The Fantasy of Opting Out • Hacker News Board

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#111

Post by candu » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

hos234 wrote: post #101

stereolambda wrote: post #79

This is one of the better articles on the subject, not written in inside-tech-bubble terms. I think they also describe something we may call "obfuscation of power": formally you can opt out, in practice you cannot, and people who have power over you are lost in a soup of legal entities. So first, you are alienated to face surveillance alone as an individual, taking all blame for losing your freedom because you "chose…

But framing things differently has been done, yet we have smoking, drinking, gambling, mcd and coke. To me it fells like certain people (a percentage of any population) are just wired to exploit human weakness. Sometimes they are unconsciously doing it and when made conscious don't know how to exit that path. And society needs to make it simpler for exits to happen. Those that are consciously doing it...well we are j…

...which is the value of robust systems designed to limit the impact these people can have.

This is precisely why mechanisms like separation of powers and whistleblower protections matter. This is also why social conventions around honesty, reciprocity, fairness, etc. matter.

When these mechanisms and conventions operate smoothly, you get a sort of "security in depth" against abuse and exploitation. People acting in bad faith find their worst impulses thwarted, both by societal / legal systems and by average citizens who are empowered to help hold them to account.

When they don't, you get dangerous patterns of corruption and indifference; these weaken trust in the system, making it harder to fix over time.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#112

Post by manthedudeguy » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #21

goatinaboat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2019 the hand symbol for OK has been retconned as hate speech. There is no sign yet of this trend reversing.

There are people still sore about swastikas and roman salute "retconned" too. But well maybe don't use them for supremacist signaling in the first place, that sure could help.

I pray you actually can perceive the nuance between the swastika and the OK sign.

For the record, I've never used the OK sign for supremacist signalling.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#113

Post by nabnob » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #8

ddiq wrote: post #7

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.

A man in the UK was investigated by the police for retweeting a limerick about transwomen - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated...

>After Mr Miller questioned why the complainant was being described as a “victim” if no crime had been committed, the officer told him: “We need to check your thinking”.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#114

Post by excalibur » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #108

excalibur wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That would also spawn outrage mobs. "This boy said right here in his Call of Duty chat that he was going to go to school with his dad's rifle and shoot people!!!" The only thing you would do is put entirely unprofessional future mobs in place of the slightly unprofessional police we use currently. I would hope people could see the very real chance that your idea would make things worse.

> The only thing you would do is put entirely unprofessional future mobs in place of the slightly unprofessional police we use currently. I would hope people could see the very real chance that your idea would make things worse.

Worse than the status quo, yes. But you seem to be under the assumption that we will be able to maintain a police force at "slightly unprofessional" moving forward, when governments have the tools and incentive to become far more controlling.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#115

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:25 PM UTC

I'm very pessimistic about all this. It seems to me that the horse has already bolted: we are all under constant surveilance and there is not much we can do about it at all. Many of us don't even think it's a problem and even many who do think it is don't want to lose the benefits that are attached to the constant automated surveilance.

As citizens of democratic countries we have uttely failed to protect our rights against private and public intrusions. We have failed to vote against politicians who introduce legislation to legalise pervasive automated surveilance. In the UK, Theresa May, who brought the Snooper Charter into law became Prime Minister instead of being kicked out of her political career in disgrace.* A majority of citizens of Western democracies continue to use social media and online services like Amazon and Netflix etc.

The EU has introduced some legislation of course, but even in the EU state institutions are free to spy on citizens and non-citizens alike. Everytime I take the Eurostar for the continent I'm offered a "fast track" through a set of automated gates that use facial recognition. I keep declining, but my partner who also normally declines was coerced to go through by a border guard. Pseudo-scientific deep-learning lie-detectors are deployed at the borders of my own country, Greece, as well as Hungary and Latvia.

But all this started long ago. When surveilance cameras were first put up on every shop and every street corner in every major EU city, only hippies and weirdoes opposed them. And now we're all watched by them and there's no changing that.

Who is going to stand up against the new threat to our rights? A few dispersed academics that nobody listens to? Anonymous?

