
You’re a Criminal in a Mass Surveillance World – How to Not Get Caught - diamonis
https://bananas.liberty.me/youre-a-criminal-in-a-mass-surveillance-world-how-to-not-get-caught/
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grownseed
A truly great read, in particular when it comes to how the author explains the
fallacy of the "nothing to hide" argument. I will definitely be re-using some
of these examples in my own conversations.

That said, there is a sad irony to the proposed solutions. Having to take
measures to hide from the authorities is precisely what Anne Frank and her
oppressed peers had to go through, and we all know how well that panned out
for them. It is also, in its own way, a form of self-censorship and a huge
impediment to one's freedom.

Not to say that I don't appreciate the author's advice on this, as I do take
some these measures myself, but the problem first and foremost is the
ridiculous escalation of power by those in charge. The article even discusses
some of the core issues on this matter:

    
    
      Although the law is incomprehensible to the governed, ignorance of the law is not a defense when you’re prosecuted by the government.
    

As well as:

    
    
      The institution of government is defined by its monopoly on both the creation and enforcement of law.
    

There needs to be real transparency, accountability and separation of
concerns. Short of a revolution, I'm unfortunately not completely sure how
this can be achieved. One of my hopes is that those who advocate and profit
from this disgusting system will be exposed by this very system. Another hope
is that people at large will downright refuse the legitimacy of the current
system, in an organized and peaceful enough fashion that an alternate coherent
system can safely emerge.

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dudul
This thing needs to be at the top of HN.

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movingsidewalk
Agree - made an account just to bump this.

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grownseed
This behaviour most likely achieved the exact opposite, effectively penalizing
the article on HN.

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movingsidewalk
Ack! My apologies to the op!

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rosehippo
Wow - this is a very expansive article full of very useful info - going to
start putting some of this to work right now.

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m_alexgr
Very good article, well written and persuasive. Much food for thought here.

Does indeed deserve to be at the top of HN.

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pdkl95
This article is surprisingly thorough. While many important topics are
discussed, I believe one in particular contains a lesson that is extremely
important for HN readers that are currently implementing tomorrow's popular
technologies. Consider the story of Miep, and why we are able to read and
learn from Anne Frank's writings today. (emphasis in the original)

    
    
        Miep ... never read [Anne Frank's diary] *out of respect for Anne’s privacy*. 
        [She] said if she’d read it she would have felt obligated to destroy it since
        it was filled with damning information, including her name and all the others
        who helped the family survive, including an (illegal) underground supply network.
    

This statement is the clearest explanation I have ever read for why some of us
have such a strong reaction to the organizations like Facebook, Google, and
anybody else that is using "surveillance as a business model". Miep had the
_decency_ to respect Anne's privacy and not read her personal information.

When a business like Google asks people for personal information, they usually
claim the information "isn't very important" or that they just want to run
statistics over it to so the can select better advertisements. Websites
regularly use google-analytics-style tracking to try and extract what people
read and for how long (or where they point their mouse) so they can do similar
statistics tricks. Absolutely _everybody_ wants to merge all that with a vague
notion that unifying everything through a (usually 3rd party) "social network"
will somehow become profitable.

What personal data are they trying to exploit ("monetize")? The names (and
aliases) people use, the connections to their family and what they discuss.
Just the _" metadata"_ from something like gmail is probably enough to map out
any "supply network". These business that are creating "big data" are making
any future "Anne Frank" impossible to hide, and are guaranteeing that any
future Miep is captured.

So why do they do this? I see only two options: _hubris_ or _collaboration_.
Reading any HN thread on the subject will revel a lot of people who dismiss
the idea of fascism and totalitarianism rising again (I guess they are waiting
for actual death camps or something). They insist that they are simply trading
some of their privacy for a useful service (that is still owned an operated by
someone else), while ignoring that they are forcing their choice onto others
when they insist on using Google's email or Facebook's chat servers. Worse,
implicit in the argument that they are trading away "their" privacy is the
hubris that assumes what is true today will continue, unchanged into the
future.

    
    
        Her father’s disclosure a decade earlier of a single piece of data,
        their religion, destroyed his family. The disclosure was a legal
        requirement to be issued a passport.
    

We never know the changes the future will bring, and to _presume_ that you
know that some piece of data is "safe" today and will continue to be "safe" in
the future requires such a massive amount of hubris that I have a hard time
believing it. Which bring me to the other option: they could simply be
collaborators, willing to sell their friends and neighbors - and their own
future - to anybody that promises enough profit.

 _sigh_ \- I'm going to stop here, before I say something _unkind_. I will end
with the suggestion that if you liked this article at all, you should watch
Aral Balkan's talk[1], which discusses a lot of similar themes.

[1]
[https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...](https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#balkan)

