

In which Eben Moglen calls out a reporter for having Facebook - inflatablenerd
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/13/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit-yells-at-me-for-being-on-facebook/

======
bigiain
"Banks aren’t the problem, he said; the users tempting banks with their
Twitter and Facebook postings are the problem.

As are reporters who write about privacy issues with social media without
first closing their Facebook accounts."

You know he's right, don't you?

~~~
cookiecaper
You can use Facebook in a way that doesn't endanger your personal privacy, it
can be primarily a consumption platform for the endangered privacy of all of
your associates. :)

~~~
knowtheory
This is actually entirely untrue given the way that Facebook is set up.

The most _insidious_ thing that Facebook has done, is litter the web with
_their_ "Like" buttons. Oh sure, _they're_ not the ones who have put up "Like"
buttons around the web, all they've done is insist that websites who _do_ want
a "Like" button have to use file assets & scripts from their webserver.

Well, by tracking where the "Like" button gets loaded, they can tell what
you've been watching out on the web, _even if_ you don't touch the "Like"
button. Loading the button is enough. And on that basis, anyone who's set
their pages up to use the "Like" button is informing on you. And in turn, your
very use of the web becomes part of Facebook's surveillance.

~~~
Sorpigal
This is why it is _essential_ for people who are concerned about privacy to
use run Firefox and install the RequestPolicy extension. I simply don't
whitelist facebook's domains and thus couldn't be tracked even if I had a
Facebook account.

~~~
waqf
This. The only regret I had about switching from Firefox to Chromium is the
lack of RequestPolicy. Apparently the hooks aren't there, as with AdBlockPlus.

In fact, just thinking about it now ... why did I switch? I should try Firefox
again.

------
nl
This article makes me angry, and the groupthink of most the replies I read
here supporting Moglen make me angry too.

You know what causes a real ecological disaster?

Washing Machines.

Yes, _FUCKING_ washing machines.

They use too much of one of the worlds rarest resources (clean water),
contribute to global warming and pollute the waste water with phosphates.

On the other hand, they have freed up half the worlds workforce from
backbreaking manual labor and contributed to society enough that no less than
Hans Rosling calls them the _greatest invention of the industrial revolution_
[1]

Facebook allows companies to sell advertising and allows law enforcement to
track you.

On the other hand, it allows quicker and easier communication than ever
before, and contributed to the Arab Spring to the point where the revolutions
in Tunisia and Egypt are known as "the Facebook revolutions" [2][3]

Convenience has costs, but who is Moglen to judge if those costs are
worthwhile for everyone?

[1]
[http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html)
(watch this video - it's really good)

[2] [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-
was...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was-facebook-
responsible-for-the-arab-spring-after-all/244314/)

[3] <http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38379/>

Edit: To all those claiming this is a strawman - it's not. Moglen failed to
point out the benefits of social networking, and I'm using an analogy to show
that most things have costs and benefits. Please don't get distracted into an
argument about that.

I'd love to see people try and explain how Moglen is right about Twitter
(which has much lower privacy costs than Facebook).

~~~
skore
Wow, that's quite a straw man you have there.

Washing machines are tools. Facebook is a platform. If Mr. Moglen was
attacking the postal service or mobile phones, you'd have a point. But he is
talking about a centralized service that gives unprecedented power to the ones
in control of the service and the jurisdictions it falls under.

I can stand in front of my washing machine and say, with total clarity, that
I'm the only one in charge of it at that time. If I had a facebook account,
there would be no such thing. And that doesn't even get to Mr. Moglens deeper
point - that usage of facebook spreads the problem into your social graph.

As for the "facebook revolutions" you cite - that's quite a rosy picture you
paint there. In reality, those services _were_ used to track protesters and
there have been coordinating handouts urging participants _not_ to use social
media for that reason. Furthermore, after these 'revolutions' have cooled
down, it's still unclear what we will end up with. I would conclude that at
most, those services served as catalysts and their convenience came at quite a
cost indeed. But it's not Arab Youth + Facebook = Functioning Democracy.

~~~
nl
My response is far from a strawman.

