A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing • Hacker News Board

Re: A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing

#11

Post by Super_Jambo » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

reitanqild wrote: post #8

valarauca1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you can't leverage customer data to sell to advertisers. The problem is, you are the product for most internet companies. Think of a Cow in a barn. The food/water/shelter is free, because you are what's to be sold.

This meme got old faster than I expected. I am the only one that is aware of symbiosis?

Well it doesn't seem inaccurate to suggest that livestock has a symbiotic relationship with humans. Yes we do slaughter them for food but think of the benefits during the cows life!

Re: A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing

#12

Post by zeveb » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 2:44 PM UTC

I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that an American court has the power to demand that an American citizen produce an item or information under his control, even if it happens to be in another country (e.g., a man getting divorced can't drive his car and all his gold and jewelry into Canada to shield them from his ex-wife). I imagine that most other countries would behave similarly: being within their borders and subject to their jurisdiction, they can compel someone to do something.

If that's indeed the case, then it seems that an American corporation—a legal person with a presence in the United States—may be compelled by a court to produce items or data it controls outside of our borders.

The thing we need to do is to limit the power of the subpoena generally.

Re: A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing

#13

Post by pdkl95 » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #7

kgilpin wrote: post #4

If companies stored customer data encrypted by keys that are held by the customer, they wouldn't have this problem. Furthermore, they wouldn't have to worry about deleting customer data either. The customer would have the power to simply deny access to the keys.

The larger issue is that you now have to push key management to the user, and the support problems that go with that. Key management is hard and painful. Telling a customer that they can't access their data on your service because they broke their laptop is going to make them very unhappy. Otherwise, there'd be plenty of services competing with Drive, DropBox, etc, that did just that.

> push key management to the user

There is no other way. Unfortunately, there has been a serious lack of r&d in this area, so we have a lot of catching up to do. I believe it can be made to work, though, because this is not entirely a new idea for most people: they already understand physical keys and the problems associated with losing them.

Moving to digital (public-)keys isn't a perfect match, but it is entirely possible to leverage the skills and experience that people already have. For example, contrary to the advice used a decade ago, Schneier recommends[1] that people write down their passwords (avoiding the memorization problem). This can provide good enough security most of the time, because people already understand how to provide security for their wallet.

Incidentally, I always liked the basic idea of the Java Ring[2]. It was basically a fancy (for the time) smart card, but the idea of storing the chip in a ring is an attempt to make security management personal, which is an idea that had potential.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_yo...

[2] http://www.javaworld.com/article/2076641/learn-java/an-intro...

edit: forgot a link

Re: A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing

#14

Post by reitanqild » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 2:47 PM UTC

Super_Jambo wrote: post #11

reitanqild wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This meme got old faster than I expected. I am the only one that is aware of symbiosis?

Well it doesn't seem inaccurate to suggest that livestock has a symbiotic relationship with humans. Yes we do slaughter them for food but think of the benefits during the cows life!

I give you points for that.

Still arguing that life in Googles and lately Microsofts barn is quite comfortable and a whole lot a safer than outside because those companies has a huge interest on securing their users

Re: A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing

#15

Post by Dirlewanger » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 2:48 PM UTC

amgine wrote: post #3

It's great this article about Microsoft fighting for our privacy came put in the midst of the upset over Windows 10 phoning home.

It's kind of a red herring to connect these two. The case here involves the government seizing data from a foreign data center. Were Microsoft to lose, this says to foreign customers that any time the US government wants some information stored overseas, they will get it. Obviously not good for business.

Here in the states, Microsoft is going to collect everything it can about its customers and store it (and from there I imagine it eventually goes on in some form to the NSA).

Re: A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing

#16

Post by valarauca1 » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

reitanqild wrote: post #8

valarauca1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you can't leverage customer data to sell to advertisers. The problem is, you are the product for most internet companies. Think of a Cow in a barn. The food/water/shelter is free, because you are what's to be sold.

