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The Fantasy of Opting Out

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

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Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#91

Post by jefftk »

Their proposals for obfuscation are a mix of real solutions and things that are easy to work around in an automated way:

* Tor: real workaround, though it does have some vulnerabilities (ex: correlation of ingress and egress)

* Browser plugins that block trackers: real

* Browser plugins that click on ads: super easy to filter out, since you're a massive outlier

* Browser plugins that choose random FB reacts: even easier to filter out since FB has a strong system of identity

* Clothes that fool facial recognition: they can update the software faster and cheaper than everyone can update their clothes

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#92

Post by Nasrudith »

ddiq wrote: post #49
hirako2000 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

Chase Bank shuts down prominent conservatives https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/chase-bank-conservati... AirBnB seeks out and blocks people going to the American Renaissance conference https://gizmodo.com/airbnb-doesnt-want-extremists-on-its-pla... Credit cards cancel payments to "hate" groups https://nypost.com/2017/08/16/credit-cards-are-clamping-down... These are all political censorship against people or gro…

"American Renaissance" - actual fucking nazis. If first we came for the nazis the poem would have but one line.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#93

Post by golemotron »

pdkl95 wrote: post #12

> Obfuscation may be our best digital weapon. 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…

People who attempt to obfuscate probably go to a special list when obfuscation is detected. You get scrutiny by attempting to avoid scrutiny.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#94

Post by motohagiography »

It raises the interesting question: how do other employees of platform companies protect their own privacy to prevent being put on a list after a political conflict of some sort? When you work in security, this kind of thing is always a distant blip on the radar, but it's there.

I know when I did work for a platform company, I didn't trust the internal controls or quality of people enough to keep their app on my devices. I was also sure there were people with access to user data who could not be depended upon to be noble.

These aren't faceless government agencies monitoring you, when it's someone doing a favour or using it to support some cause, it's people you know.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#95

Post by Nasrudith »

RobPfeifer wrote: post #3

I actually sort of thought this was the common POV for anyone within tech. Controlling google searches for your name, putting fake content on social media, etc. are obviously only way to create enough noise to direct algorithms to outcomes you’d prefer no?

It is a viewpoint of the SEOers. Others prefer not to bother with that arms race of bullshit and never "opted in" to the dancing monkey trap in the first place.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#96

Post by antocv »

imgabe wrote: post #56
antocv wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is it that you want to do that these technologies are preventing you from doing Organizing tea parties without being surveilled and oppressed? Inviting friends to a meeting, without tech giants knowing about it, and taking actions against said meeting.

Which actions are tech giants taking against people organizing meetings? Does Google have a goon squad that is busting people's doors down and breaking up meetings? It seems like something like that would be in the news somewhere.

> Which actions are tech giants taking against people organizing meetings?

Feeding the data straight to NSA, which then feeds FBI, which then crashes the party with pepper spray and dogs. Sometimes the Feds can send under-cover agents to join the party, then stirr dissent and division.

See Occupy Wallstreet.

Another example is, tech giants forbid/censor messages (try sending a torrent link with wikileaks data in it to your friends), making your party so small you think no-body is actually interested. But the message is just silently dropped. Spooky eh.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#97

Post by squiggleblaz »

tomxor wrote: post #86
pdkl95 wrote: post #12

> Obfuscation may be our best digital weapon. 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…

> your definition of a state of privacy will be my definition: the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself. This is true of the world we live in today, which comprises of almost completely centralised services. But in the future, I believe the second option will be: building and using local FOSS replacements for those services. Many of those local replacements will need no communication at all - So many things th…

What is the local FOSS replacement for Facebook and Instagram? It is not inherent in the notion of communicating publicly and privately using photos, videos and short text messages than I disclose some ungodly amount of private data. I have feel like writing some protocol and a few clients and servers, but I expect that there's already twenty four competing protocols that no-one uses because, if you're not the biggest, you're noone.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#98

Post by excalibur »

pdkl95 wrote: post #12

> Obfuscation may be our best digital weapon. 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…

> 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.

Make the data public. All of it. Don't allow them any secrets. Knowledge is power, power to the people.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#99

Post by yeahforsureman »

SysINT wrote: post #88

The use of the word Privacy is misleading the conversation. We should be setting the goal to make it illegal to collect. It should be illegal for commercial entities to collect information that can be considered personally identifiable information without explicit consent. Additionally, that should not be allowed within a commercial terms of service agreement, and if automated must also provide means to remove with t…

Consent is a poor tool for such a wide category of data. If you're looking for actual informed consent, we are talking about something either practically impossible or at least a massive strain on people's time and decision-making capabilities over things they often couldn't care less about.

See e.g. F.J. Zuiderveen Borgesius, Security & Privacy, ‘Informed Consent. We Can Do Better to Defend Privacy’, IEEE (Volume 13, Issue 2, p. 103-107).

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#100

Post by wruza »

Obfuscating your personal profile is like obfuscating an entrance to your house so that thieves to have hard time to find it. If that is a concern, a society should consider a strict law and legal trouble for them, not hiding tactics.

Opting out is a thing created by fraudsters, and why is it tolerated is mysterious. The way EU implemented it, allowing sites to drag a user through a burden of un-checking a dozen of checkboxes, is also ineffective en masse. It is still easier to just use complete ad-blocking (passive measures) and clicking “okay” to get rid of a popup.

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