Moglen pointed out all the problems with Facebook (and Twitter) without
showing the benefits.

~~~
skore
So you say it's not a straw man. Maybe you have some more words left to
explain yourself on that point?

He was asked for the problems. It's not his job to advertise social networking
services.

One of the big figures of Software Freedom is asked about the drawbacks of
social networking services and you start your argument with saying that he
doesn't talk about the benefits. And then you compare the drawbacks to the
ecological damage of washing machines (with the recent advances in efficiency,
nobody is making as strong a point against them as you are trying to force).
Nope, sorry, that's a straw man. And a very weak one at that.

I think if anything, having those three big issues out there (privacy
violations, tracking by government, careless spreading of the two into the
social graph), Mr. Moglen would be correct to say that the cost is already too
great to be weighed against with any benefits.

~~~
nl
_A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on
misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to
create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a
superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and
refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position._

I don't think I misrepresented Moglen's position in anyway. He only spoke
about the negative aspects of social networking, but nothing about the
conveniences. Argument by analogy isn't a strawman.

I agree that recent advances in washing machines have improved them, and that
the environmental impact of them is far outweighed by the convenience.

Indeed, that is _my point_.

For me - and many others - the convenience and advantages of social networking
outweighs the costs. I make that decision in full knowledge of those costs,
and I think it is fair to point out that there are advantages as well as
costs.

~~~
skore
Mr. Moglen is well known to speak against and was asked to comment on the
drawbacks of social networks. You are attacking a straw man if you complain
that he isn't talking about the benefits.

    
    
        Person A: Sunny days are good.
        Person B: If all days were sunny, we'd never have rain, and without rain, we'd have famine and death. Therefore, you are wrong.
        Problem: B has misrepresented A's claim by falsely suggesting that A claimed that only sunny days are good, and then B refuted the misrepresented version of the claim, rather than refuting A's original assertion.
    

You are picking a discussion that Mr. Moglen was not having.

The benefits of social networks are self evident - they enable communication
in an unprecedented way. His argument is that the drawbacks he is talking
about are unnecessary and dangerous and that some of the technology may seem
useful, but is actually just thinly disguised non-social behavior ("keeping
up" with somebody may border on "stalking"). You have not addressed any of his
arguments while complaining that he didn't address points that nobody was
discussing to begin with.

So yes, one more, final, time - your argument is a straw man.

~~~
nl
Wait - so I'm not allowed to attack omissions in his arguments?

That's like saying when Rick Santorum points out what he sees as problems with
gay marriage no one can point out the benefits because it is a strawman.

That's ridiculous!

~~~
skore
Alright, this is moving quickly into troll territory. One final reply:

The premise of the article we are discussing was this:

"My editor wanted a quote from a privacy advocate, so I immediately thought of
Eben “Spying for Free” Moglen, a militant digital privacy advocate, founder of
the uber-secure personal server FreedomBox, and the inspiration for the
decentralized social network Diaspora."

Eben Moglen was asked for his statement as a privacy advocate. There is
nothing to be said about facebook in terms of being a privacy advocate. Except
for maybe "sure wish they'd try some!". And that's the end of your argument
right there.

Eben Moglen argues that facebook is bad because of the gross privacy
violations it institutionalized. His argument is perfectly sound and coherent
and doesn't need any forced "balancing" to be valid. He is not omitting any
facts to make his argument.

You are welcome to argue against it, but you have instead chosen to act as
though his argument is moot because he didn't make yours. That's not how
arguments work.

Your 'Rick Santorum' point boggles the mind. Rick Santorum is not attacking a
straw man, he is stating his honest, if misguided, beliefs. You could now
attack a point completely unrelated or only superficially related to his rants
about gay marriage and _that_ would be a straw man. You could also, however,
argue for or against his points with your own argument.

~~~
nl
_Rick Santorum is not attacking a straw man, he is stating his honest, if
misguided, beliefs._

Moglen is not attacking a straw man, he is stating his honest, if misguided,
beliefs.

 _You could now attack a point completely unrelated or only superficially
related to his rants about gay marriage and that would be a straw man. You
could also, however, argue for or against his points with your own argument._

This is true. Additionally, one could point out the good things about gay
marriage. That's a perfectly reasonable approach.

Specific to the Moglen argument, it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to
argue against his points because I agree with a lot of them. However, I think
the benefits are more important and I won't sit still and let only one side of
the argument be presented.

