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China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

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Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#201

Post by DanielBMarkham »

delegate wrote: post #185

> Now every picture posted, every comment made, every driving infraction could go into a central database to produce a person's 'trustworthiness' score. How is this China-only ? Can't Facebook do the same ? Can't the government force Facebook, Microsoft, etc to give out all the information that we generate in their networks ? Can't they compute such a "trustworthiness" score and sell it to your (potential) employer ?…

Agreed. There's a technical word for the kind of world we technical folks are helping to build. It's called a "dystopia"

And while it's fun to either wave our arms around and say "But everybody's doing it!" or talking about wild dreams of a better tomorrow, the crap we've created is right here, right now. As a technical person, if you're looking for somebody to blame, there's the mirror.

When I was in the armed forces and you needed something desperately that you did not have, somebody would always say "Well, you'd better grow one"

We technical folks do not have the moral underpinning we need to help there be a brighter tomorrow. We're lacking the social and political theory and the historical grounding to understand what kinds of things might help and what kinds of things might hurt. Instead we just imagine how what we're making might help mankind along. News flash: imagining isn't cutting it any more.

We may not have the tools we need to responsibly create the tech we're creating, but we'd better grow some.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#202

Post by FabHK »

masklinn wrote: post #174
kriro wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Android 6.0+ you can deny the READ_PHONE_STATE permission and stop using apps that won't work if you do. A quick search seems to indicate that there is an Alibaba app for iOS. Do you think Apple negotiated that the IMEI isn't required for the iOS version? Personally I don't trust Android (or the hardware companies that sell Android devices) or iOS but picked an Android 6+ device because in principle I'd rather hav…

> Do you think Apple negotiated that the IMEI isn't required for the iOS version? Didn't need to negotiate anything, on iOS the IMEI has never been programmatically accessible[0], and other "global identifiers" (UDID, MAC) either weren't ever accessible or were removed afterwards. You can get an "advertising identifier" which should only be used to hand to ad networks (your application can get banned if you use it ot…

And, BTW, in iOS you can reset the advertising identifier in Settings -> Privacy -> Advertising.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#204

Post by vertex-four »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #201
delegate wrote: post #185

> Now every picture posted, every comment made, every driving infraction could go into a central database to produce a person's 'trustworthiness' score. How is this China-only ? Can't Facebook do the same ? Can't the government force Facebook, Microsoft, etc to give out all the information that we generate in their networks ? Can't they compute such a "trustworthiness" score and sell it to your (potential) employer ?…

Agreed. There's a technical word for the kind of world we technical folks are helping to build. It's called a "dystopia" And while it's fun to either wave our arms around and say "But everybody's doing it!" or talking about wild dreams of a better tomorrow, the crap we've created is right here, right now. As a technical person, if you're looking for somebody to blame, there's the mirror. When I was in the armed force…

An "apolitical" approach to tech is very much supporting the worst of what people would like to do with said tech, as well as the best. I think people should think a lot more about the bad side of what the tech they're creating enables, and decide whether they're actually comfortable with that, and whether there's a way to achieve their goals which enables less harm.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#205

Post by BoorishBears »

masklinn wrote: post #172
robinson-wall wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think iOS is to blame for the binary choice that you get with Uber / Waze. I have some apps which have three choices in the location services settings (Always, While using the app, Never) so it seems like a choice by the developer.

Well Apple could have made the list unmodifiable so that application can't "opt out" of the "while using the app" setting.

That wouldn't achieve much, apps already tend to give rationale for those settings, the apps could just say "If you dont choose Always, we're done here" (they already do that for "Never") and people would just be conditioned to accept Always

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#206

Post by the8472 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #201
delegate wrote: post #185

> Now every picture posted, every comment made, every driving infraction could go into a central database to produce a person's 'trustworthiness' score. How is this China-only ? Can't Facebook do the same ? Can't the government force Facebook, Microsoft, etc to give out all the information that we generate in their networks ? Can't they compute such a "trustworthiness" score and sell it to your (potential) employer ?…

Agreed. There's a technical word for the kind of world we technical folks are helping to build. It's called a "dystopia" And while it's fun to either wave our arms around and say "But everybody's doing it!" or talking about wild dreams of a better tomorrow, the crap we've created is right here, right now. As a technical person, if you're looking for somebody to blame, there's the mirror. When I was in the armed force…

> There's a technical word for the kind of world we technical folks are helping to build. It's called a "dystopia"

Consider e-cash. People would love to implement it, but banking regulation makes it difficult to actually do business through anonymous transactions.