This meme got old faster than I expected. I am the only one that is aware of symbiosis?

>symbiosis

It exists in 3 forms.

1) Both benefit (I.E.: mutualistic)

2) Only 1 benefits while the other has no clue of its usage (I.E.: commensalism). Vultures and Lions more or less, or hermit crabs and shell fish which are dead.

3) One actively benefits while the other is consumed by the active particpant (I.E.: Paracitism).

:.:.:

Your argument is that webscale logging is mutualistic. To an extent I'll agree. But this isn't the case. Google is mutualistic when using say GWallet, Docs, Mail, search etc.

But Like/Plus buttons, as well as cookie sniffing isn't mutualistic. Its commensalism. I have no say if another organism uses what I leave behind, it doesn't directly effect me, but it benefits another organism.

Re: A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing

#17

Post by Karunamon » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

valarauca1 wrote: post #6

kgilpin wrote: post #4

If companies stored customer data encrypted by keys that are held by the customer, they wouldn't have this problem. Furthermore, they wouldn't have to worry about deleting customer data either. The customer would have the power to simply deny access to the keys.

But then you can't leverage customer data to sell to advertisers. The problem is, you are the product for most internet companies. Think of a Cow in a barn. The food/water/shelter is free, because you are what's to be sold.

If by "you", you mean aggregated data about you in lieu of cash payment.

Google/Facebook/etc are not selling your data, they are not selling you, they are selling access to you via advertisers, more specifically, they are selling access to people who like certain things and who live in certain areas who have certain demographic profiles.

If you're curious about this, go sign up for an Adwords account and see how the targeting works - what you see there is the limit of what any advertiser using Google sees about its users. Facebook is much the same.

Get it right. Any ad-backed company of note does not "sell your data" and characterizing it as such is so divorced from reality as to be a blatant, willful lie.

Re: A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing

#18

Post by sangnoir » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 2:53 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #12

I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that an American court has the power to demand that an American citizen produce an item or information under his control, even if it happens to be in another country (e.g., a man getting divorced can't drive his car and all his gold and jewelry into Canada to shield them from his ex-wife). I imagine that most other countries would behave similarly: being within their borders and…

It gets more interesting where the American companies own subsidiaries incorporated in other countries. Can a US court compel Apple's Irish subsidiary (for instance) to release data?

Re: A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing

#19

Post by EGreg » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

reitanqild wrote: post #14

Super_Jambo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it doesn't seem inaccurate to suggest that livestock has a symbiotic relationship with humans. Yes we do slaughter them for food but think of the benefits during the cows life!

I give you points for that. Still arguing that life in Googles and lately Microsofts barn is quite comfortable and a whole lot a safer than outside because those companies has a huge interest on securing their users

Security is one of the hardest things to decentralize. Would you rather trust Google or a rinkydink website with your data? They may not have even installed the latest patches of their open source software!

Bitcoin decentralized money.

Until now, social has not been decentralized effectively.

Security is even harder, perhaps! Because it requires authentication but also a clear definition of guarantees, including availability! Perhaps your data could be stored on your computer and other replicas can be stored encrypted in the network, like freenet, but encrypted only by you. And your key would be a hash of your passphrase like "all horses are fine". If that guy's bitcoin key had been a result of a hashed passphrase, he wouldn't have lost $3 million in the garbage!

Re: A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing

#20

Post by bertomartin » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 3:01 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #10

kgilpin wrote: post #4

If companies stored customer data encrypted by keys that are held by the customer, they wouldn't have this problem. Furthermore, they wouldn't have to worry about deleting customer data either. The customer would have the power to simply deny access to the keys.

Tarsnap (a service that acts like your description) is quite nice, but the problem of "customer lost the keys" is a very real one. I love the idea, but someone really needs to come up with some decent key management (and offline backup and key migration) to make this consumer friendly.

Then, we need a good service to store keys, with a key to get to your key