How would you suggest I should present benefits of social networking without
you calling me a troll or saying my argument is a strawman?

~~~
skore
_Moglen is not attacking a straw man, he is stating his honest, if misguided,
beliefs._

Seems like you finally got it! (Although I disagree that his beliefs are
misguided.)

Moglen was stating his beliefs because he was asked for them. _You_ created a
straw man to argue against them.

You could have just said "I agree with Mr. Moglen on points X-Z, but I would
like to weigh them against the benefits of social networks" - and then do
that. That would clearly mark that you are opening your own line of reasoning
instead of trying to forcibly claim them on the OP. Then, we could have _that_
discussion together.

You must understand - I did not take exception to you trying to start that
discussion, but it's a cheap shot to say that Mr. Moglen was the one who
should have done so. It's perfectly reasonable to stand up for your own
arguments without forcing them on another person. It was a particularly cheap
shot because you did not offer anything in line with your argument except the
washing machine argument which I found very weak for the reasons I mentioned
earlier.

~~~
nl
_You could have just said "I agree with Mr. Moglen on points X-Z, but I would
like to weigh them against the benefits of social networks" - and then do
that. That would clearly mark that you are opening your own line of reasoning
instead of trying to forcibly claim them on the OP. Then, we could have that
discussion together._

There are an infinite number of ways I could have responded, but I
deliberately chose to use an analogy, and to express my anger about how Moglen
presented a 100% negative view. I understand why you say that he didn't need
to express anything positive about social networking, and I disagree. To me,
one should always attempt to give an honest view on any subject. Moglen's 100%
negative views are either wrong or dishonest. That make me angry.

Show me where I misrepresented Moglen's views in anyway. That's the definition
of a strawman, and I object most strongly to your claim that I used one. Nor
do I troll, take cheap shots or resort to personal attacks.

~~~
skore
Eben Moglen was asked "What's so bad about Social Networks?". Then he talked
about what he thinks is bad about social networks.

You say: "His argument isn't valid because he isn't talking about what is
_good_ about social networks".

Instead of addressing what he did talk about, you chose to talk about
something he did not. And that's the definition of a straw man:

 _to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with
a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition_

"What is bad about social networks?" != "Can you provide a balanced picture of
social networks?"

The fact that you have not given a single word to actually discussing his
statements (Oh, because you agree? Hmm...), except defending your initial
argument (based on the olde and extremely valuable "because!"), actually not
even responding to my critique of that argument, shows that you are not
interested in the discussion, you are only interested in being right. You've
made a mistake in your understanding of the article and made a bad argument
against it that I and others clearly saw for what it is. Get over it.

Actually, I don't know why I bother anymore. If what I (and a couple other
commenters) have said before doesn't convince you, I reckon nothing will.

------
md224
I'm kind of amazed at some of the completely unsympathetic responses on here
and on the original article. There are two distinct issues I see here: 1)
whether or not Moglen's tone/attitude was appropriate, and 2) if his arguments
were valid. Personally I think he was a bit harsh on her and could have at
least expressed his feelings in a more diplomatic manner. She's a journalist
calling about a story, not someone on trial. The moralist scolding seemed a
bit much.

I also think his premise is a bit extreme... Social Media can be used
recklessly, but so can many things. Suddenly people are saying that if your
friends are on Facebook then you should get new friends... I must admit this
sentiment sounds extremely reactionary and way over the top. We seem to be
operating under the assumption that all information shared about another human
being is potentially dangerous... Really? I'm pretty sure that most of what
gets shared on Facebook is fairly innocuous, if not utterly mundane.

~~~
Splines
_most of what gets shared on Facebook is fairly innocuous, if not utterly
mundane._

It usually is, until it isn't. By then, it's too late.

~~~
md224
Do you have any examples to back up this statement, other than people getting
fired from their jobs for foolishly posting incriminating information online?
It seems to me that most of the alarmist reactions to social media are based
on completely theoretical "slippery slope" arguments that assume we're heading
straight for an Orwellian future. That may be true, but so far I haven't had
any of my friends scooped up by the secret police for Facebook-related
thought-crimes.

------
jwallaceparker
>> Me: I think that’s totally relevant and will definitely put it in. (N.B.:
In the end, I did not put this in the story for several reasons, not the least
of it was the fact that it was late and over word limit.)

So what ARE the reasons?!?!

I'd like to hear why Adrianne Jeffries didn't include any of Moglen's points
in the final article.

Does Adrianne Jeffries really think Moglen's ideas are "totally relevant"? The
tone of her article suggests otherwise. She introduces him as a "militant"
professor, and the title of her post appears to mock the entire situation.

The telephone exchange is certainly entertaining, but Moglen's points are
relevant and I'm disappointed the author didn't include her reasons for
omitting them from her article.

