
It's Time to Panic About Privacy - TuringTest
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/10/opinion/internet-data-privacy.html
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blakesterz
I didn't get much out of that, but the very last page says "This column is
part of The Privacy Project, a series from The New York Times Opinion." which
does seem much more useful and has a bunch more:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/opinion/internet-
pr...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/opinion/internet-privacy-
project.html)

And yes, The Privacy Project has a bunch of trackers on it.

~~~
nerdjon
Thank you for linking to that page.

As far as the trackers, is it really that surprising? Any news site advocating
for privacy, while much of their business relies on tracking their users so
they can keep them "engaged".

Almost as ironic as anytime Google says anything about Privacy

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oflannabhra
I don’t think it is surprising, but it is hypocritical. I think such hypocrisy
is worth pointing out, even if it is routine at this point.

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lotu
This kinda feels like worrying about how the telephone would allow people to
spread rumors and damaging information about each faster and further. Or
perhaps discriminate against a potential job applicant based on their voice,
instead only getting to see a letter.

This feels like a non-tech person has realized what tech people realized 20
years ago. Technology makes everything we do faster and more efficient even if
those things are bad. What they don't propose is any general statement of the
problem or any type of solution.

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rchaud
> This feels like a non-tech person has realized what tech people realized 20
> years ago.

Really? 20 years ago, tech people realized that billions would be carrying
electronic devices that pinged their location and constantly phoned home to
6-10 large corporations?

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FakeComments
In 1999 when Palm Pilots and Blackberries were there, showing a clear trend
towards greater handheld power after things like brick cellphones and
gameboys?

Yeah, that was the general consensus about what the future would be.

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rchaud
Back then, the business model that incentivized mass data harvesting didn't
exist, and neither did the infrastructure necessary to store and process those
mountains of data.

In 1999, only the original Blackberry and Palm VII "could" do mobile data. I
use quotation marks because they both relied on a very rickety, bandwidth
constrained Mobitex network that could barely send and receive text-only
emails for a few hundred concurrent users, let alone real-time geolocation and
web browsing data across billions of devices. Even then, Blackberry had to
route every single email through their own servers to compress it before
transmission.

Blackberry's business model, like Apple's, was built around an integrated
hardware-software solution. There was no incentive to sell their data to
advertisers. That only started with the search and social media companies that
had no other way of making money.

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charliepark
Pretty shitty to have absolutely zero keyboard interactivity on that page.
Tabbing gets you … the NYT homepage, a bunch of YouTube videos — which you
can't even see on the screen — and a "privacy project" link of some sort.

~~~
rchaud
KB navigation works. The response is delayed, probably because part of the
"page" were still loading.

Terrible UI, IMO. No signage about how to navigate, except for "Click to
Proceed" on the "main" screen.

Why not just create a PowerPoint/Google Slides and be done with it? Probably
would have saved the poor design team a ton of time and had the exact same
impact.

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sequoia
Is there a text version of this somewhere? Not interested in attempting to
navigate some web designer's idea of a fun mirror maze.

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kristianc
This makes a pretty anodyne set of talking points around privacy and wraps it
in the web version of a PowerPoint. In text form, this would barely qualify as
a blog.

On a more general point these articles really should do more to balance the
privacy constraints against the benefits.

Google is not just 'a free service', it is all of the world's knowledge, plus
mapping, plus email, plus god knows what else all completely on demand, five
nines reliable and free to the end user.

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reaperducer
_web version of a PowerPoint_

It felt more GeoCities to me. But yeah, this isn't the _Times '_ best moment.

Some of the paper's interactive pieces are really well done, and innovative.
This... wasn't.

Maybe that's because it came from the Opinion section, not one of the news
sections.

Maybe that's why when I get the paper the first section that goes in the
recycling bin is Opinion.

