

Let Your Data Go - bensummers
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/02/19/The-Limits-of-Control

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blasdel
This is what Eric Schmidt meant when he said _"If you have something that you
don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first
place."_

Of course it's stated in the general case, and as a consequence it's more
tactful, but it's the same idea: If you don't want someone to know something,
don't tell them.

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rauljara
"It’s like this: If you send data to someone over the Net, you can’t control
what they do with it. At least cost-effectively. Or, if you want a good
outcome.

This applies to Internet Standards. Any standard that tries to constrain the
way in which data, once received, is processed, is broken."

So, is the author then opposed to having a secure, standardized way to make
credit card payments? Methinks he should be using a word less broad than
"data".

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csytan
What I got from your quote is that he thinks it's not possible to control how
data is processed _after_ it has been received -- he's not talking about the
entire process.

Since the data is on somebody's server, there's nothing that can be done to
stop them from making poor decisions with it (such as storing CC numbers in
plain text).

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andreyf
Funny - he's saying this in regard to copyrighted data, but it may also be
interpreted to be talking about private user data.

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wmf
Is he? I thought this was about HTML5.

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dangrossman
That's what I was thinking too. The HTML5 spec is trying to specify exactly
how HTML is processed and not just the syntax of the markup.

