A shudder went through Wall Street on Friday after the revelation that Bloomberg News reporters had extracted subscribers’ private information through the company’s ubiquitous data terminals to break news.The company confirmed that reporters at Bloomberg News, the journalism arm of Bloomberg L.P., had for years used the company’s terminals to monitor when subscribers had logged onto the service and to find out what functions, like the news wire, corporate bond trades or an equities index, they had looked at. Bloomberg terminals, which cost an average of more than $20,000 a year, are found in nearly every banking and trading company.Bloomberg said the functions that allowed journalists to monitor subscribers were promptly disabled after Goldman Sachs complained that a Bloomberg reporter had, while inquiring about a partner’s employment status, pointed out that the partner had not logged onto his Bloomberg terminal lately.The incident led to broader concerns about the line at Bloomberg between its lucrative terminal business and the hypercompetitive newsroom, threatening to undermine the credibility of both. In a secretive world that thrives on opacity, traders and financial firms jealously guard every speck of information about their activity to avoid tipping their hand on their trades and investments....Jonathan Corpina, a managing partner at Meridian Equity Partners, said the incident was a reminder that nothing — not even the seemingly secure Bloomberg terminal — was private. “It concerns people that what they are doing is being watched and monitored by people who shouldn’t be watching and monitoring it,” Mr. Corpina said.
Indeed it does concern people that what they're doing is being watched and monitored by people who shouldn't be watching and monitoring it.
Which is why people don't want the state collecting all that data on their kids and handing it over to Murdoch and Gates.
It's that simple.
No comments:
Post a Comment