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mherrmann
This was surprisingly weak. Security cameras? Who cares? Here's what we really
should be worried about: Google. They know _everything_. Our browsing history.
Probably which porn sites we visit. Our emails. Which services we use. Our
passwords (if stored in Chrome). Our schedule. Where we are and where we're
going (Maps). Security cameras? Laughable. Google (and to some extent FB,
Microsoft and Amazon) is where the danger lies.

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StavrosK
So switch off them. Fastmail is better than Gmail, Firefox is better than
Chrome, DuckDuckGo is pretty good, etc. Even switching _some_ stuff is better
than not switching _any_ of it.

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toasterlovin
Seriously people, Duck Duck Go is fine for most work-a-day search. I
occasionally use Google search for some obscure technical stuff, but that's
it.

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cmroanirgo
Is there a reason why startpage never gets a look in, but it's always ddg? I
get better results with sp.

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toasterlovin
It's probably just that people have heard of DuckDuckGo and it's good enough
to not make it necessary to search for a better performing alternative.

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noarchy
Is there an article here? I couldn't navigate beyond the initial page.

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defanor
Not exactly an article: it's more like a series of statements, and apparently
requires JS to navigate (which is tricky even then). But more easily readable
with CSS disabled (or in textual browsers with no CSS).

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joshstrange
What a terrible format. There was nothing added to the "Article" (which was
like a paragraph in length) by using that format other than pretending it was
more that it really was.

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pcmaffey
Because panic is an appropriate response... never? What a terrible framing.

Participating in mob tactics, especially for an issue you care deeply about,
is worse than doing nothing at all.

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jlc
I wonder if there's an interesting essay behind that interface. I'll never
know.

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sevensor
There's not. I use w3m, so there was no annoyance other than a very
lightweight argument and a call for panic. Panic does not make for good public
policy.

Don't panic.

Text follows:

Privacy is a thing we all say we want. You get mad when it’s invaded or
mishandled. Say, when Equifax leaks your credit info, when your nudes show up
on 4chan or when your health data is held ransom. But privacy is also
something a lot of people are happy to trade away at a moment’s notice, for
the slightest reward. We claim to want it, companies claim to provide it,
neither side is really being entirely honest about the trade, and we all just
kind of accept that… You don’t have any privacy online. But the latest
innovations in tech are elevating questions of privacy into much larger
social, moral, political and economic issues. Consider digital home security
cameras, a key part of your “smart home.” Privacy-wise, they don’t seem
especially novel. You want to be alerted when a “bad guy” comes to your door,
but not when your neighbor walks by. So you get a camera that scans and
remembers faces. Very convenient! But what do you do when it spots someone —
wink, wink — “suspicious”? What happens when concerned neighbors start sharing
these faces on the neighborhood social network? What if law enforcement gets
in on the act? Maybe every new face is checked against sex-offender databases,
or maybe Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Is that O.K.? Ring, one of the
biggest doorbell-cam companies, already has a creepy neighborhood watch social
network. It has filed a patent for creating a “database of suspicious
persons.” Wait, that’s crazy. You don’t want to profile people. You just want
peace of mind that your family is safe. You like these cameras because you can
get alerted when your kids come home, and watch your dog from afar. Isn’t that
cute? But where’s all that data going? Can your abusive spouse get it? Your
internet company? The smart home is becoming a treasure trove of the most
intimate data about your life — and there are few controls over it. Domestic
abusers are already using smart-home devices to spy on their victims. And even
if they don’t literally watch your videos, Congress passed rules in 2017 that
allow broadband companies to track your digital data, including smart-home
data. O.K., you didn’t sign up for all that. You’re really just worried about
package thieves! Isn’t it your right to monitor your front door to make sure
your toilet paper isn’t getting stolen? Sure, but have you ever considered the
privacy of the workers delivering your toilet paper? Thanks to doorbell
cameras, delivery drivers can be watched and tracked on the job. Is that O.K.?
Of course, it’s about more than doorbells. Each time you buy some new device
or service that trades in private information — your DNA, your location, your
online activity — you are gambling on an uncertain and unprotected future.
Here is the stark truth: We in the West are building a surveillance state no
less totalitarian than the one the Chinese government is rigging up. But while
China is doing it through government … … we are doing it through corporations
and consumer products, in the absence of any real regulation that recognizes
the stakes at hand. It is time to start caring about the mess of digital
privacy. In fact, it’s time to panic.

