
How Privacy Became a Commodity for the Rich and Powerful - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/magazine/how-privacy-became-a-commodity-for-the-rich-and-powerful.html
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client4
I actually wrote a House Bill for Montana in 2013 that would have been a
pretty comprehensive privacy law for the state. My friend Dan tried his best
to get it passed, but it was a bit too much new code for legislators to
stomach. Thankfully Dan has broken the original legislation down into smaller
parts and has really succeeded in improving privacy in Montana.

[https://legiscan.com/MT/text/HB400/2013](https://legiscan.com/MT/text/HB400/2013)

~~~
lm_nop
Well done! With GDPR privacy law in the EU and new ISP data collection legal
status, I expect we will have much more work to be done in this area, across
the country. Hopefully lawmakers will decide to protect consumers. Thanks for
getting the ball rolling in Montana!

~~~
client4
Thanks! I'm not hopeful for federal level privacy protections on par with the
EU or even other states (Massachusetts being a leader in the US), so I think a
state based strategy is the best bet. Especially in Montana as we have a
constitutional right to privacy which makes it much easier to pass pro-privacy
laws.

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danieldk
I think the article touches upon a key problem: even if some people are in
principle willing to sacrifice some privacy in order to get a product for
free, it should be required to state what data is shared with whom in clear
human language (and not in a 20 page wall of legalese).

The relation between the user and a service is now completely asymmetrical: it
is hard to know what your data is used for. It does not help that the legalese
often boils down to 'you will sell your soul'.

~~~
_jal
As Bruce Schneier used to say, give people the option between security and
.gifs of dancing pigs, they will take the pigs every time.

As abused as they are, internet users need to build up some healthy "buyer
beware" instincts around the tradeoffs. They'll tell Facebook things they'd
never physically say in front of strangers due to the bait-and-switch feeling
of talking to friends, forgetting the panopticon around them.

I think part of this is the mystery surrounding data practices - people fall
for come-ons they wouldn't accept if they understood what was actually
happening. So more and louder talk about things like unroll.me is good - if
people hear more about others feeling burned by the bait-and-switch, they'll
hopefully be more careful, because they see the results of accepting that
anodyne "may share with trusted partners" language.

~~~
apetresc
Okay, I'll bite - what kinds of things do I not "understand is actually
happening" in terms of what companies like Google and Facebook do with my
data? I'm a reasonably technical person and I honestly believe the "tradeoffs"
I'm making with companies like that are firmly in my favor.

It's not the first time I've asked people who seemed convinced that I was in
some sort of abusive Stockholm-syndrome relationship with Google/FB/etc to
explain what exactly is so bad about the metadata packages they're selling.
The only convincing arguments I've ever heard have centered around insurance
companies denying me coverage based on risk factors I'm revealing, but I'm
pretty sure nobody is actually doing that. Everything else basically just
boils down to "they get to show you better ads" which honestly seems like a
win-win to me.

~~~
alasdair_
Imagine ten years from now you decide to run for some kind of important
political office.

Imagine your opponent had access to every single search query, email and
message you had ever sent.

Imagine they had access to all of the GPS data from your smartphone so that
they could tell exactly where you went each day, how long you spent there and
(importantly) which other people were nearby.

Correlate all that with all of the things you've ever bought because your
credit card company sold that info years ago.

Add in all the data from your spouse, your children and your closes family and
friends.

Now hand it to the people that are trying to smear your reputation in the
worst possible way.

You can see how easy it would be to sway elections this way. Even if right now
it wasn't something you cared much about - this data is collected _forever_
and I doubt you know exactly how your life is likely to be ten, twenty, thirty
or more years from now.

~~~
ajmurmann
Playing devil's advocate: They might expose that a candidate just likes to
grab women by the pussy who did not indicate that they'd like that to happen.
The candidate might still successfully be elected.

~~~
spearmint
How is that playing devil's advocate? Are you implying that if such a campaign
were to hurt a candidate you don't personally approve of, it would be
perfectly fine?