___________

* She was, but only later, because of Brexit.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#116

Post by squiggleblaz » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #78

d3nj4l wrote: post #63

This article talks about the cost of opting out, but doesn't go into some of the more insidious ways in which companies have made it harder and harder to do so. I recently opened the Downloads app on my new Mi phone only to find a notice asking me to grant authorization to Xiami to "... collect, process and use [my] personal data" in order to use the app[1]. Why does a basic downloads app need to gather and analyze m…

> Why can't I use a version of the app that doesn't collect that data Because that particular developer hasn’t chosen to offer you that deal. If you don’t like the deal vendor X is offering, don’t use vendor X. Particularly in the case of a phone app, you tend to have a lot of choice. If vendor Y provides you a deal you like better, why not use them? You might find that vendors who offer those terms might bundle them…

That's absolutely daft. You can pick your lord, but they'll all demand unnecessary permissions. The road to serfdom looks like capitalism working according to spec - right up until you can't meaningfully vote.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#117

Post by bilbo0s » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

excalibur wrote: post #114

bilbo0s wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would also spawn outrage mobs. "This boy said right here in his Call of Duty chat that he was going to go to school with his dad's rifle and shoot people!!!" The only thing you would do is put entirely unprofessional future mobs in place of the slightly unprofessional police we use currently. I would hope people could see the very real chance that your idea would make things worse.

> The only thing you would do is put entirely unprofessional future mobs in place of the slightly unprofessional police we use currently. I would hope people could see the very real chance that your idea would make things worse. Worse than the status quo, yes. But you seem to be under the assumption that we will be able to maintain a police force at "slightly unprofessional" moving forward, when governments have the…

Governments can be ultra-controlling with slightly unprofessional police. It happens all the time across the globe. But without exception, wherever those police have been removed, poor though those police may have been, it has resulted in untold misery on the populace.

Giving everyone the power to know exactly what everyone else is saying and doing is tantamount to taking data and removing all its police, and removing all its locks.

It will not end well.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#118

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

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…

Well, obfuscation is great for that sweet frisson of resistance and for laughs (I guffawed when I read about ah's datapools; https://ahprojects.com/datapools/) but if we're resisting by hiding ourselves, then we've already lost.

We should not need to hide ourselves from anyone, because there should not be anyone to spy on us. We should not have to think about how to obfuscate our activity, because there shouldn't be anyone watching our activity without a very, very good reason (and even then, with enough safeguards to discourage all but the most commited of spies).

If we're subverting the authority of democratically elected governments -governments that _we_ have given authority to- then we are in deep, deeep shit. We might as well obfuscate ourselves out of shame of being recognised for the negligent democratic citizens that we are.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#119

Post by SolaceQuantum » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

hos234 wrote: post #101

stereolambda wrote: post #79

This is one of the better articles on the subject, not written in inside-tech-bubble terms. I think they also describe something we may call "obfuscation of power": formally you can opt out, in practice you cannot, and people who have power over you are lost in a soup of legal entities. So first, you are alienated to face surveillance alone as an individual, taking all blame for losing your freedom because you "chose…

But framing things differently has been done, yet we have smoking, drinking, gambling, mcd and coke. To me it fells like certain people (a percentage of any population) are just wired to exploit human weakness. Sometimes they are unconsciously doing it and when made conscious don't know how to exit that path. And society needs to make it simpler for exits to happen. Those that are consciously doing it...well we are j…

"To me it fells like certain people (a percentage of any population) are just wired to exploit human weakness."

A theory is that all humans do it in various nuanced situations whose categorizations are specific to each individual. Sometimes its as simple as getting in physical fights when you know you are stronger, or playing political games at work to get ahead. Sometimes its as nuanced as choosing to run an ad campaign to make people feel bad for being fat so they buy your product. Sometimes its negging, or sussing out if an employee might get pregnant soon, or choosing to make tests for ovarian cysts not covered by health insurance.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#120

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #29

mojuba wrote: post #23

What an irony that I open the page source of this article and see this literally on the second line: var mi_track_user = true Then there are all the usual suspects: Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter and a few others at the bottom. Is this the price I should pay for reading this article for free?

i like the poetry of the third line too: var mi_no_track_reason = ''; We have no reason not-to track people, so let's track everyone

Could be worse:

  var mi_track_reason = '';