
Why metadata is bad – 3 minute video your Mom will understand - mikkokotila
https://privacyinternational.org/node/573
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lizzard
Hi. I'm someone's mom, and both of us understand this. When you use mothers as
a metonym for people who don't understand technology, think about who you are
assuming is your audience, and who are you are excluding and insulting.

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evook
Who cares?

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clbrook
I do.

I was pleased when I opened the comment section to see this as the top
comment.

I want to live in a world where being kind, respectful, understanding, and
caring are the highest of virtues. In that world, hopefully all people will
work toward working together to understand others and appreciate our many
wonderful differences instead of insulting them, even in a micro-aggression,
this might be funny, yet deprecating sort of way.

Although I personally don't often spend much time being offended by these
culturally accepted deprecating statements, I have recently started to wonder
if it is contributing toward the public policies that attempt to marginalize
and discriminate against any group of people.

Moms build things. Girls build things. Women build things. I build things.

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bcook
Does being kind & understanding mean allowing someone to make a joke about
you? I often allow jokes at my expense if the intent was not malicious.

Also, I perceived the joke to be making fun of the elderly, not women.
Honestly, you post seems like you were primed & ready to be offended by the
slightest thing, which has more negative social impact than the light-hearted
title of the linked article.

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tptacek
Why would it be OK to make fun of the elderly? Why would you stick up for
that?

Also, the person to whom you're responding had, when you wrote this, _one_
carefully worded comment on the thread. "Primed and ready"? Clearly, the
person on the thread most fitting that description is you. _Please stop doing
this._

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forgetsusername
We make fun of all sorts of people in life. I even do so at my own expense.
Its not a big deal; it's even referred to as fun.

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viiralvx
Couldn't you just have said, "3 minute video that anybody can understand."
Rather than stereotype people's mothers as technically incompetent?

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tdkl
Stereotypes wouldn't be stereotypes if there wasn't a grain of truth in them.

If we take a sample of N>1000 mothers, I bet my money more then 50% would fall
under this "stereotype". Is this democratic enough to suit as an argument ?

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munin
if anyone is going to viscerally and immediately understand the impact of de-
anonyimzation and the importance of privacy, it will be a woman.

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mynewtb
Nah, it will be a black transgendered immigrant at least. Get with the times
instead of perpetuating sexist stereotypes from the 50s.

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idop
So everybody's complaining about the second part of the title, I'm gonna
complain about the first. Metadata is a very broad and general term, and
metadata is not bad. Here I thought I'm gonna read an article about why I
shouldn't be storing metadata in my applications. Instead I get a video
explaining how data is collected about me on the internet, mostly via social
websites, and how this data can be used not according to my personal
interests. That's a very specific case of metadata, and I don't even think the
"meta" prefix is important here.

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eclipxe
Agree. The non technical folk have latched on to a specific use of the word
"metadata" completely ignorant of the broader use. They should just say "data"
but "'metadata" somehow makes it scarier?!

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DanBC
The non technical meanings are "metadata" and "content".

The use of "metadata" word is designed to make it sound _less_ scary - it's a
word that politicians use when they want to reassure people.

"We don't want the content! We just want the metadata - how long a call lasted
for, for example".

It's a good thing that people are a bit scared about metadata. It's the
metadata attacks that make tor hard. It's the metadata attacks that make end-
to-end encryption weakers.

Companies collect a lot of data. They should be thinking carefully about how
much they actually need, and how harmful it is to their users if it gets
slurped.

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tehmillhouse
The video's nice and all, but I'd appreciate if people would stop using my Mom
as a stand-in for "person who is not competent with technology".

Also, did they really mistake the chrome logo for the google logo?

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hmahncke
Yes. My Mom was an analyst for the CIA and helped win the Cold War. This
phrase is silly.

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Robadob
Longer video (25 minutes) of a talk from BlackHat 2013, about how metadata was
used to expose an illegal(?) 2003 CIA operation carried out in Italy. It's by
a non-tech journalist, so it's also largely non-technical and provides a very
interesting overview of what metadata can expose.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwGsr3SzCZc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwGsr3SzCZc)

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stegosaurus
Interesting video, but it feels a bit 'icky' to me, for lack of better words.

The voice feels patronising, perhaps even scary, and towards the end it
suddenly turns into a description of a dystopia. If this were an advert I
think it'd have most reaching for the remote control fairly rapidly.

