
And the privacy invasion award goes to …  - zoowar
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/and-privacy-invasion-award-goes-to
======
victork2
I might have a bleak vision of this place but unfortunately I think this
article is not going to ring a bell in here. Well it might be upvoted but
sparsely read.

A good portion of HN users don't care at all about privacy, or at least not
when they could be the ones protecting it. I read this board every day and
every time I am floored by the fascination for cloud services, the (relative)
savings from it and monitoring software. As long as they are glossy and
beautiful, that's it, sold.

Anyway I was shocked by the last one with Brita and that's great that EFF is
publicly calling these companies and their actions.

Thanks for reminding us that we must remain vigilant.

~~~
danneu
Privacy probably doesn't strictly monopolize HN's concerns because cloud
services are Good Enough when it comes to privacy for our Ruby on Rails MVPs,
our benign blogs, and our JSconf slideshows.

Conflating privacy where privacy is needed with privacy for privacy's sake is
a waste of time and dilutes real privacy concerns with a bunch of "Wolf!"
cries.

~~~
loup-vaillant
One example of a huge cloud-based privacy problem: Google Analytics, which I
discovered by using NoScript.

So, google knows about me even when I don't use it. Even when I am explicitly
_avoiding_ it, and use DuckDuckGo instead (I do, by the way). Your "benign
blog" which uses this service is hurting my privacy big time. I'm okay with
_you_ knowing that my computer is visiting your web site. I'm not okay with
third parties such as Google, Facebook ("like" buttons, anyone?) or some
advertiser automatically knowing that as well.

Same problem with Gmail. They look at and analyse your emails to send you
those targeted ads, remember? You pay with your privacy to use it. Which may
be fine. But you also pay with _my_ privacy, each time you send me an e-mail,
and each time I send one back. That is definitely not fine.

Personally, my heuristic for privacy is this: By default, don't sacrifice your
privacy. Think twice before you do. And never ever sacrifice others' privacy
without their explicit, informed consent.

We're quite far from that.

~~~
GoodIntentions
I read someplace that 60% of the English language web sites use google
analytics. add in any DNS requests passing through google's DNS, adwords js
views, google searches etc and it's not hard to assume they can see pretty
much whatever they need to build an advertising profile for you.

I suspect facebook is a close second with the tracking of outbound links from
FB and "like" buttons all over...

------
da_n
Just wrote 'furious email tone' to Brita, as a long time user:

"Hello,

With respect, I am disgusted to learn apparently your company is responsible
for forcing schoolchildren to use RFID chipped water bottles that need to be
'scanned' whenever they want to refresh themselves of surely a basic human
resource, drinking water. I sincerely hope the following 'award' goes someway
to you recognising how disgusting your conduct appears to the general public:

<https://www.bigbrotherawards.de/2012-en/.biz/>

I hope that you are a good company with well intentioned people working who
has been misinformed or conned by some marketing clown, and that this is just
a misjudgment on the part of bad management. Please ensure this programme is
stopped as soon as possible, I have been a Brita user for years but this is
unconscionable.

Thank you,

xxxxx xxxxx"

------
SagelyGuru
Privacy (and anonymity) is worth defending right now precisely because it is
under an unprecedented attack.

There is a real mania underway for registering and identifying users of even
humdrum activities like using public transport, for instance. Increasingly,
you can not get services, at least not at the best price, without registering
all your details and being issued with some silly card to identify you. Yes,
there are 'discounts' offered but this just proves the point that there is
real pressure to identify everyone at every transaction. In practice, it means
in fact a hike in price for those refusing to conform.

The Brita example of children not being allowed to drink water without
identifying themselves is just the tip of an iceberg.

~~~
SagelyGuru
Contrast this modern lifestyle with those _terrible dark ages_ , when you
could put a few gold coins into your purse, jump on your horse and ride to
anywhere without a passport, without any idetification or documents
whatsoever, without worrying about exchange rates. You could give or not give
your name as and when you pleased and still get courteous services and make
purchases with your gold anywhere in the whole world.

A _lot_ has changed since those days and, I would argue, not for the better in
this respect.

~~~
tomkarlo
If you really believe that was a better time to live in, there's some third-
world countries that still operate that way. But it's pretty rough going when
you have 1. no credit and 2. no distance communication, just to name two basic
issues enabled by better identity management.

~~~
SagelyGuru
Poverty, though a real problem, is an orthogonal issue to this. You are right
though that debt creation and 'identity management' go together.
Interestingly, these dirt poor people who are not 'indentity managed' have
better balance sheets (standing at zero) than your average US college
graduate.

~~~
tomkarlo
I actually only was referring to the lack of infrastructure, not the poverty
(although the two generally go hand in hand, because per-capita GDP is driven
by the level of infrastructure investment.)

As for balance sheets, that's why you don't assess company values based on
their balance sheets alone. It's better to have a somewhat negative balance
sheet and strong income potential than a zero balance sheet and 1/10th the
future income. We complain a lot here in the US about how terrible things are,
but we still have something like 10X the per-cap GDP of much of the world.

------
danneu
The award to Blizzard, Inc. for memory scans to prevent cheating in an MMO
video game (something that I'd wager most players would accept) sort of
cheapens the award when it's shared by widespread government-disseminated
trojans and citizen surveillance.

~~~
tptacek
An example of what is developing into my biggest problem with EFF: an
organization doing incredibly important work that at the same time has
seemingly no scruples about muddying the water to gain attention and gin up
outrage. It's hard to escape the thought that Blizzard is on this list because
nobody cares about German frozen food companies, but everyone recognizes
Blizzard.

~~~
tobiasu
How do you come to that conclusion? The German Big Brother Award is not an EFF
event. It concerns itself with issues mostly relevant to Germany and is split
into different categories. Blizzard "won" the in the consumer protection
category. I would also argue that it's wrong that nobody cares about frozen
food companies. Germany has strong privacy laws and while not nearly enough
people care, a lot still do. Companies violating employees right to privacy
_is_ a big deal in Germany and gets top spots in the news.

~~~
tptacek
I agree that companies violating German privacy laws are a big deal.

------
tylermenezes
I hate how often the EFF comes off as looking like a bunch of conspiracy
theorists. "chat recording that captures text communications, game recording
and player rankings that reveal how often and how long players have been
playing" Um, yes, this was a highly desired feature.

There are so many legitimate problems in privacy, but these are not them.

~~~
thenomad
It is, to be fair, also a feature that is of great use to stalkers - a problem
which WoW players won't be exactly unfamiliar with.

I'm on the fence about this award for Blizzard - on the one hand, there are
worse offenders, but on the other hand, Blizz do tend to make some remarkably
dubious privacy calls.