~~~
yobfountain
The author is referring to another article in her N.B. It's linked in the
first paragraph: [http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/13/as-banks-start-nosing-
aro...](http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/13/as-banks-start-nosing-around-
facebook-and-twitter-the-wrong-friends-might-just-sink-your-credit/)

------
rdssassin
When privacy advocates are as honest as Moglen, they recognize that the
biggest problem facing them is not governments or Facebook but those damn,
stupid _people_ who keep letting their privacy be invaded. Sure, people will
say they want privacy, when you ask them using that loaded word, but time and
again when faced with the choice between revealing information and getting
some small thing of value, they reveal the information. But underneath the
Moglen viewpoint is a huge disconnect: If privacy is about individuals
exercising power over one's own information, and the vast majority of people
consistently decline to exercise that power, then what the hell are privacy
advocates advocating for?

------
Tichy
I have to side with Moglen here. First the journalist decides to call somebody
he describes as "a _militant_ privacy advocate" (emphasis mine). Then he says
things like "It just doesn’t seem like the consequences are that bad."

What did he ever expect? I think Moglen is right in his expectations that any
article resulting from that will be bullshit. And really: "N.B.: In the end, I
did not put this in the story for several reasons, not the least of it was the
fact that it was late and over word limit". Really, the word limit is his
excuse? Sorry, but I think the journalist is the jerk here.

------
anon1385
Changing Threats To Privacy From Tia To Google (Blackhat 2010) by Moxie
Marlinspike <http://www.securitytube.net/video/1084>

_How many people here would be excited about a law that required everyone to
carry a government mandated tracking device with them at all times? Probably
very few people right, no-one's really excited about that. How many people
here have a cell phone? Right, probably everybody in this room has a mobile
phone. And so what is the difference really? A mobile phone is a tracking
device that reports its position over an insecure protocol to a few
telecommunications companies that are required by law to reveal that
information to eavesdroppers and governments worldwide. So what's the
difference? Choice. This is the difference. You choose to carry a cell phone,
whereas you would be forced to carry a tracking device._

 _Well I have a mobile phone. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would
have a mobile phone, why would I want one: it's a mobile tracking device, it
communicates over an insecure protocol, it's potentially a mobile bug. And yet
I have one. So did I choose to have a mobile phone? Maybe._

 _I think if you look at the way that people tend to organise in groups and
communities, there are often informal communications networks that bind them
together, that allow them to communicate, make plans, coordinate activities.
If you introduce something like the GSM cellular network to this group, and if
I start using it, I am subject to something that is very well known called the
No Network Effect. If I am the only one with a cell phone it's really not
worth very much. The value of the network is in the number of people that are
connected to it and that if I'm the only one I can't really communicate with
anyone._

 _However if I somehow manage to get everyone to start using my communications
network it becomes very effective and very valuable. But there is an
interesting side effect, which is that the old informal mechanisms people use
to communicate and to collaborate disappear, that they are destroyed by the
introduction of technology. The technology actually changes the social fabric
of how people communicate and coordinate. Mobile phones, there are many
obvious examples. People used to make plans, they would say: "I'll meet you on
this street corner at this time on this day and, you know, we'll do something"
and now people say "I'll call you when I'm getting off work" or "I'll text
you" and if you don't have a mobile phone you can't really participate in this
type of organisation and you begin to find yourself kind of alone. Because if
I now make a choice not to be a part of this cellular network, there is sort
of an interesting thing where once again I am subject to the no network
effect. The network that used to exist, the informal communications channels,
has been destroyed._

