When it comes to internet privacy, be afraid, analyst suggests

The difficult part isn't getting people to understand that Internet privacy is important or at risk; nearly every person that I know (tech-savvy or not) understands that companies like Google and Facebook are in the business of collecting their data, and don't want them to. However, companies like these have human habit on their side: most people use these services daily, and will continue doing so unless it's easier or more convenient to do otherwise. That means that in order to reverse the trend of users continuously using these services, an alternative must be created that's better in every way, and default on all platforms that people use.

In the case of Facebook, it's a chicken-and-egg problem: many people that I know will not use another social media platform because nobody else that they know uses it, but nobody else that they know uses it because they don't use it.

> Snowden’s revelations made people aware of what was happening, but little changed as a result.

Things got worse and that's expected. After all these things were made public, if there was no mass outrage the perpetrators learned a valuable lesson - they can increase their activities without much fear. Pretty sure at this point NSA doesn't even have to play games with masking / unmasking filtering US citizens, they might as well stop jumping through hoops and just record and search everything they like.

I'm already extremely pessimistic about these things.

Computers were a mistake and represent the greatest threat to freedom in human history. The ability of those in power to mass produce perfectly obedient machines that can perform complex tasks without rest allow for a nightmare society. Additionally machine learning asymmetrically benefits those with the resources to fully leverage large amounts of data collection and compute power AKA not you or me.

Any state in history would have loved to have been able to watch its citizens at all times and know what they're doing and likely thinking. It just wasn't feasible until now. The big last line we haven't but will inevitably crossed will be the automation of force.

At least suicide is always an option.

I once asked Bruce Schneier at a conference to scare me.

He told me to consider the associations between data. Bits and pieces that Google knows about me, that Facebook knows about me, that Amazon knows about me...think of all of those little meaningless bits of data being associated all together to build a picture perfect model of my life, and then sold to advertisers, who know enough about your life to attempt to manipulate it at every step. And if advertisers can pull up every saleable bit of data about me with enough accuracy to sell me products that I actually want, then anyone with enough money and desire can get that same data, use the same associations, and understand more about me than most of my closest friends, all before taking one step away from the computer.

I'm still afraid.