Similarly many privacy-conscious ISP operators want to throw away logs as soon as possible, but regulation forces them to retain data.

Sure, the likes of facebook and google do thrive on gobbling up more data. But others who want to improve privacy are actually actively hampered by politics.

This creates an asymmetric landscape.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#207

Post by zimpenfish »

masklinn wrote: post #187
zimpenfish wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then every app would just go for "Always" in case they ever wanted to change it in the future and we'd all lose.

Er… what? The application can't "change it in the future" in the first place.

Uber went from allowing "While using the app" + "Always" to only "Always".

I was perhaps misunderstanding the parent as suggesting that once an app has allowed "While using the app" as a choice, that could never be removed - ie Uber would still have to allow "While using the app" as a choice.

If that was the case, apps might avoid offering the "While using" choice in the first place if they might ever consider the need to remove it, no?

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#208

Post by zimpenfish »

e_proxus wrote: post #182
zimpenfish wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then every app would just go for "Always" in case they ever wanted to change it in the future and we'd all lose.

You misunderstand. The list is for the user to choose, not the app developers. As it is now, Apple allows app developers to disable the middle choice for users, instead of forcing them to support it if the user so chooses.

Ah, you mean apps should always have to support the options of "Never", "While using", and "Always" rather than the app specifying which it supports? Sure, makes sense, and I would be on-board with that.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#209

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

simonh wrote: post #176
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #81

Oracle maintains a database of personal information for billions of people. The US corporate surveillance web is rich in complexity. Before we judge China, lets make sure we know what we're comparing them to. I highly encourage anyone interested in the subject to watch this talk from last month's Chaos Computer Club Congress. "Corporate surveillance, digital tracking, big data & privacy: How thousands of companies ar…

The concerns about US/Western surveillance is that it could lead to routine direct abuses and active intrusions into daily life. It's important that we use the political and legal protections we have to limit the risks this raises. In China they have routine direct abuses and intrusion into daily life right now and are expanding it as fast as they can. There are no legal protections and the risks are already happenin…

I'm not sure what sort of legal protections you think Americans have, as it would seem that any 3-letter agency can get an order to force private companies to hand over any data they have about any number of individuals based on the rubber stamp of a secret court which forces the company to stay silent about the activity. I'm absolutely certain that the NSA has precisely the same granularity of data on US citizens as described in this article. The US government is just smarter about hiding that fact, lest there be a second revolution. Another decade or so, and it will be so prevalent everywhere else that they'll start operating in the open, just like the Chinese.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#210

Post by kuschku »

FabHK wrote: post #199
kuschku wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a few levels of protection that you might want from a chat system. #1 Protection from a dumb attacker doing MitM: This is done by anything that uses HTTPS. #2 Protection from an attacker that can get fake SSL certs: This is done by anything using certificate pinning. #3 Protection from an attacker that controls the app store: This can’t be easily done by Signal – and they don’t do it. #4 Protection from an at…

With Signal, you can verify fingerprints. So, what you're saying is: #4 if some agency "takes over" the Signal servers, they can extract metadata. But only that? #3 if the binary is not what its supposed to be, then, yes, all bets are off. That's a whole other can of worms, but a) is there any evidence that's ever happened? and b) that much affects any smartphone chat app, so does not help you to decide between Signa…

> #4 if some agency "takes over" the Signal servers, they can extract metadata. But only that?

With Signals model, as long as everyone verifies fingerprints, yes.

But, considering XMPP is a thing, XMPP with OMEMO provides all the same guarantees – and you can make it less likely that an agency has taken over the relevant servers (because you can self-host easier).

Signal’s use case is "something as secure as OTR, but easier to use".

I’m not saying you should use something else than Signal, but I’m saying that Signal isn’t ideal if your adversary is a government.

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