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Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

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Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#61

Post by shostack »

walterbell wrote: post #22
krschultz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say something similar. I've seen many people using them all hours of the day & night. People are watching music videos, charging their phone, getting directions, and surfing the internet. The people using them are often those that don't have the luxury (necessity?) of walking around with a nice smart phone and a big data plan. Do they have ads on them? Of course. So do the bus shelters which are funded…

Google's business model is based on selling user-generated data to advertisers, unlike telcos who sell network data to you . See Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff's video on Surveillance Capitalism, https://vimeo.com/110222526 NYC has the leverage to negotiate better financial terms for capturing the value of city residents data. The money generated from harvesting city resident behavior can then be invested into cit…

Sorry to break it to you, but Verizon certainly sells data. Check out their data membership with AOL (pretty sure it's them ) to help close the cross device tracking gap.

Telcos are very aggressive about monetizing their data.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#62

Post by yk »

I don't know if I should be impressed or scared. Everything google^1 does in the last few years feels like they really know what they are doing, autonomous cars, everything they do about machine learning, now they are integrating that with fiber. It feels like Microsoft, if they would have nailed the browser and activeX in 95.

^1 I will use alphabet and google interchangeably, since I am not trying to do math here. If you are looking for a mathematical theory of world domination, just ask google's famously responsive customer service.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#63

Post by ultramancool »

4ndr3vv wrote: post #56
ultramancool wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about an actual solution? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.p... It's pretty much set-and-forget, randomized per-AP macs and random changes while scanning.

Changing your mac address wont protect you from being identified - browser fingerprints are just as effective https://panopticlick.eff.org/

On phones, not so much. Running it on my phone in Firefox I get 66k browsers with an identical fingerprint. In Chrome, 133k exact matches.

That said, if you're using public wifi you should be using a VPN anyways, so MAC would be identifiable, but nothing else would.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#64

Post by inanutshellus »

throwanem wrote: post #48
smacktoward wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the whole point is that you shouldn't have to do that. The burden shouldn't be on the individual to constantly be finding ways to keep one step ahead of surveillance. The burden should be on those who would surveil them to justify why it's necessary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem

I infer from this you're saying "crap in one hand, wish in the other and see which fills up first"?

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#65

Post by morgante »

hueving wrote: post #55
morgante wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's business model is based on selling user-generated data to advertisers, unlike telcos who sell network data to you. Really? Where? I have worked on some large marketing projects. We'd love to be able to buy user data from Google. This facile argument is really getting old. When you get a free newspaper, does that mean you're getting "sold?"

Google generates most of its revenue from selling targeted ads to advertisers. A targeted ad is selling data about users. Just because you aren't looking directly at the data doesn't mean you are getting information as a result of it.

> A targeted ad is selling data about users.

That's a lazy and incorrect causal link.

Google goes to great lengths not to sell user data. It's far more valuable if they can hold on to it and use it to continue selling advertising.

It's important to understand the difference. This isn't a great metaphor, but imagine a top university. The professors at said university have accumulated many Nobel prizes. The university uses those Nobel prizes to sell classes to students. Does that mean the university is selling Nobel prizes? Obviously not.

Google uses data to target advertising. That doesn't mean Google's business is selling data.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#66

Post by sevensor »

ucaetano wrote: post #9
walterbell wrote: post #5

Alphabet's NYC kiosks also have two cameras which are recording passers-by, https://cryptome.org/2016/06/linknyc-spy-kiosks-installation... A dystopian "smart city" vision can be seen in the "Hyper Reality" video, http://hyper-reality.co that is inspired by Magic Leap's AR, in which Google is an investor.

Or the Syndicate Wars intro sequence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGvIrf86g4Y

Or the Self-Aware Colony Secret Project video from SMAC.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#67

Post by throwanem »

inanutshellus wrote: post #64
throwanem wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem

I infer from this you're saying "crap in one hand, wish in the other and see which fills up first"?

That's an unduly reductive take. A more accurate way to put it would be that, regardless of what should be the case, it's necessary to cope with what is.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#68

Post by ultramancool »

smacktoward wrote: post #40
ultramancool wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about an actual solution? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.p... It's pretty much set-and-forget, randomized per-AP macs and random changes while scanning.

But the whole point is that you shouldn't have to do that. The burden shouldn't be on the individual to constantly be finding ways to keep one step ahead of surveillance. The burden should be on those who would surveil them to justify why it's necessary.

> you shouldn't have to do that

Unfortunately, like with many things, there's no way to prevent them from doing it, so "shouldn't" has no relevance here. If it's profitable or entertaining to exploit that data, people will do so.

Legislate and regulate as you may, I can't depend on it because I can't validate it on my side.

If you have no way to verify something, you must always counteract it to the best of your ability.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#69

Post by kbenson »

aub3bhat wrote: post #51
kbenson wrote: post #39

As he spoke, the screens shifted and a new message appeared: "If You See Something, Say Something. Be Suspicious of Anything Unattended." Okay, that's kind of creepy. [Google] actually went so far last year as to shit-can its own "Don't be evil" admonition to its employees in favor of "Obey the law" No, they didn't[1]. Alphabet has a slightly more formal code of conduct[2], and it's not simply "Obey the law", it's "f…

"If You See Something, Say Something. Be Suspicious of Anything Unattended." How is it creepy? Have you ever visited New York, its announced every 15 minutes or so on subways. This might even be something that city officials explicitly required.

> Have you ever visited New York, its announced every 15 minutes or so on subways.

My point is more that it's creepy in general, not specifically because of these devices (but the relation to 1984's telescreens is obvious), and that if it's prevalent in NYC (which I assumed), then I definitely don't want to live there. To me that feels like living with a sensationalist newscast about past terrorism always playing in the background, and I don't think that's a good state of mind to keep your citizens in for a decade and a half without good, and recent cause.

> How is it creepy?

I think there's a trade-off to be made between security and how you prime your population with fear. Having frequent messages about being suspicious of any random items in the city in general, not a specific high value target such as an airport, falls too far on one side of the spectrum for me. That it's on a large screen capable of recording video and audio, well that doesn't help[1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescreen

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#70

Post by kbenson »

EGreg wrote: post #52
kbenson wrote: post #39

As he spoke, the screens shifted and a new message appeared: "If You See Something, Say Something. Be Suspicious of Anything Unattended." Okay, that's kind of creepy. [Google] actually went so far last year as to shit-can its own "Don't be evil" admonition to its employees in favor of "Obey the law" No, they didn't[1]. Alphabet has a slightly more formal code of conduct[2], and it's not simply "Obey the law", it's "f…

"If you see something, say something" (spanish "Si ves algo, di algo" ) is NYC's campaign in the aftermath of terrorism, and has been going on for over a decade. Its origins are not creepy and at this point most of the city's population is used to it. You can see it especially on any MTA properties such as subways, where they worry unattended luggage may contain a bomb, so they ask people to report such.

> Its origins are not creepy

Well, no, the origins are not creepy. I'm a little troubled that it's apparently still so pervasive though.

> and at this point most of the city's population is used to it.

That part is what's creepy to me. That it's still there 15 years later and people are so blasé regarding its existence. It represents something, and puts people in a specific state of mind.

> You can see it especially on any MTA properties such as subways

That's a more appropriate place for it, as a potential target location. Similar to airports. Kiosks at random street locations? I have a slightly different opinion.

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