You can't solve a collective action problem just with free will, though.
You can choose not to use those services and still have your privacy invaded, through other people posting things about you, cameras in public spaces, phone tracking, etc.
You can choose to live like a recluse to avoid this (no phones, stay out of public places, don't let friends take your picture, etc), but saying that is a reasonable choice is ridiculous.
This is like people who say "well, if you don't like how the credit bureau's operate, just don't use credit! Sure, you can do that... but you won't be able to ever buy a house, get many jobs, fly on an airplane, etc. More and more restaurants and stores are even going 'cashless'. It might technically still be a choice, but it is not a reasonable one you can expect people to make.
I'm all for protecting oneself in the framework of anarcho-capitalism, as it the default state of nature. But most people agree it is the government's place to prevent aggression between members of society. And pervasive surveillance is aggression.
Suggestions of individual actions are worthwhile, and it behooves everyone to take all of the personal steps they can to protect themselves. But the existence of individual actions culminating in a hypothetical path to opting out does not justify harm being done when people fail to live up to them.
So generically, who should I be more worried about having my information and having more power? Google to advertise to me better or the government who can take my stuff based on a vague suspicion via civil forfeiture and has the power to send me to jail?
More personally, as a Black guy living in the mostly White burbs in the south - ie looking suspicious for living my life - who should I worry more about big tech (that indirectly provides for my livelihood) or the “justice system”?
> who should I be more worried about having my information and having more power
Wu. Constructing a "lesser evil" choice is simply a way of justifying evil.
> Google to advertise to me better
It's not mere "advertising". Google's surveillance trove will be exploited for economic gain in unenumerable ways. Sort individuals into classes, market a message of safety, and discriminate to keep the undesirables away - it's the age old playbook. The results of this paradigm will eventually be sold directly to the de jure government, as Experian et al currently do, making the distinction moot.
> big tech (that indirectly provides for my livelihood)
So you've chosen to align yourself with a more-distant oppressive power, hoping that doing so will buy you power to defend against a closer oppressor. Sure that may be prudent, but it is not morally right nor is it sustainable. And backfitting from "what is" to "what should be" is never a good idea.
Less abstractly, yes the US government is corrupt and generally pushes garbage like this EARN act. But that isn't an intrinsic argument against anti-totalitarian regulation akin to the GDPR. Rather the lack of the action on the latter is better seen as further evidence of said corruption.
Constructing a "lesser evil" choice is simply a way of justifying evil.
On the scale of “lesser evil” the government being able to arrest, harass, violate civil liberties and lock someone up is off the charts compared to what big tech can do.
Sure that may be prudent, but it is not morally right nor is it sustainable. And backfitting from "what is" to "what should be" is never a good idea.
So I should be more worried about what you consider is “morally right” instead of putting myself in a position where I can afford a competent lawyer - instead of an overworked public defender - to keep me or my family from being railroaded by the criminal justice system?
But that isn't an intrinsic argument against anti-totalitarian regulation akin to the GDPR. Rather the lack of the action on the latter is better seen as further evidence of said corruption.
You realize that you want to give the government more power that in my parents lifetime (who are still alive) has said that interracial marriage should be illegal, segregation should be legal and even as recently as the 80s has had laws making it crime punishable by jail time for adults of the same gender to have sex?
As far as big tech vs the government, big tech has never discriminated against me when trying to get a job. I feel the same way about tech vs the government that Muhammad Ali felt about going to the Vietnam War. I’ll leave it for the readers to search for what he said.
Your comment comes from a perspective of having been abused. While I respect your struggle, stressed analysis is not good when trying to foresee where the next source of abuse will come from.
The commercial surveillance industry is not currently engaging in abuse on the scale the government has previously committed, but the government is not presently doing so either! Yet we are rightly concerned with setups that make such things possible - for example I presume you don't just chuckle at white supremacy protestors for being on the wrong side of history, but view them as a threat that could gain momentum any time.
The commercial surveillance industry is currently poised with a more invasive scope into everyone's personal life than a government could ever have, operates autocratically, and actively resists the desires of its targets to opt out (eg Do Not Track). That last bit puts them deeper into the domain of wielding governmental power than a straightforward monopoly. Trusting the people controlling these companies to be benevolent is a setup for failure.
> You realize that you want to give the government more power
I don't see something like the GDPR as giving the government more power, but rather just shifting it around. Government and corporate power are merging regardless (hence this thread), and it's better to have the result under democratic control than fully autocratic. The real solution is of course for people to shift to using software that they control (and hence can actually represent them), but unfortunately that seems a long ways off, or at least unevenly distributed.
You realize that the government is trying to get the right to have backdoors to allow for surveillance.
As far as what the government is presently doing. The “war on drugs” is presently more focused on minorities while drugs are treated as a “disease” in rural America.
Presently, my son had four or five keys on his key ring that looked alike and he fumbled through them trying to get in our house. I made him a different color key so the overzealous neighbors who look at him strangely wouldn’t harass him (or call the police) for breaking into his own house.
So yeah, I have a good reason to be worried about the government wanting more power to surveil people and to have a back door for encryption.
Yes, I do realize. I do not think this is a good thing. I think the government is currently doing plenty of terrible things. It has done bad things to me personally. The magnitude of those bad things would have been from three times to infinitely worse if I were Black.
You keep repeating these assertions as if we're not on the same page. We are on the same page here.
Where we diverge is that you're taking this indictment, and extrapolating it to an indictment of all government regulation.
I'm actually predisposed to this point of view as well, with regulatory capture and all, but the fact of the matter is that the synergy of government and corporate power is going to happen regardless of which rights we attempt to obtain for us individuals. And so we might as well try to reserve an ability to opt out of commercial surveillance as part of their bargain.
Commercial surveillance eventually feeds right into that same government which has abused you and your family, while being much more agile than blunt government programs. As far as I'm aware, there is no law which requires Experian, Lexisnexis, etc to pass their surveillance data to all levels of government, including the local cops that you're rightly worried about. They do so because it is profitable, and because power generally coalesces.
You can logout of Facebook
You can not use Google and use an ad ad blocker.
You can buy online from some place besides Amazon
You can not buy a mobile phone running an operating system written by an ad company.
What you can’t easily do is change your government.