For a privacy-centric approach that is also compatible with GDPR and business needs, there's the MyData conference in the end of August: https://mydata2018.org/
A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe
21–30 of 128 posts
Re: A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe
#22I wish we could find a way to apply the model of the vending machine to mass commerce. A vending machine doesn't make notes of who buys its products. A vending machine doesn't keep logs of its transactions or of the payment methods used. A vending machine does not make "recommendations" of what the consumer might like based on their past purchases. You give the vending machine a dollar, it gives you a soda. The trans…
Problem is that vending machines don’t scale. Consider that much of the “tracking” on a site like Amazon.com are to overcome the inherent problems of finding products in such a massive catalog.
Re: A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe
#23I wish we could find a way to apply the model of the vending machine to mass commerce. A vending machine doesn't make notes of who buys its products. A vending machine doesn't keep logs of its transactions or of the payment methods used. A vending machine does not make "recommendations" of what the consumer might like based on their past purchases. You give the vending machine a dollar, it gives you a soda. The trans…
You can prove that you purchased something by having a receipt. It can be as simple as a unique purchase number. If you pay by some cryptocurrency, you can even prove you own the sending address.
Re: A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe
#24I wish we could find a way to apply the model of the vending machine to mass commerce. A vending machine doesn't make notes of who buys its products. A vending machine doesn't keep logs of its transactions or of the payment methods used. A vending machine does not make "recommendations" of what the consumer might like based on their past purchases. You give the vending machine a dollar, it gives you a soda. The trans…
Problem is that vending machines don’t scale. Consider that much of the “tracking” on a site like Amazon.com are to overcome the inherent problems of finding products in such a massive catalog.
To add to this, what if the vending machine was able to dispense 1000 things? And let's say that you are diabetic? Wouldn't it be nice if the sugar-free treats were easy for you to find? And the organic stuff easier for those seeking them to find? Etc. etc.
Somewhere there must be an intelligent balance.
Re: A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe
#25I wish we could find a way to apply the model of the vending machine to mass commerce. A vending machine doesn't make notes of who buys its products. A vending machine doesn't keep logs of its transactions or of the payment methods used. A vending machine does not make "recommendations" of what the consumer might like based on their past purchases. You give the vending machine a dollar, it gives you a soda. The trans…
>A vending machine doesn't make notes of who buys its products. A vending machine doesn't keep logs of its transactions or of the payment methods used.
Well technically the vending machine itself doesn't note this, but I've increasingly seen vending machines which accept credit cards. Thus your CC issuer knows where you were, when you were there, and can even make some inferences about what was bought based on the price.
Personally, I keep an "entertainment" budget which I withdraw in cash, both for privacy reasons AND budget reasons. (Staring down into your wallet at cold hard cash makes you hesitate before buying that cup of coffee or other sundry)
Re: A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe
#26I love RMS but I'm not holding my breath waiting for any government laws to protect me.
For what it's worth, neither is RMS, if you've read about how he uses the Internet.
Let's keep building the free software tools so anyone can easily get the level of privacy they want for whatever they're trying to do. We've made so much progress but there's still so far to go.
Do not to look UP to authority for hope - look AROUND at your fellow citizens working hard to bring free privacy software to everyone - that's who's going to fix this, because no one else will.
Re: A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe
#27The article raises good points. One important aspect is missing though; the reliance on web services, SaaS, and the like. Free software is not enough. We need free software that runs locally and offline.
Maybe the way to go with this is to have an auditing system where third-party auditors go through the source code (with NDAs) and certify it meets $PrivacyStandards. This might be a way to appease the folks who want to keep their software proprietary and yet make sure they don't just get to do what they want. Kind of like financial audits.
Re: A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe
#28I think creating a legal regime where corporations are financially responsible for damages created by misuse or leaking of personal data would discourage companies from collecting the data in the first place.
By all rights, the equifax databreach should have ended the company. Instead, they're likely to profit from it.
Re: A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Problem is that vending machines don’t scale. Consider that much of the “tracking” on a site like Amazon.com are to overcome the inherent problems of finding products in such a massive catalog.
To add to this, what if the vending machine was able to dispense 1000 things? And let's say that you are diabetic? Wouldn't it be nice if the sugar-free treats were easy for you to find? And the organic stuff easier for those seeking them to find? Etc. etc. Somewhere there must be an intelligent balance.
> Somewhere there must be an intelligent balance
In practice though this is mostly biased towards the revenue of the company selling the goods, not towards your health requirements.
Re: A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe
#30This seems like such a losing battle. Payments on public transit could become anonymous, but the video feeds would still be recorded, and facial recognition could be easily performed.
The cat is out of the bag. Information technology makes this data accumulation inevitable. Likely even for those who walk around with a face covering all day, pay only cash, and don't use smartphones. By doing those things you actually make yourself more noticeable, in a lot of ways, and are still trackable.
There are some cryptoanarchist ways to achieve practical privacy, to all but the most dedicated governments. Yet, those technologies have severe downsides for both individuals and society at large.
There's no obvious way out of this conundrum. The concept of the Participatory Panopticon is one proposed solution, and is less top-down, but not necessarily any less capricious than centralized authority.
The best safeguards are to create strong institutions, informed citizens, stable economies, and all the usual boring social reform stuff that tech geeks hate and think is mushy, unchangeable, hard to study, and likely irrelevant.