 _So yes, I made a choice to have a mobile phone, but what kind of choice did
I make? I think this is sort of an interesting phenomenon. What happens is a
choice is introduced; it starts as a very simple choice: the choice of whether
or not to have a mobile phone, a simple piece of technology. But slowly things
happen to expand the scope of that choice until eventually it's so big as to
encompass not just whether you have a mobile phone or not but whether you want
to be a part of society. In some ways the choice to have a mobile phone today
has become not necessarily just whether you have a piece of consumer
electronics in your pocket but whether or not you are even a part of society,
and that's a much bigger choice. Maybe not one that we should have to make, or
at least maybe one that isn't really a choice at all._

~~~
bh42222
_So yes, I made a choice to have a mobile phone, but what kind of choice did I
make? I think this is sort of an interesting phenomenon. What happens is a
choice is introduced; it starts as a very simple choice: the choice of whether
or not to have a mobile phone, a simple piece of technology. But slowly things
happen to expand the scope of that choice until eventually it's so big as to
encompass not just whether you have a mobile phone or not but whether you want
to be a part of society._

That is it right there.

The only answer is the same technology without the bad side of it.

Mobile phones that do not track you, that governments can not track.

A Facebook alternative like Diaspora, except much better and as popular as
Facebook.

We are not going to quit mobile phones and social media, but we have to strip
their bad side from them. That may involve non-profit mobile phone
manufactures, open source social media, who knows exactly what. But I know
that _technologically_ it _is_ possible, now we have implement it and use it.

~~~
freshhawk
> Mobile phones that do not track you,

> that governments can not track.

The pragmatist in me wants to call that a pipe dream. Phones that work on the
cell system that don't track you are an oxymoron. It would require a ground up
reimplementation of phones. The best case I can see is burner sim cards for
smartphones with all the data encrypted and some non-skype popular voip
platform. Even if someone built all this you'd still be tracked while you used
the phone.

You could start talking about mesh networks or public free wifi to improve
some of those problems but any technically realistic solution relies on
government supporting things they inherently dislike and popular support for
"terrorist helping" technology (which the public doesn't care about until a
local power group starts using surveillance to kill/torture a _lot_ of them)

------
nkoren
Moglen is of course correct about the problems of privacy and corporate
ownership of social networks -- but then goes on to take an absolutist
position which is both strategically indefensible and ethically bankrupt.

First, a key concept: there is no such thing as absolute freedom. Freedom can
exist at many different levels, some of which are mutually exclusive;
sometimes abrogations of lower-order freedoms are required to create higher-
order freedoms. The archetypal example of this is the law which arbitrarily
restricts you from driving on one side of the road. This is a small loss of
freedom, but when applied universally, it creates the far greater freedom to
drive for long distances without substantial risk of a head-on collision.

Now, with social networks and the like, freedoms are created and freedoms are
taken away. The problem which Moglen identifies -- and is absolutely correct
to call out -- is that there is absolutely _no legitimate reason_ to abrogate
the freedoms that are being abrogated. Where he goes wrong is in denying the
reality of the freedoms that are being created: namely the most powerful one-
to-many communications platforms in history. The citizens of Tunisia, Egypt,
and Libya are categorically _not_ less free because they used Facebook to
organise their revolutions. Whatever freedoms they lose on account of
Facebook, pale in significance to the freedoms Facebook has allowed them to
create.

Whether this calculation holds true in other societies is a perfectly
legitimate subject for debate; where Moglen goes wrong is in denying that it's
a debatable subject whatsoever.

I had the same problem with Richard Stallman, when I recently attended one of
his boilerplate talks. While I greatly respect what he has accomplished and
agree with the majority of his opinions, he had absolutely no concept that
there could possibly be greater freedoms outside of his narrow domain. It was
all too easy to picture him castigating, say, Syrian activists for
distributing videos of atrocities using non-free codecs, captured by camera
phones with non-free firmware. Stallman's position would seem to be that if
you can't document an atrocity with fully free software and hardware, then you
shouldn't document it at all. This is where he -- and Moglen -- take a swan
dive from the moral high ground into the swamp of ethical bankruptcy in which
all true zealots swim.

The bottom line is that there are greater freedoms and lessor freedoms. The
world has collectively decided that the freedoms created by one-to-many
communications networks are greater than the freedoms that are (unnecessarily)
being lost in the process. Sometimes this decision is clearly correct
(Tunisia, Egypt, etc.); other times it probably isn't. What's certain is that
asking people to forego what they (often correctly) perceive as the greater
freedom, in order to fix an unnecessary abrogation of the lesser freedom, is
not an ethically defensible position to take.