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Procrastes
Just want to point out how appropriate this reply was on many levels. The core
article was about privacy and using w3m overcomes most intrusions. The
presentation on the site is apparently awful, but w3m removes all that and
distills the page to text. As a developer I use w3m (and previously lynx) for
all these reasons, but also as a first-pass proxy for more exhaustive
accessibility checks. I guess what this makes me think about, is, for the
moment, while we still have access to general purpose computers, we do still
have a choice in how we consume what we are forcefed. Maybe if we exercise it
enough, we'll get to keep that choice. Maybe not. Worth a try.

~~~
sevensor
Thanks! I like w3m because the web in general is insanely overstimulating. w3m
lets me engage with the text without having to see all manner of distractions.
I'm willing to accept being locked out of some sites to preserve my sanity. I
also use firefox, but only as an application client for things I've already
opted in to, like webmail, banking, and work-related stuff. Like you say, this
is the freedom afforded to us by general purpose computers, and it's worth
exercising.

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ficiek
Broken without JavaScript.

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reaperducer
If you're not using JavaScript, there's probably not much a general news
publication can tell you about privacy that you don't already know.

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tannhaeuser
Make this "if you're required to use JavaScipt, then there's probably not much
a general news publication can tell you that you would like to know and don't
already"

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hprotagonist
It was time to panic about privacy in about 1998, and don't think i haven't
been!

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dreamcompiler
The New York Times must think we're all illiterate ADHD idiots. The subject is
interesting and the NYT seem very proud of their flashy graphics, but the
signal/noise ratio here is quite low.

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wetpaws
Related:
[https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1116354502032932865](https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1116354502032932865)

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nwni
>/interactive/

Is this going to be the trend for how they deliver news now?

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js2
Imgur version for folks who are having trouble with the interactivity:

[https://imgur.com/a/ibC1RZa](https://imgur.com/a/ibC1RZa)

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jak92
Thanks, but javascript still required for the album..

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Nav_Panel
_claps hands_ okay folks, it's time to panic. let's get this train rolling.

(as if "panic" was that sort of phenomenon, like a protest or something)

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floatingatoll
That's literally correct, though I imagine you meant this as sarcasm. Crowd
panic is a phenomenon that is in the same category as spontaneous protests.

It's quite nice to see NYT telling the non-hackers to worry, because I've been
trying to explain that to them ever since Google bought Dejanews and with the
help of NYT and others they're finally starting to understand.

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amelius
How is it that, say two decades ago, telephone companies or banks would not
dare to think about selling their clients' information, but right now it seems
like it's the most normal thing in the world? What went wrong? Why do we
accept this behavior now?

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mikestew
You're reminiscing about good ol' days that never were. My wife and I got our
first mortgage twenty five years ago. The junk mail started arriving almost
the next day. Damned straight the banks were selling your information. Every
time you wrote down your name and address on a warranty card, a car loan, or
anything else, that went into an IBM DB/2 database running on someone's
System/38, packaged to be sold to the highest bidder at the first opportunity.

The only reason you might think there is a difference is because the tools got
a lot better.

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SmellyGeekBoy
8 trackers blocked by uBlock Origin, including google-analytics.com and
scorecardresearch.com.

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fb03
Timing couldn't be better with today's arrest of Julian Assange. Bravo.

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kadendogthing
Well, looks like they need to make the whole page clickable. And not just
invisible sidebars. Or make the sidebars visible.

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andrethegiant
First time Automatic Reader View has really come in handy! (Safari on iOS)

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Causality1
Wow that's an incredibly annoying format for an article.

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chejazi
Sponsored by Apple™

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skummetmaelk
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, until they're not.