It's a real challenge to describe these issues without looking unhinged.

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giuscri
Personally, as a (would say) techie, I tend to underestimate the importance of
this topic.

Indeed, the times when I used Tor I felt curious about the technology and how
it achieved anonymous traffic. But when people asked me why I was using it I
didn't know what to answer.

"You know, those poor people under dictatorships..."

To my understanding, we miss a big public case where metadata and information
collected are used against western people.

I fear we won't see any, before it'll be too late.

I have no problem with dystopian unrealistic scenarios -- and have no problem
accepting it could happen, under the ghost of terrorism.

But the majority of people feel this is all too much "cyber-punk" or, worse,
that "you have something to hide".

A great pop-movie about that would be great!

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DanBC
The guidelines are pretty clear about titles, and this title is a great
example of the trainwrecks that result when people fuck about with titles.

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ebbv
If you're gonna try to explain to non-technical people maybe you should choose
your title more carefully. Metadata itself is not bad. It's how it is used and
who has access to it.

The thing that's bad here is:

1) Lack of personal control over your own meta data. You can' go to Google and
say "Erase everything you know about me." easily. Some Google services allow
you to do something like this, others don't, it's purposely a big pain in the
ass. That goes for all these big companies.

2) Most (all?) governments have too much easy access to this data, and no
public disclosure or oversight about what/who they are looking at and for what
reasons.

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mtgx
"It's only metadata" and "We drone strike people based on metadata" aren't
exactly the most congruent of messages, are they?

Either it's close to useless to the point where we have to question why they
bother gathering so much in the first place and adding to the noise, or it's
so valuable that we assign assassination targets based on it.

Which is it, world governments? You can only choose one. You can't choose the
middle, because that would be admitting to "assassinating people based on
mostly useless information" (and therefore likely killing many innocent people
because of that).

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rll
Why change the headline to a blatantly sexist one?

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jhall1468
I doubt you'd have said the same thing if it was a 3 minutes video your dad
would understand.

So who's the sexist one?

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rll
That made no sense at all.

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jhall1468
It wasn't about gender. It was about "incompetent about technology." Your mom,
grandma, dad, grandpa, dumb cousin or incompetent friend would all work as
well.

You made it about gender.

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rll
Don't you see that you just proved the point? You read "your mother" and you
understood "incompetent about technology." That is the sexist stereotype we
get irritated by.

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gluelogic
If your experience was anything like mine, then you grew up regularly handling
technology (fixing computers, hooking up VCRs, etc.) for and explaining it to
people older than you. That's the stereotype at play in the title--old person
won't understand tech.

It would be quite different (and have a totally different effect) if the title
said "3 minute video even a girl will understand"

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DanBC
Google searching shows very many more hits for "your mother would understand"
and "your grandmother would understand" than for father / grandfather /
grandpa / etc.

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jhall1468
The number of query results from a google search aren't evidence of anything
except that your argument is weak enough that you couldn't find _actual_
evidence.

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h_r
I find it interesting and funny that this video about metadata turned into one
giant metadiscussion of the video with almost no mention of the actual
content.

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gdulli
What is with the condescending bullshit?

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SNvD7vEJ
Really, how is metadata bad? ...

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ambicapter
The amount of outrage generated over a very common turn of phrase honestly
smacks of a disinformation campaign. I guess privacy matters are 'passé' on HN
now.

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smt88
Just because it's a common turn of phrase doesn't mean we should be less
outraged. In fact, we should be more outraged, because it's more likely that
it's actively harming people. Ideas -- in this case, stereotypes -- are very
powerful and have real effects. Language is important in creating
expectations, and people are given opportunities based on expectations.

Also, it's not a common turn of phrase in my world because I don't spend time
with assholes stuck in 1950.

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forgetsusername
"Actively harming people"...followed by directly referring to someone with a
curse word.

Funny that the US is on the verge of electing Trump, because there are a lot
of people who are tired of this tripe.

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smt88
Insulting anonymous people _based on their behavior_ (and using curse words)
isn't harming anyone, especially because they're anonymous.

Perpetuating stereotypes does harm people, because it degrades people _based
on the way that they were born_ (or, in this case, also based on the fact that
they decided to have a child).

No one is on the verge of electing Trump, by the way. More than 70% of women
dislike him. More than 60% of the country actively dislikes him[1].

1\.
[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorabl...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html)