Please don't get me wrong: unlike road-direction restrictions, there's no
reason why social networks _need_ to be compromising our freedoms the way that
they are. I'd much rather see social networks created by open-standard
distributed protocols rather than centralised corporate systems, just as I'd
much rather see mobile phones with fully free firmware that encode video with
free codecs. I think it's absolutely worth trying to create all of those
things. But simply ignoring the genuine freedoms that are created _despite_
the faults of these platforms is not ethically legitimate.

Ethics aside, it's also bad strategy, and just won't work. If you're obligated
to give up your car before writing about global warming, or obligated to
become a vegan before writing about animal cruelty, or obligated to take
monastic vows before writing about conflict in domestic relationships -- then
you'll probably never write about any of these issues. And that won't help
anybody, will it?

~~~
jwallaceparker
>> Ethics aside, it's also bad strategy, and just won't work. If you're
obligated to give up your car before writing about global warming, or
obligated to become a vegan before writing about animal cruelty, or obligated
to take monastic vows before writing about conflict in domestic relationships
-- then you'll probably never write about any of these issues. And that won't
help anybody, will it?

I find Moglen's absolutist point of view on this issue refreshing.

You're not obligated to give up your car or go vegan to write about certain
issues, but you're a hypocrite if you don't acknowledge your own contribution
to a problem.

Two examples:

Al Gore did a great job spreading the word about global warming, but he still
has a larger carbon footprint than most Americans (it's well-documented).

Jonathan Safran Foer became vegan when he researched and wrote his book
"Eating Animals" about animal cruelty.

We need more people like Foer, do we not?

~~~
mfringel
I find that point to be orthogonal.

That's like saying that everyone at Occupy Wall Street had forswear all
material goods in order to be considered "valid" protesters.

Discarding someone's argument due to a lack of complete purity is just plain
facile.

~~~
jwallaceparker
>> That's like saying that everyone at Occupy Wall Street had forswear all
material goods in order to be considered "valid" protesters.

No, it isn't.

Occupy Wall Street isn't about giving up all material goods. A better analogy
is a OWS protester who is a manager at one of the banks that got bailed out.

>> Discarding someone's argument due to a lack of complete purity is just
plain facile.

I never said the arguments should be discarded. I acknowledged that Al Gore
did a good job spreading the word about global warming.

I'm just saying it's refreshing when someone actually stands behind their
argument by making a personal change or sacrifice.

------
billybob
Best quote: "The problem is caused by people who would like a little help
spying on their friends. And in a genteel way, that’s what the social media
offers. They get to surveil other people. In return for a little bit of the
product, they assist the growth of these immense commercial spying
operations."

This has become the crux of my objection to social networks: they exist to
gather data on you. Whatever benefit you get from it, their purpose of
existence is data mining.

As the Pinboard Blog puts it, that's ANTI-social.

"We're used to talking about how disturbing this in the context of privacy,
but it's worth pointing out how weirdly unsocial it is, too. How are you
supposed to feel at home when you know a place is full of one-way mirrors?"

<http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/>

~~~
bproper
Too bad we can't exchange that for a system where social networks let you own
the data and charge a monthly subscription fee.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Diaspora lets you own the data, and it's free. If you wanted to run your own
node on a dedicated server rented at a hosting company, you could do that too.

------
gojomo
Even if you don't buy his whole argument – and especially that the journalist
has a partisan duty to abstain from, rather than research, these systems –
it's awesome that Moglen is making this point, and this ecological/privacy-
littering analogy.

------
pgroves
_Facebook now acknowledges what we said for a long time and they didnt
acknowledge, that every single photograph uploaded to Facebook is put through
facial recognition software they call PhotoDNA which is used to find people
for whom any law enforcement agency in the world is looking._

How true is this?

~~~
pbburrell
I don't think it's very true at all. From what I've read, PhotoDNA is used to
detect child pornography by comparing a photograph's "hash" against a database
of hashes for known pornographic images. There's no facial recognition
involved.

More here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2564235>

------
masterponomo
Mr. Moglen: Thanks for the warm up. I'm having lunch with Stallman in un poco
minutos. Bye!

Reporter: Like, bye?

------
bravura
_Dr. Moglen: Well you called me, you know what the problem is. People lost
their homes. People lose their money. People lose their freedom. (??? -ed.)_

Could someone elaborate upon these? I am not aware of these incidents. (In
particular, the first two.)

