
Facebook and Google’s pervasive surveillance poses danger to human rights - t23
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/11/google-facebook-surveillance-privacy/
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hjek
... yet we're fine running Google Analytics on our own site, of course. Please
like and share this article using the _f_ button on the left.

(Of course it's better being a hypocrite than being completely indifferent but
there's no excuse for not fixing their own site.)

~~~
ForHackernews
Someone makes some version of this comment on every article about Facegoog
surveillance.

I guess you're only allowed to complain about surveillance on your personal
blog where no one will read it, because any modern media site uses invasive
tracking. For some reason, HN posters pretend not to understand that the IT
staff who install those trackers are different people from the writers who
complain about it.

~~~
hjek
> Someone makes some version of this comment on every article about Facegoog
> surveillance.

Yup, that was in the back of my mind when I wrote that.

I think it's great that they're complaining on the Amnesty blog. Let's be
clear: The issue is _not_ the complaining; it's the tracking. It's not that
they shouldn't post this important post on their site; it's that they should
consider not using Google Analytics.

As I wrote before as well, being a hypocrite is a step up from not caring.
It's good to see Amnesty taking a public stance on this.

But I think you touch on an interesting general phenomena there: That someone,
who professes a view, risks being attacked as a hypocrite, which could make it
easier to stay silent instead.

------
dredmorbius
Herbert Simon, Nobel laureate in economics and one of the fathers of AI, wrote
one of the better treatments of the possible future of computer-based data
systems in his 1977 essay "What Computers Mean for Man and Society". In it, he
addresses concerns:

"The privacy issue has been raised most insistently with respect to the
creation and maintenance of longitudinal data files that assemble information
about persons from a multitude of sources. Files of this kind would be highly
valueable for many kinds of economic and social research, but they are bought
at too high a price if they endanger human freedom or seriously enhance the
opportunities of blackmailers. While such dangers should not be ignored, it
should be noted that the lack of comprehensive data files has never been the
limiting barrier to the suppression of human freedom. The Watergate criminals
made extensive, if unskillful, use of electronics, but no computer played a
role in their conspiracy. The Nazis operated with horrifying effectiveness and
thoroughness without the benefits of any kind of mechanized data processing."

[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a9e7/33e25ee8f67d5e670b3b7d...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a9e7/33e25ee8f67d5e670b3b7dc4b8c3e00849ae.pdf)

There is, of course, one slight problem with Simon's argument: The Nazis _did_
make heavy use of mechanised data processing, provided and supported by IBM.
Edwin Black documents this meticulously in his book _IBM and the Holocaust_ :

[https://ibmandtheholocaust.com](https://ibmandtheholocaust.com)

Whether or not it's possible to transact genocide at similar scale without
computerised data records, it's quite clearly far easier to do so _with_ them.
Worse, with comprehensive records and rapid identification of any particular
meddlesome priest, activist artist, or woman who was warned but nevertheless
persisted, it's possible for such regimes, state or non-state, to dip in and
retaliate with pinpoint effectiveness. Even the mere suggestion that this is
possible can be extraordinarily chilling.

[https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/103059230160200494](https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/103059230160200494)

