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

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

#211

Post by specialist »

nebabyte wrote: post #203
specialist wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you lobbied? Testified? Met with any of your legislators, representatives, councilmembers? Other forms of participation? Voting is the smallest part of democracy.

An idealist to the end, eh? Without money to throw around, those forms of "participation" are - especially at the federal level - about as useful as earning participation trophies. Less, even; since the latter at least get you free paperweights. -- Besides which, arguing for them means you've effectively bought into class based discrimination, as many working poor wouldn't be able to afford anything but an email or l…

Realist.

I encourage you to read the book The Waxman Report, to better understand how policy and legislation are forged. It's a lightweight, layperson intro. TLDR: It takes decades to research, build support, reach consensus. And then big changes apparently happen all at once.

People I know have been working on paid parental leave and domestic care legislation for EIGHTEEN YEARS. Last month, they were happy to report that their legislation was passed and signed.

Prior examples are marijuana legalization, marriage equality, background checks for gun purchases, education and healthcare for immigrant children. Etc.

--

What is privacy? What does it look like?

No one knows. There is no agreement. There is not even consensus on the questions, much less the answers. So imagining a technological solution (implementation) isn't even remotely possible.

This privacy policy stuff is wicked complicated. I've been working on voter privacy and protecting healthcare records since 2004. I'm still learning new things, causing me to revisit my positions.

And only now, some 12 years later, I've finally figured out what to ask for, a proposal on how to fix this mess.

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

#212

Post by dredmorbius »

stephengillie wrote: post #161
nnfy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might take weeks for someone to identify you in real life based on a grainy still image from a camera. And then one would still have to correlate among people, other cameras, and locations to learn anything about you without surveillance. With the internet, because of data aggregation, I can go on piple and find all of that about you and more in 2 minutes. The power with which one may invade privacy over the inter…

So it's bad because it's faster? Or easier to automate?

Scale, speed, and costs all matter.

The Jevons paradox notes that an increased efficiency of some process or system increases the total utilisation. In particular, it makes previously nonviable applications viable.

Postal junk mail, telemarketing calls, email spam, popover/popunder ads, malware, robocalls, fake news, chatbots, and more, are all responses of previously nonviable applications becoming viable.

The underlying limitation seems to be the scope of attention of attackers based on private / personal data, and/or of the systems in which they operate. The role of AI in extending that institutional bandwidth ... strikes me as rather frightening.

There've been previous discussion of similar topics which point to the prospect of, say, automated lawsuit filing, or debt collections (already a problem), or more. The prospect of some trained algo running over deep, rich data, seeking arbitrage opportunities, strikes me as undesireable.

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

#213

Post by anigbrowl »

amelius wrote: post #22
benbenolson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is a good reason to have some sort of technocracy element to the federal government. I lean extremely far right, but in this case, this seems like one of the few things that the federal government should be doing-- breaking up stout monopolies that can't be competed with. I'm unfamiliar with the decision, but why split up a company like Microsoft in 1999, but leave Facebook and Google alone?

We simply need laws against data brokerage. And prohibit ad-based monetization on services with >100M users.

Those will fail on first amendment grounds. I've been saying for years that you won't have privacy without a constitutional amendment/rewrite, but that's looking more and more likely every day.

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

#214

Post by specialist »

nebabyte wrote: post #203
specialist wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you lobbied? Testified? Met with any of your legislators, representatives, councilmembers? Other forms of participation? Voting is the smallest part of democracy.

An idealist to the end, eh? Without money to throw around, those forms of "participation" are - especially at the federal level - about as useful as earning participation trophies. Less, even; since the latter at least get you free paperweights. -- Besides which, arguing for them means you've effectively bought into class based discrimination, as many working poor wouldn't be able to afford anything but an email or l…

"...you've effectively bought into class based discrimination... And if you think..."

PS- That's actually pretty offensive. My friends worked on DREAM Act, expanding our local voting rights for Latinos (and everyone else), protections for sex workers, better conditions for migrant farm workers. I support as able (donations, petitions, warm body for hearings, etc). I see the effort involved AND their results. And, frankly, they're the only groups that are getting the job done these days. So I can't speak to what you think is and isn't possible. But maybe take a look around you, find your local heroes, lend a hand.

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

#216

Post by brainfire »

yellow_postit wrote: post #119
svachalek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally instead of a wall of text preceding the use of a service, or even worse hidden away somewhere under a fine-print footer link, I'd like to see services have to do something like this: "You've just entered some search text. May we store this text and future search queries? [ ] yes, anonymously to help suggest searches for other users [ ] yes, along with your user name to help refine future searches, and to impr…

This would quickly become the incessant prompts about cookie usage that the UK enforces. Like most alerts users quickly become blind to them and click through to get to what they are trying to accomplish.

"This product is known to the State of California to..."

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

#217

Post by tzs »

igravious wrote: post #197
KSteffensen wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elect the parliament by lottery. 4 years of service if you get drafted, replace 25% of seats per year. Would be far more representative of the people than current way and less susceptible to populism. People often think I'm joking when I propose this but I haven't heard a good argument against it yet.

If jury duty is random why not political duty? I think your idea (is it your idea?) deserves a lot of attention. Maybe 2 years of service. 4 is a lot. That combined with Swiss-style direct democracy would go a long way I feel. And universal basic income.

> If jury duty is random why not political duty?

Jurors are asked to do a couple fairly common tasks that most people do frequently throughout their lives: (1) listen to different sides of a story and decide which side to believe, and (2) decide the motives for a person's acts.

A legislator is asked to judge complex policy questions often requiring extensive specialized knowledge. The arguments for and against are often long and complex. It's not a job you can expect to take some random adult off the street for and have them do it competently.

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

#218

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #95
SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think discord has better potential to be the next social media juggernaut, I know most of my social media interaction goes through discord. As our lives move more and more online discord seems to be the digital equivalent of the roman forums and I appreciate the ability to jump into a conversation with my friends in the same way I would IRL. Mostly I appreciate the ability to be parts of different groups, the ease…

I love how, in a thread about the uncertainty of internet privacy, you're here slinging praises to a walled garden service that owns all of your chats. Another walled garden interested in collecting information and slinging adds to pay back VC funds is the last thing the internet needs and the fact that it's so successful is a better indicator than anything else that the consumer doesn't care a lick about privacy.

You can't unopen Pandora's Box, and trying to close it is a bit of a sisphyian task. Might as well enjoy the terrors of the box.

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

#219

Post by Chardok »

dredmorbius wrote: post #209
ethbro wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revelant, see effect of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle on food safety laws, which through popular sentiment forced the US government to create the FDA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle

Though his intent was to create employment reforms. "Iaimed for the public's heart, and ... hit it in the stomach". http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-05-21/features/06052...

That was actually a very nice read! I just finished the book and certainly remember the meat factory scenes the most, but couldn't help but feel Upton would have been disappointed from the message he was trying to ultimately convey.

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

#220

Post by colordrops »

Chardok wrote: post #60

"Opting out doesn’t work. It’s nonsense to tell people not to carry a credit card or not to have an email address. And “buyer beware” is putting too much onus on the individual. People don’t test their food for pathogens or their airlines for safety." This is a brilliant line and it works so well because he is absolutely right: it should not be on the burden of the consumer to make sure their products are safe, be it…

The elephant in the room is that most of the information people get today is filtered through the same entities that are benefiting from all of these privacy invasions. The conflict of interest is real and intense.

That doesn't even touch on the other prong of the problem, being that the ones responsible for legislating privacy rights also benefiting greatly from the lack of it.

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