~~~
joezydeco
There have to be hundreds of social media-related incidents that came up in
the middle east during the Arab Spring uprisings. This one came up first on a
search:

"Man gets three years in prison for insulting Islam on Facebook"

[http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/10/arab-spring-in-egypt-
man-g...](http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/10/arab-spring-in-egypt-man-gets-
three-years-in-prison-for-insulting-islam-on-facebook.html)

~~~
jonhendry
And the same result would likely have occurred had he said the same thing on a
street corner, or in a pamphlet he handed out at a bus station.

The problem here isn't Facebook, it's the government that he lives under. But
Facebook did give him a much larger audience than he might otherwise have had.

------
moocow01
Somewhat unrelated but I've always wondered how many passwords you could crack
by making a word dictionary attack out of a user's status updates and
comments. The assumption being that most users have a narrow vocabulary and
would naturally pull from it to choose their passwords.

None the less it seems like every time you publish on the net with an
association to your identity in any form you do willingly degrade some aspect
of your own privacy. Truthfully just from analyzing a couple sentences you
probably have a pretty good shot at guessing all kinds of things about the
person.

------
corin_
Isn't this a little bit like saying "You can't claim to be against governments
spying on their own citizens if you ever go outside. By going outside they can
trace where you are, and who you visit."

I don't want to live in a world where I have to not do things to avoid privacy
invasion, I want to live in one which doesn't allow privacy invasion.

Obviously it's not a simple issue, you can't just sign up to twitter and tick
the "no privacy invasion please" checkbox, but if we're going to aim for
something, how about we reach for the stars not the dogshit.

~~~
skore
No. Going outside is an act that happens on common grounds. Using facebook
happens on commercial grounds. You can choose not to use facebook and
eliminate the problem right there. You cannot choose not to use roads.

You are right to say that we need better rules to regulate the second, or to
go with Moglen - the people should know better than to even ask for such rules
instead of staying away from the problem. But that doesn't mean that the same
logic must suddenly apply to civil society, no matter how paranoid (and, at
times, rightfully paranoid) you may be about the tracking that happens there.

------
spinchange
It's interesting to me that the impetus for this post is seemingly motivated
by the reporter's reaction to Mr. Moglen's tone over the substance of what he
said.

I know it's "just" betabeat, a blog, etc, but imagine if Leslie Stahl or even
Katie Couric made the emphasis of a story how they were "legit yelled at" by
an expert source who gave some thought provoking ideas on a silver platter
that could have been developed into much more.

------
y4m4
Moglen's argument fits in an idealist world, but having governing laws for
Social engineering sites will help in regulating centralized power of
corporations. This can be handled outside software too. But somewhat
aggressive political behavior of Moglen worries me.

------
16s
How comparable are sites like HN to FaceBook and Twitter? I'm genuinely
curious what others, here, think about that. I don't use the mainstream social
sites, but I do use and like HN. Would professor Moglen think HN users were
part of the problem too?

~~~
spacemanaki
Well there are no ads being served on HN, so while it's possible that pg and
YC are collecting tons of interesting data on people from analyzing their
comments and votes, I think it's easier to imagine that they are not, since
there's no clear motive.

------
jonhendry
Eh. If it's not Facebook, it'll be some dork from Anonymous releasing a bunch
of data, including yours, that they hacked from ThinkGeek, because they're
offended by the plush bonsai kitten.

------
Confusion
Did anyone else have the experience of reading this, starting out thinking
"Moglen has gone over the edge" and ending in a defeatist "it's actually as
bad as he says and there's no stopping it"?

------
ColdAsIce
Awesome.

I just cant describe how awesome Moglen is.

A "journalist" wants a story, a complete article, so she doesnt have to think
- get this she says " I was hoping you might be ableto help __me think __about
this particular" - she wants him to think for her! She could as well have told
him to please write the article for her in full, but she will take the credit
and money. Then he still serves her an idea and a very fruitful thesis which
she could write several articles about if she would pull her finger out of her
ass for once.

------
aptwebapps
As an exchange, that was awesome and hilarious. The substance, however, is
neither.

