
Google's Chief Internet Evangelist: 'privacy may be an anomaly' (2013) - gullyfur
https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/20/5125922/vint-cerf-google-internet-evangelist-says-privacy-may-be-anomaly
======
gundmc
It's odd to describe Vint Cerf as Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, a
largely honorary and emeritus position, as opposed to co-creator of TCP/IP for
which is is famous. It makes the headline and framing feel very click-baity.

The referenced FTC announcement was titled "Internet Innovator Vinton G. Cerf
to Keynote FTC's Internet of Things Workshop".

~~~
lonelappde
How is TCP/IP relevant to his opinions on Privacy?

~~~
tomaslb
It's relevant to the reader to understand the impact this man has had on
developing the internet as we know it, and realising that he probably knows
what he is talking about.

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nashashmi
Maybe there should be three terms acknowledged in the study of privacy:

Public

Obscure

Private

For the longest time we have interpreted obscurity as privacy. Such as what
your house looks like. Or how many people know of your legal immigration
status.

There are very few pieces of information that are truly private, like social
security number, health records (known only by Healthcare providers), and the
actions you did in secret where no one was present, and maybe even the
thoughts you have and the writings of your journal.

~~~
Avamander
> There are very few pieces of information that are truly private, like social
> security number

Most countries don't have such a number with such high value.

~~~
lonelappde
How do those countries handle taxes, public services, and credit?

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eximius
They have similar IDs, but they are IDs not authentication methods in and of
themselves. SSNs are Bearer IDs that the knowing of is proof of identity,
which is dumb.

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wayoutthere
I think this assumes people don't have a choice about being "extremely
online". As someone who quite literally grew up on the Internet in the early
90s (before that was common), I have pulled back my engagement significantly
in the last 5 years. I'm not on social media at all.

And you know what? Other than a few Facebook Groups, I realized I'm not
missing much. I rather enjoy living life offline; I'm not obsessed with
checking the news 30 times a day or being performative with my posts. The last
few weeks have actually been pretty hard for me because it's like being forced
to take heroin when you've been clean for a while.

But I also have privacy. There are things in my life that I don't feel are
even appropriate to broadcast widely, so I don't. You can't really Google me
and find anything meaningful. The advertisements I see are not in any way
aligned to things I would do / buy, which makes it _way_ more obvious how much
advertising we are subjected to. I feel it's a bit like peeking behind the
curtain.

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0xff00ffee
> I'm not on social media at all.

What's HN then?

~~~
Nicksil
HN is an Internet forum:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum)

~~~
sixstringtheory
Which is one kind of medium for socially interacting.

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astrobe_
Well, if you insist, sure, but social networks are focused on people while
forums are focused on topics (news article etc.). The difference is
significant enough that some people may post on various forums all day long
but never on Twitter or FB.

~~~
0xff00ffee
/r/selfawarewolves

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NegativeLatency
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
on his not understanding it.”

~~~
pmezard
Is there a Firefox extension to fold threads containing that kind of recurring
generalities? Sinclair's quote (not even quoted here), "If you are not paying
for it, you are the product", "Government are bad", etc. ?

~~~
choward
I prefer "Even if you are paying for it, you are the product"

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jonny_eh
This is Vint Cerf, co-creator of TCP/IP (aka the internet protocol). He's
better known by his actual name, isn't he?

