Our Internet privacy is disappearing. Probably the government is looking at our posts down to the last comma and thirty to forty companies have embedded cookies to follow our visits and there enough tracking software on us to tell if we spent nano seconds at one place or another.

So, they are playing games with us and manipulating us.

Let’s manipulate back.

On your social networking sites, move a lot. If you always wanted to live in Hawaii, get a map and find a nice place and declare it your home. Move every couple of months. You can live in fictional places from Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis to John Foster Caine’s Xanadu (a double header – fictional character and fictional place). What about birthdays? These are excellent ways for people to track down medical and financial information about you. Well, have you ever wanted to have two birthdays in a year? Why be a piker, have three or four. Change them every few weeks.

Political beliefs? Give up being a boring Democrat or strict Republican. Vote with the crew of the Enterprise, join the “wild” party, declare yourself at one with the hopes and aspirations of the Pirates of the Carribean.

How about being tracked on the internet and having your every move sold to spammers and marketers determined to exploit this knowledge? At the end or beginning of your web surfing, go wild. Visit this web site and discover how to build your own coffin. Go to the World Wildlife Fund and discover how to adopt a beaver! Fill your your web trackers with useless and incorrect information. Make their tracking as useless as time permits.

Ah, the tough one, how do we write e-mails to annoy the Department of Homeland Security? It’s easy. Now, you’ve heard people say to put words in like terrorist or bomb. Don’t do that. Write e-mails in praise of the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI or the DEA and alway include the latest plot these agencies have foiled. The computer will probably have to cough up all these e-mails to an actual person to discern the seriousness of the message. What will they find? – that you like the government! What could be more harmless?

Now, there are a few of you saying, “James, you shouldn’t be messing with the American government’s ability to catch terrorists?” To which I reply, “They have never said or alleged at any time that they are reading our e-mails. So, obviously, there is no surveillance and you are doing no harm at all. You can’t interfere with non-existant privacy violations, can you?”

“If they were monitoring our e-mail, that would be a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, so you see they can’t be doing that. What’s more I love the Deparment of Homeland Security. What a bunch of great guys! I sleep better at night knowing that they are looking out for me!”

What about you? Have you ever become tired of that same old face in the mirror? It’s time to live a little! Get yourself a new e-mail. Become a movie star, a little old lady, an heiress or a Wall Street executive. Creat a dozen new e-mail addresses, every single one with a new version of yourself. Didn’t Walt Whitman say, “I am multitudes!” Be a multitude. Leave a few blog comments in your new identity. Try out some interesting points of view.

If all these turkeys want to collect information on you, help them out. Give them tons of information. Be cooperative. Don’t just show them the data from one person but dozens.

And do log on and post from different computers. Use programs that disguise or block identity searches, so our friends can grow and develop as human beings (whatever doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger!!).

These people are kind enough to take an interest in us. We should take an interest in them and help them out with a much data as possible.

James Pilant