Not OK, Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Not OK, Google

#341

Post by ht85 » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 5:37 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #303

ht85 wrote: post #100

I feel like an old fool fighting against its time, but to me all those new applicances are scary not because of privacy (have my data, I couldn't care less), but because of how they shape our world. Most of the coolest memories I have were the product of something spontaneous, or mistakes, that become close to impossible with a computer and internet in your pocket 24/7. Assessing what's around you, talking to strange…

If the twilight zone taught me anything, it's that humanity will always have a rebel. If you make life so safe and easy that free will is no longer necessary someone will demand free will.

We might get to the point where society is so safe and easy that insurance company start selling "Risks and Uncertainty" packages.

Re: Not OK, Google

#342

Post by CaptSpify » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 5:38 PM UTC

eternalban wrote: post #121

darklajid wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Star Trek even a currency? It always feels like a socialist/communist thing to me. You cannot compare the world's biggest seller of advertisement space with the ST universe. The motivation's aren't aligned: Google/Alphabet want to make sales based on my information. I agree that I found these oh so clever AI fantasies interesting in my youth, still do to a degree. But I always pictured the data being held inacces…

Star Trek's world seems to be a 'utopia' of scientific-military governance. Most of the key players have a military rank, wear color coded uniforms, and appear to be under 24/7 surveillance (which is OK since this is a very nice and progressive scientific-military goverment and you know War On and all that. :)

Was the society under constant surveillance? or just the part of society the show highlighted?

Re: Not OK, Google

#343

Post by eli_gottlieb » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

bhauer wrote: post #278

pimlottc wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody was thinking about "the cloud" back in those days. Back then, your data, you programs all lived and ran on your own computer in your home. Most people didn't go online, and if you did, it was mostly to read and download data to use locally on your own computer. Connections were intermittent and slow. The idea that your own data would be stored online was almost unimaginable; even using network-depending applic…

I feel your message is the most important in this thread because it's the crux of the whole concern about privacy and the cloud. Where technology has failed us most is in the utterly stagnant evolution and maturation of secure private networks. The following is a utopian notion, but had private networks seen as much R&D as the public clouds, they would be significantly less cumbersome than today's clunky VPNs. Imagin…

>Where technology has failed us most is in the utterly stagnant evolution and maturation of secure private networks.

Not just secure private networks, but secure and programmable personal computing in general. The amount that I can actually do with my workstation PCs, let alone laptops or mobile phones, is now thoroughly restricted compared to problems that require a full-scale datacenter.

I originally enjoyed computing because, so to speak, it was an opportunity to own and craft my own tools, rather than being forced into the role of consuming someone else's pre-prepared product. Now we're being boxed into the consumer role in computing, too.

Re: Not OK, Google

#344

Post by problems » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

0xmohit wrote: post #264

_wp3r wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find Google settings in one of these places (depending on your device): In your Settings app Settings, scroll down and tap Google. Open a separate app called Google Settings Google Settings. Tap Location and then Location History. At the bottom of the screen, tap Delete Location History. Also https://maps.google.com/locationhistory allows for delete all history.

What makes you think that deleting location history actually deletes the history? Reminds one of the group of students called Europe v. Facebook [0]: Schrems described the file obtained through a legal request as a 500MB PDF including data the user thought they had deleted. The one sent through a regular Facebook request was a 150MB HTML file and included video (the PDF did not) but did not have the deleted data. [0]…

Definitely, and this is why it needs to be a global option to disable location history - just sending it to them in the first place is the problem!

Re: Not OK, Google

#345

Post by r00fus » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 5:41 PM UTC

programmer_man wrote: post #143

wj wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you visit a place of business you are potentially under surveillance. I'm sure there is a distinction but I'm failing to come up with it right now. I was somewhat radical about privacy in the late 90s (only person I knew that read every EULA) and am still a supporter of the EFF but I don't really understand the issue here.

The distinction is that when you visit a place of business, the data is under the control of the business owner. When you visit you friend's house, the data is not under their control, it is under Google's control. Therefore, Google has a WAY bigger responsibility than most people realize, once they decided to collect this data.

Do you normally use your friends' wifi? I do that when it's family, but generally not with my friends (don't do LAN parties anymore).

With LTE, I don't need wifi.

