Just how often would you say W. V. Fluffington mentioned jihad?

I'm giving this whole blogging thing another try. And in the truest form of the blogosphere, I'm going to rip off content from somewhere else as part of my first post: 

From The MetroWest Daily News, June 23, 2013: 

"I like sales. But do I like having my identity and shopping habits instantly known by any corporation who wants to sell me something? That’s the reality today’s Big Data age. Nothing is deleted, terabytes of data can be crunched to find correlations and trends in milliseconds, and my personal privacy is only a speed bump on the path to profit. 

That doesn't scare me. What scares me is when my personal privacy is a speed bump on the way to public safety. The NSA and FBI don’t slow down for speed bumps."

Now, the chump who wrote that is clearly an alarmist Luddite who doesn't like to see technological progress. But I can also tell he's a charming and skilled writer who is prone to occasional bouts of brilliance.

Okay, none of that is true. I wrote that piece for The MetroWest Daily News as my first Op-Ed ever to be published in a big boy, non-college newspaper. And I like how it turned out.

The only point I wanted to be more clear about: big data is great, and it provides the capacity for amazing progress as a society. But where major corporations and the government are concerned, I think citizens (and consumers) need to have the most transparent system possible in place. We have to be as informed as possible how our personal data is being collected and used.

I want Target to send my wife coupons for baby clothes and vitamins when she's pregnant... that stuff is expensive. I'm happy to opt-in to that program. Just make it clear that you're collecting our purchase data to give better timed promotional offers and sales, and we're fine.

And you, Uncle Sam, you need to be as transparent as possible too. I don't believe that secret surveillance programs make the country safer; I believe they make the country more paranoid. You have to prove to me what you're doing is for the public good, and I'm not just going to take your word on it.