~~~
ajmurmann
No, I'm saying that having even massive dirty like this on a candidate
apparently doesn't prevent them from winning anyways. A common response to
pussy gate was that you hear stuff like that in any mens room. So digging up
dirty from twenty years ago from someone Facebook page will likely be met with
the same response.

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bithive123
The idea that privacy can be traded away transactionally is a
misrepresentation. Privacy is a choice; depending on who I am interacting with
I will withhold certain information about my life.

If someone convinces a friend or family member of the lie that they can trade
privacy for services, then my communications with them are compromised without
my consent.

This is all about every being's right to choose to be private. The idea that
it's okay to impinge this right as long as someone thought of it as a
transaction is morally bankrupt.

~~~
stinkytaco
It's not always a choice, though. If I need to rent a car, I need a credit
card. Now my credit card company knows where I went on vacation or traveled
for work. I have to have an email account, but if I apply for a job, now my
email providers knows quite a bit about me.

None of these things are necessarily the end of the world if there's some data
protection guarantee. But to say it's simply a choice ignores how much data
other people have on us, just by going about our daily lives.

~~~
bithive123
What I'm saying is that it's immoral for your credit card company to spy on
you, regardless of what language they snuck into your contract. Same for your
email provider.

It's even less acceptable if a company uses its customers to spy on people who
aren't customers.

To rationalize it by saying "well, you could have used a different bank" is
self-indulgent nonsense.

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theprop
"Facebook revoked users’ ability to remain unsearchable on the site;
meanwhile, its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, was buying up four houses
surrounding his Palo Alto home to preserve his own privacy. Sean Spicer, the
White House press secretary, has defended President Trump’s secretive meetings
at his personal golf clubs, saying he is “entitled to a bit of privacy,”

That said, privacy is being commoditized for everyone as well with tools such
as Snapchat, the Epic Privacy Browser and TOR.

~~~
659087
> Snapchat, the Epic Privacy Browser and TOR.

One of these things is not like the others.

~~~
theprop
Hehe, well Snapchat is kind of private in theory...at least people use it
because they think it's private!

~~~
659087
It's not private in any way, and those who think it is are incredibly naive.

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ajack46
How can one trust someone with their email account. I believe that is just a
weird thing to do no matter whether it was not such a threat before. But your
email is something personal.

~~~
germinalphrase
When setting up my own email server is as easy as downloading and launching
Firefox then it might happen. As is, I don't think it's so simple.

~~~
JohnnyConatus
Truthy. But That plan didn't even work out for Firefox.

~~~
newsat13
What didn't work out for Firefox? Firefox is used by millions last I checked.

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sixothree
What I want to know is - How can I buy the information marketers have
collected about me?

~~~
ptr_void
I've heard, it's usually not in the interest of companies like Google and
Facebook to sell raw data. It's much better for them to keep control of the
data and sell it's use as a service.

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chickenfries
Has anyone implemented something similar to Unroll.me, except not SaaS?
Perhaps as a browser extension?

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davidgerard
Fake title. Real title (and URL): How Privacy Became a Commodity for the Rich
and Powerful

~~~
Hydraulix989
I actually disagree with the real title. People of all socioeconomic classes
use these privacy-encroaching apps -- Facebook, Unroll.me, etc.

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ckastner
_Last month, the true cost of Unroll.me was revealed: The service is owned by
the market-research firm Slice Intelligence, and according to a report in The
Times, while Unroll.me is cleaning up users’ inboxes, it’s also rifling
through their trash. When Slice found digital ride receipts from Lyft in some
users’ accounts, it sold the anonymized data off to Lyft’s ride-hailing rival,
Uber._

~~~
j_s
This was a useful service for many tech people; some here are still
discovering this issue that blew up two weeks ago.

Initial discussion of the "buried lede" in the NYT article _Uber CEO Plays
with Fire_ :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14178397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14178397)

Discussion of the CEO's non-apology:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14181152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14181152)

~~~
659087
I can't help but wonder about the competence of "tech people" who are handing
random services on the internet full access to their email accounts to save
themselves minimal amounts of time.

~~~
pc86
Hey how else am I supposed to be 10x and have time to write this Rust CRUD
app?