Re: Not OK, Google

#346

Post by kllrnohj » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 5:43 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #285

Does anyone else find the tone of this article off-putting? I mean, I agree with the author, but the presentation feels like fear-mongering. Maybe this is what we need to get people to pay attention to the details, but I instinctively mistrust things I perceive as trying to appeal to by fear at a base level, and this triggers that fairly heavily. I have very conflicted feelings about this article.

It reads very heavy on the tinfoil-hattery. Particularly with things like Google Home's mute button. The single advertised feature of the device is that it's always listening and the author is somehow shocked or confused by the fact that you have to push a button to have it not listen? So much so that they thought it was worth cramming in some stupid sounding snide remark about "true intentions"? That tone immediately undermines the entire rest of the piece.

Re: Not OK, Google

#347

Post by mellis » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 5:43 PM UTC

One thing that I think is lost in a lot of the comments here is that, to a large extent, privacy is experienced, not factual. That is, in many cases, the breach of privacy is the act of mentioning something that should be private, not whether or not the system (or the person) knows that thing. This is something we tend to intuitively understand in our human relationships, but one that somehow seems to be forgotten in the design of these systems (or, at least, the conversations about them). We need good ways to tell the Google Assistant that something is private (or for it to figure it out for itself) -- even if it still possesses the underlying data.

(There are, of course, situations in which the actual existence or not of specific data is what matters, but I think those are less relevant to the success of something like Google Assistant than the perception of privacy -- and that perception is important, regardless of the underlying data.)

Re: Not OK, Google

#348

Post by whonut » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #310

aqzman wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it Google's responsibility to? I would say no. If algorithms detect that an individual is going to a bar every Monday and Thursday night, and then starts providing information about said bar on Monday and Thursday nights I don't see the problem. But I think it would be a problem if every Monday and Thursday night Google Now started providing information about AA meetings in the area, instead of bar information. It…

If you're trying to change your lifestyle, it's more difficult when you have a bad friend constantly enabling the behavior you're trying to cease. Google may not have a responsibility to be a good friend, but personally I'd prefer not to have a bad friend always following me around, thus I'm a little less excited about this feature.

You can just tell it to stop. It's not hard.

Re: Not OK, Google

#349

Post by jsmthrowaway » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 5:45 PM UTC

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #136

ubercore wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and to illustrate your point, I have an email very similar to someone else's. I very frequently get their emails (invoices, church events, travel itineraries, purchase receipts). Google thinks they're _my_ trips, and updates me about flight times. I think this example serves both our points. To your point, it's totally leaked this other person's info into my "google world" because I'm on gmail. On the other han…

I have a fairly uncommon name and predominately use Gmail. Still, I receive a surprising amount of other people's mail in error. Apparently lots of people guess at email addys. I do often wonder at both the lack of privacy this engenders and what the Goog machine must make of it all.

I know someone who has his (common) first name @gmail.com as he was an early employee on Gmail, and he regularly gets grandparents guessing their grandson's name as the correct e-mail address. He told me this happens several times a day.

Re: Not OK, Google

#350

Post by tekromancr » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

Eupolemos wrote: post #60

ubercore wrote: post #11

Google Now has done the same for me, told me how long it will take to get to a bar I frequent. My reaction was quite exactly "Oh that's neat, thanks!" and I went and had a great burger that night. Totally OK for me Google. I respect that people have different privacy thresholds, but I think the fact that it's different for everyone is being lost in articles like this.

I fear you will be unable to recognize when that burger was your choice and when it was a reaction. You probably won't notice. And that is harmless. I also fear you will be unable to notice in which areas of life and information the distinction between choice and reaction is harmless and which it isn't. Of course, I'm not talking about "You" you, but just people. Me as well. I feel we are widening the field of uncons…

That's the thing though. I reject the notion that you ever actually make a choice. I would posit that 100% of the actions you take are simply the deterministic reactions when the current world state is filtered through your brain. Then, after the fact, your brain gets busy inventing a reason that you took a particular action and calls it a "choice" when really you were just going to do what you were going to do anyway.

"I ordered this burger because I was hungry and it tastes good" vs "I ordered this burger because Google was able to successfully predict that I would be receptive to having burgers, or the idea of burgers, placed in my environment"