than they knowingly make it themselves. In short, creating an on-line world that operates like the real world and not just how the technical elite feel it should work. Together with his close friend of many years, The Hammer, "the project" is coming together as a valuable resource for anyone looking to regain ownership of their data, and consquently, everything connected to it.
Our laws concerning privacy on the internet are seriously lacking. Our legislators could have taken a common sense approach of extending physical world concepts to the etheral on-line space in which we interact. Instead they have confused the issues, and themselves, over nuances put before them by those who benefit by the ambiguities. Consequently we have no laws to protect our data stored out on the Internet not deemed "personal" under very narrow definitions. Progress has been made on this front via TekAdvocates with proposed regulations accepted and endorsed by congressman McNerney and forwarded to the FCC for further consideration. We need laws protecting particpant generated data (PGD) on the Internet just as we do for our other forms of communication.
Much of todays technology relies on a centralized communication paradigm. What that list of 50 cent words means is that once a person's data leaves their computer it is stored in giant repositories over which they have no control. All any of us have in the absence of laws are weak promises made in privacy policies that everyone's data is being stored and managed responsibly. "Responsibly" is very subjective in this case. We at TekAdvocvates are writing standards and building software to help overcome this problem. Our goal is to create the technology needed to enable everyone the ability to share their data only with those they intend. Data generated by one person and shared with another belongs to them alone. We aim to support this real world model.
Naivite abounds in our populace regarding the implications of using modern technology. In many cases this is justified. Not everyone can be a data management and computer security expert. We must all rely on one another to share our knowledge and help one another overcome gaps in what we know. That is the principle on which this site exists. We are sharing what we know. First we are sharing the problems we see. It is ony logical to identify the problem before fixing it. Next we are sharing solutions. Then we will add the ability for everyone to share what they know for the benefit of those needing assistance. Education is the foundation upon which everything we do is based. It is our goal to give those willing to become knowledgeable on-line participants, rather than just being good product users, the tools to do so. We aim to see the world again populated with respected customers rather than meritless consumers.