

The Google Wallet, a lifetime log of your purchases - ZeroMinx
http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Google+Wallet-a+lifetime+log+of+your+purchases

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revorad
This made me realise there should be a service which translates Terms of
Service documents to human-readable bullet-points. Most people, myself
included, are unlikely to start reading these annoying documents, but if there
was a place which highlighted important aspects (like the OP does), then we
are much more likely to pay attention.

YC-funded MarketBrief is doing this for SEC documents. Is there anything that
does it for ToS?

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phpnode
i think this is an AI-complete problem. Lawyers write contracts in legalese
not because they love obfuscation (although some clearly do), but because it
is basically a DSL that tries to represent a set of terms in the least
ambiguous way possible. To translate these documents into simpler language
would require the translator (human or machine) to have a proper understanding
of the content being translated, hence AI-complete. Also, the newly simplified
contract would be a separate entity from the original contract, and therefore
could be interpreted differently by a court. Anyone attempting to do this is
opening themselves up to all sorts of horrible litigation

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revorad
Those are good points, but do you think MarketBrief is solving an AI-complete
problem?

There must be low-tech, semi-automated, crowdsourced solutions to this
problem. The legal implications might be a problem, but maybe a community site
with clear disclaimers can avoid any trouble. Even highlighting or extracting
key parts of the original document would be useful.

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phpnode
no, as far as I can tell MarketBrief is a different thing entirely: they're
generating their content from statistics, not by comprehending and rewriting
existing texts.

I think the essence is this - you can probably summarize these contracts and
highlight important clauses with a crowd sourced solution as you suggest, but
these summaries are just an interpretation of the contract, they can't replace
the real thing.

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mcherm
Nevertheless, a summary of the important points in the agreements would be
EXTREMELY useful to me. Unless I go to court I probably don't care whether it
is the law or the law AND the arbitration that is based on the legal framework
of California USA. But I do care whether or not there is a clause that says
"You Can't Sue Us" in one language or another.

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jrockway
So let's say everyone on earth gets my search history and purchase history.
What bad things will happen to me?

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swombat
You buy some gay sex toys, search for gay sex info, etc. Maybe you try out gay
sex, because you're sort of curious. It's not for you, but oh well. Ten years
later, homosexuality is made illegal.

Five years after that, they make homosexual practices retroactively illegal.
They look through your profile and found evidence of gay activity. You go to
the internment camp, never to be seen again.

If the above scenario sounds unrealistic to you, you haven't studied history
well enough.

To expand the topic a bit, imagine a government like Nazi Germany or any of
the communist dictatorships, but with all this information at their disposal.
The Red Khmers mass-murdered people who wore glasses, on the basis that they
were intellectuals. Imagine such a regime with the tools to figure out, via
mass, automated profiling, exactly who all the potentially subversive elements
might be, and execute them all ahead of time, leaving a population consisting
mostly of nice obedient types who never read any other book than the Da Vinci
Code.

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revorad
Following that line of reasoning, imagine 10 years from now, talking about
homosexuality is made retroactively illegal. You'd be in big trouble (and now
me!).

If the above scenario sounds unrealistic to you, that's right. It is
unrealistic, just like the one you painted.

I'd rather not tell Google everything about myself but I'm honestly shocked
that such extreme examples are being used to argue against the idea. By
invoking Nazi analogies to make your point, you're actually doing a disservice
to your argument. The instinct of my irrational mind is to think: well if it
needs another Hitler to make it really scary, then I can probably ignore it.

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swombat
It doesn't seem all that unrealistic to me. My dad, who has actually lived in
a communist dictatorship for most of his life, and experienced this type of
thing first-hand, constantly criticises me for all the dangerous stuff I post
online. The fact is, if such a regime comes up unexpectedly, I'll be against
the wall before I know it.

My plan to deal with this is to keep extremely aware of the political
evolution where I live and to make sure that if it looks like such a regime is
about to take power, I'm on the other side of the world with my family when
that happens.

What's your plan?

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chrischen
It's unrealistic in the developed world and there are actually reasons for
preserving privacy besides something so extreme like the example you painted.
Reasons besides simply for hiding what the gov't thinks is wrongdoing.

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daimyoyo
While this explains why Google wants in the payments business, I refuse to do
anything more with Google than search and email. I am just not comfortable
with one company knowing that much about me.

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uptown
"I refuse to do anything more with Google than search and email. I am just not
comfortable with one company knowing that much about me."

In that case, you'd better install some browser extensions to block Google
Analytics. They could correlate the IP address from your email and search with
your visits to every website using Google Analytics for metrics and
extrapolate more about your from there.

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thematt
Ghostery is a good choice: <http://www.ghostery.com/>

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sschueller
How long does a credit card company keep your purchase history and do they
keep it private?

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rjd
No they sell the information but its anonymised I believe. They'd keep it what
ever the legal requirement is per country, after they have sold it I doubt
there much reason to hold it.

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woodson
Sell it to another party, maybe?

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chrischen
Wouldn't the privacy issue be an issue only if it was forced on us? I assume
you'd still have the option of hiding purchases from Google by not using the
service.

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T_S_
Most people here are assuming that Google will have the line items on your
receipt. Credit card companies normally do NOT get that information. It takes
extra work for the merchant to provide it. The top line data is both less
intrusive and less useful. Does anybody here actually know what data Google
will be collecting?

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suking
Just what I thought google should know. I felt like they don't already have
enough data - I hope I can input my CC number and google wallet will decide
what I need for me and just buy it. Living the dream...

