
The Privacy Revolution in Action - dmos62
https://tcsltesting.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-privacy-revolution-in-action.html
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newscracker
I’m deeply frustrated on reading this, but not shocked really. It seems like
people are being numbed into helplessness and powerlessness while they’re
still ignorant and unaware. By the time many people realize how bad the
privacy situation is and the impact it could have, resignation to the status
quo may be the only choice — corporations and governments collecting and using
data in ways people consider grossly inappropriate, creepy and a violation of
their dignity and freedom — would be “too big and too rigid to change”.

I fear the worst is yet to come, and people’s neglect of these issues (for
whatever reason) is going to be _an irreversible crime against future
generations_ (like climate change). How dare we consent to these or accept
these or let these be?

~~~
rasengan
You hit the nail on the head.

The method they are using is take advantage of the size and complexity of our
society -- if they make subtle changes in small silos within our society, we
will fail to notice as very few people watch the world at such a macro-level.

> people's neglect of these issues

SJ Res 34 was a prime example -- most major social mediums attempted to censor
it among other things from the general society. Now, ISPs are allowed to
harvest and sell your data to the highest bidder. Terrible.

How can we fix this?

1\. Vote for the right people.

2\. Write them letters (not emails) telling them how much they suck if they
don't do things for the benefit of people.

3\. Stop using things like youtube etc. This gives WAY TOO MUCH narrative
power to the overlords running those sites (and their overlords who control
them -- do you seriously think the Alex Jones thing was a bunch of unique,
coincidental decisions to ban Alex Jones independent of what any other site
will do given that they all cut him collectively, at the same time? I'm not in
any way saying his rhetoric is good or not -- but he was censored, and his
free speech was blocked).

4\. Understand that the constitution was a draft of laws from a long time ago
and our overall makeup/structure of society has changed -- we really need to
make new laws to keep society safe, secure and prosperous.

~~~
spking
Which specific parts of the Constitution would you change?

~~~
snaky
Rewrite it to something like that, I suppose.

> The constitution repealed restrictions on voting and added universal direct
> suffrage and the right to work to rights guaranteed by the previous
> constitution. In addition, the constitution recognized collective social and
> economic rights including the rights to work, rest and leisure, health
> protection, care in old age and sickness, housing, education and cultural
> benefits.

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rasengan
The author states that RSA collecting data isn’t “wrong.”

Let me share a harsh reality: Nobody has to do anything wrong other than the
act of collecting and storing the data itself - someone else can infiltrate,
hack and leak the data - look at equifax.

The privacy revolution is very well under way.

The other day I was reading this post from APNIC and realized that even they
are data mining[1], and nobody noticed because they just used different
vocabulary.

[1] [https://blog.apnic.net/2018/05/21/what-drives-
ipv6-deploymen...](https://blog.apnic.net/2018/05/21/what-drives-
ipv6-deployment/)

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Nebbers
Highly recommend everyone to read "Weapons of Math Destruction" by Cathy
O'Neil. I have tried to stop using services that collect my data as much as
possible, and when anyone throws the arguement "you must have something to
hide" it's good to have a few real life examples of why everyone should fight
back against data collection and information brokers.

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open-source-ux
_"...the realization hit me, that if Good Guys like Google and RSA were
collecting all this information, it was a given that Bad Guys were too, and we
have no idea just who is."_

Google is neither the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy'. They aren't there to look
out for your best interests and we'd all be much better if we stop ascribing
human qualities to gigantic corporations.

No other company tracks your online behaviour at such industrial scale as
Google - and gets so little scrutiny for it.

For most of the tech community, Google's level of tracking is perfectly fine
because Google has never had a data breach (that we know of). That somehow
makes everything fine.

When it comes to matters of privacy, there's a lot of hypocrisy from the tech
community.

~~~
908087
"Don't be evil" was one of the most successful pieces of feel good propaganda
I've ever seen from any corporation. People still regularly quote it as
"proof" that Google is an altruistic entity which only spies on you to
"provide you with a better experience" and "change the world" (with "for the
better" being implied).

It's amazing how easy it is to get the majority of people to completely shut
down their critical thinking abilities. In this case, it only took 3 words.

~~~
sixstringbudha
>It's amazing how easy it is to get the majority of people to completely shut
down their critical thinking abilities. In this case, it only took 3 words.

One amusing thing I have noticed is that how fast all of the internet got
converted into google catcha system which was originally supposed to convert
books, but now a days just show traffic lights, cars, buses and fire hydrants.
And no one, bats an eye. And even worse, still calls google the "good guy".

Do you know how many images it makes you click if you try to access it with a
clean state?

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nateburke
Amazing write-up.

"Mass psycological persuasion" \-- isn't that just politics, though? I am
wondering if the privacy revolution isn't just a cheapening of a service
(effective one-to-many communication) that only governments and churches could
afford in the past?

I think the real scary stuff hasn't happened yet, thankfully. When identity
becomes enough of a _fuzzy_ notion for most people, borders will need to be
redrawn, or eliminated completely. Then there will be a big war.

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raintrees
Bruce Schneier's most recent newsletter had an excerpt that shows a fictional
account of this playing out at the Nation-State level:
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/08/future_cyberw...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/08/future_cyberwar.html)

This would seem to me to be the next logical step, given what humans have now
in information collection and what can be done with current tools...

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cube2222
I personally think this will all go back somewhat. With which I mean,
information about us being collected without our knowledge and everybody
having all their data made available to big companies.

One reason for me to believe this, is that it's already getting somewhat
creepy, even for the general public. When the new invigilation systems at
china get demonized in public media, people will start to care about privacy a
lot more. Which will open a lot of market space for companies focusing on
privacy. Apple is one company I have in mind here. But, especially with
articles about homomorphic encryption coming up more regularly and a lot of
research on how to train ML systems with anonymization on end user devices (a
blog post about Siri and differential privacy comes to mind) going on, I think
companies will start to cater more to those needs of society. End-to-end
encryption is already a standard feature in new messenger applications.

Another good sign, at least in Europe, is GDPR.

~~~
gonmf
I disagree. I think that companies have such a vast and strong grasp on public
discourse, opinion, and even whole countries, that it will only get worse and
worse. I'm sure some companies will sell "privacy" at a premium for the few
that can afford it, but I don't see any future where there will be actual
riots in the streets for privacy.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Yeah I have to agree here. I don't see this getting any better. Look at how
many people are willing to give up their entire lives worth of privacy to FB
just so they can chat to friends, which they could do on any number of IMs and
other services.

People just don't care.

It's a very very tiny minority who actually do, and the big companies and
Governments are quite happy to ignore that problem until it goes away, as the
vast majority pf people are steam-rolling any chance of privacy mattering in
the future by accepting all this.

~~~
cube2222
I agree they don't care, now at least.

My opinion's that they will, after the situation in China will have been
demonized in public media / books.

~~~
gonmf
But it won't, there's too much money involved to demonize China. And there are
many other such examples of mass surveillance from the five eyes, CCTVs in
major cities, less and less "freedom" in the web. Just this week in my country
(western European) the whole database of everyone that enters and leaves the
country was moved from the police to the secret services, to avoid any kind of
scrutiny.