~~~
coldtea
By technical audiences maybe. By the general public, Verge readers, etc, not
so much. Half of the population doesn't know who the vice president is, much
less Vint Cerf.

~~~
lallysingh
We're on Hacker News. I think we can assume audience here is fairly technical.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
I'm smart enough and I didn't know he was the cocreater of tcp/ip. I also get
him confused with Tim Berners Lee, as they are both referred to as the father
of <2 different things that are use somewhat interchangeably>.

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sarah180
It's a reasonable hypothesis, but I think it overlooks the scope of
information that is now shared electronically and the ability to collate it.
Noticing the people from whom somebody get mail is very different from having
access to a huge amount of private communication in a queryable database.

As people have said before, a modern smartphone is like a diary times a
thousand.

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ashton314
> Elaborating, he explained that privacy wasn't even guaranteed a few decades
> ago: he used to live in a small town without home phones where the
> postmaster saw who everyone was getting mail from. "In a town of 3,000
> people there is no privacy. Everybody knows what everybody is doing."

Terrible, stupid analogy. If I wanted to have a private conversation with
someone, I could just close my door or make sure no one was eavesdropping in
the bushes. Perfect secrecy. In the digital realm, there's always a danger
that my message will be recorded, decrypted, or analyzed and I have no idea
how long that message will live. Internet communications are insecure, but
that is not the default in real life person-to-person interactions.

It does work in some sense: everyone in town will know you bought that fancy
new thing, etc.—there's less privacy there—but as far as communication has
been concerned, the default was private: no one other than the participants
hears the message.

~~~
specialist
Agreed.

Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everyone compared kids online convos to real life,
from memory:

Kids hanging out in a food court, gossiping about this and that, are talking
to each other. Not to outsiders. And adults eavesdropping are creepy. They
treat their online chatting the same way.

What I take away from Shirky's (many) observations is that social conventions
haven't adapted to the new reality and that our new communication technology
was implemented irrespective of social norms.

I haven't used Snap, so this is speculation: I think it's tech of short-lived
messages tried to implement social norms. Which would be exceptional in the
tech world.

------
simmanian
Is there any way to make personal data usage within companies more transparent
and verifiable? Are there known studies/works in this line of thought? In an
ideal world, what can we do to make data usage more transparent?

~~~
lonelappde
How would you guarantee privacy by requiring transparency? They are opposites.

~~~
simmanian
I had been a staunch advocate of not sharing any personal information wherever
possible, but recently I've been thinking whether I've approached the whole
privacy issue from a wrong angle. I now believe privacy is the lesser evil we
pursue because of lack of trust. The world is full of "evil" corporates that
funnel our personal info into black boxes for their private gains. We have no
idea what happens to our data once they're collected and fear that they could
be used to exploit or even harm us down the road. In this zero-sum
environment, our best option to protect ourselves is by not sharing data at
all.

Trust is the game changer. We almost take it for granted that increased
transparency is inherently good, and we've seen how people's data could be
used for good in how countries like S. Korea handled the COVID crisis.
Verifiability and transparency are how we achieve trust.

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matz1
Agree with him, we need to evolve and adapt. Relying on privacy is not
feasible going forward. Instead of privacy we need to strive to minimize the
damage due the information being online.

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cleanroom
Open source is a work in progress. There are plenty of software and hardware
projects that care about security and big tech can't stop them although they
would probably like to.

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bgee
Vint Cerf has been infected with COVID-19 [0], btw.

[0]:
[https://twitter.com/vgcerf/status/1244636584508604417?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/vgcerf/status/1244636584508604417?lang=en)

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Pedrit0
Well, Google may be an anomaly too...

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Pedrit0
Oh let me be more explicit: Google's destiny is deeply intricated with
geopolitics, and as several US-based giants it will have its future indexed on
the US destiny. And the US are declining at the speed of light. China has
built its own tech powerhouse and it is dwarfing the american digital
universe. Moreover Trump's tech blocade on China is just prompting them to
develop alternatives on every possible hardware and software product and
therefore China is becoming the biggest threat to US Big tech companies.
Europe can (and will) go on make easy money taxing Google and other 'privacy
predating' companies because they cannot afford the luxury to quit the biggest
trade bloc in the world... ANd it is a good strategy to weaken the US. If you
think that Google will remain what is is now, get your head off the SV tech
blogs and read a bit about geopolitics. So yeah, I think that Google is
anomaly. And most anomalies tend to disappear...

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paulus_magnus2
indirect Proof:

To all Googlers, does your contract include clauses about Confidential
Information, Trade Secrets, NDA-type clauses etc? Great penalties for breaking
these?

\-- Q.E.D

