11–20 of 205 posts
You are wrong, privacy mean stopping the flow of the data completely. No one should spy on your life.
From Dan Geer's talk "Cybersecurity as Realpolitik" (which everyone should hear[1]/read[2]):
>> There are so many technologies now that power observation and identification of the individual at a distance. They may not yet be in your pocket or on your dashboard or embedded in all your smoke detectors, but that is only a matter of time. Your digital exhaust is unique hence it identifies. Pooling everyone's digital exhaust also characterizes how you differ from normal. Privacy used to be proportional to that which it is impossible to observe or that which can be observed but not identified. No more -- what is today observable and identifiable kills both privacy as impossible-to-observe and privacy as impossible-to-identify, so what might be an alternative? If you are an optimist or an apparatchik, then your answer will tend toward rules of data procedure administered by a government you trust or control. If you are a pessimist or a hacker/maker, then your answer will tend towards the operational, and your definition of a state of privacy will be my definition: the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself.
>> Misrepresentation is using disinformation to frustrate data fusion on the part of whomever it is that is watching you. Some of it can be low-tech, such as misrepresentation by paying your therapist in cash under an assumed name. Misrepresentation means arming yourself not at Walmart but in living rooms. Misrepresentation means swapping affinity cards at random with like-minded folks. Misrepresentation means keeping an inventory of misconfigured webservers to proxy through. Misrepresentation means putting a motor-generator between you and the Smart Grid. Misrepresentation means using Tor for no reason at all. Misrepresentation means hiding in plain sight when there is nowhere else to hide. Misrepresentation means having not one digital identity that you cherish, burnish, and protect, but having as many as you can. Your fused identity is not a question unless you work to make it be.
It's the year 2027. You get a notification from the H8Watch™ by the ADL app, default installed on every phone, and can't be deleted without jailbreaking. You open the notification, and it shows a video of you from 2 weeks ago, from a camera embedded in the table of the fast food restaurant from where you were eating lunch with your friend. Your voice has been reconstructed through lipreading software and played back…
It's remarkable how someone living in 2019 still finds grounds to complain about stiffing political correctness.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's remarkable how someone living in 2019 still finds grounds to complain about stiffing political correctness.
If you think this story is limited to, or even about, political correctness, you are mistaken. It could be your insurance rates going up for jaywalking, even with no cars around. It could be your credit score dropping if you have too many drinks at a bar. It's about your personal activities all being tracked, measured, and in the end, controlled by corporations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's remarkable how someone living in 2019 still finds grounds to complain about stiffing political correctness.
If you think this story is limited to, or even about, political correctness, you are mistaken. It could be your insurance rates going up for jaywalking, even with no cars around. It could be your credit score dropping if you have too many drinks at a bar. It's about your personal activities all being tracked, measured, and in the end, controlled by corporations.
> The social credit system is used to punish citizens for bad behavior with numerous blacklists preventing them from traveling, getting loans or jobs, or staying in hotels, and even by limiting internet access.
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-b...
Maybe people find it hard to believe these will be implemented in western countries?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you think this story is limited to, or even about, political correctness, you are mistaken. It could be your insurance rates going up for jaywalking, even with no cars around. It could be your credit score dropping if you have too many drinks at a bar. It's about your personal activities all being tracked, measured, and in the end, controlled by corporations.
Maybe you should have used one of those examples instead.
I guess technologists don't want to see the future they're creating, and would rather just come up with tactics that barely defend against the surveillance we have now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you think this story is limited to, or even about, political correctness, you are mistaken. It could be your insurance rates going up for jaywalking, even with no cars around. It could be your credit score dropping if you have too many drinks at a bar. It's about your personal activities all being tracked, measured, and in the end, controlled by corporations.
I don't know why you are downvoted. Think the dangers are real with social credit systems on the rise. Much has been written on them, e.g. > The social credit system is used to punish citizens for bad behavior with numerous blacklists preventing them from traveling, getting loans or jobs, or staying in hotels, and even by limiting internet access. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-b... Maybe…
The author: Privacy does not mean stopping the flow of data; it means channeling it wisely and justly to serve societal ends and values and the individuals who are its subjects, particularly the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. You are wrong, privacy mean stopping the flow of the data completely. No one should spy on your life.
The author: Privacy does not mean stopping the flow of data; it means channeling it wisely and justly to serve societal ends and values and the individuals who are its subjects, particularly the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. You are wrong, privacy mean stopping the flow of the data completely. No one should spy on your life.
Absolute statements are always wrong. ;)
The problem with this way of thinking is that it's very hard to define what 'spying' is, and what 'your life' is. This is best illustrated with an example - when you read this comment you'll have loaded a page on HN. That means HN's server probably has a log of your IP address, browser agent string, etc. There's a complete history of every article you've ever read, upvoted, commented on there for you (and the public at large for some things) to see;
Your profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Altheasy
Your comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Altheasy
Your favourited articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=Altheasy
Taking the first page of your comments and that favourite I can reasonably assume that you're a developer, you don't like testing much, you have a cat, you have a judgemental attitude about how other people spend money, you have a smart phone, etc. Not great insights but you're pretty new here. If I trawled through the comments of someone who has 20,000 comments I could learn a lot.
So... is HN spying on you? Am I spying on you when I read those pages? I don't think so. You put that data out there in the open. The same is technically true for most data that people say is spying - eg Google Analytics isn't spying on you when it tracks everything you do on 50% of the websites you visit. You're giving that data away. That's fine. It's useful. It makes the internet better.
The flow of data in itself is OK. It only really becomes spying when the data is misused. That's what people want to control.
The author: Privacy does not mean stopping the flow of data; it means channeling it wisely and justly to serve societal ends and values and the individuals who are its subjects, particularly the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. You are wrong, privacy mean stopping the flow of the data completely. No one should spy on your life.