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The Fantasy of Opting Out

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Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#131

Post by ddiq »

Nasrudith wrote: post #92
ddiq wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's ok to go after the free speech of political dissidents if you slander them with generic insults first?

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#132

Post by ddiq »

hirako2000 wrote: post #64
ddiq wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks, although it's the security checks at the border based on traced political views isn't sourced, I found some. That's the one that bothers me, as there is hardly ant competition possible in the security checks business. Airbnb, banks.. all it takes is some open minded provider to make those political police institution to loose ground. Although its matter a time before open minded providers also get pressured t…

I see what you're saying, but it's just a bit naive. It's not that easy to create a new provider to help political dissidents. A number of web services have been started to do so, and forced to shut down by being cut off by upstream providers. "Just make your own ..." at some point isn't viable, because other companies at every level are making sure you don't succeed.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#133

Post by danShumway »

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…

> the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself.

Agreed. I describe this as The Right to Hide.[0] An important part of hiding is that when people ask you to provide information, you should be able to lie.

We've learned from App Mainfests on Android and on the web that if an app can tell whether or not they were granted a permission, they'll just try to harass the user into giving it. The better solution is to make it so that the app can ask for anything, but can't validate whether or not any of it is true.

I'm encouraged by the work people are putting into protecting privacy by blocking data collection itself, but I think that obfuscation/misinformation is a more promising direction for us to go.

[0]: https://anewdigitalmanifesto.com/#right-to-hide

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#134

Post by a3n »

bananatron wrote: post #44

In Germany recording folks without their consent is illegal (or at least not admissible in courts) in many contexts. It is possible to build incentives that don't lead towards mass surveillance.

That's great, but not much protection if the surveillor has no intention of bringing the information to court.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#135

Post by a3n »

llarsson wrote: post #5

I cannot help but wonder if the use of such tools as the ones listed in the article are not just "privacy theater", in the same sense that we have come to realize that much of what happens in the name of security is just "security theater". Ironically, of course, is that much of what happens in the name of security is exactly what takes away our privacy in the first place. What is needed is for people to tangibly suf…

"The Lives of Others" of a moving film about the people on both sides of the East German microphone.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#136

Post by squiggleblaz »

rauhl wrote: post #43
rapnie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I don't know why you are downvoted. I don’t agree with the downvoters at all, but I think it’s fairly obvious why he’s being downvoted: either folks think he’s wrong that such a thing is possible, or folks think he’s right but don’t care (i.e., they think that the society he describes is desirable, or at worst neutral). I don’t think that his described society is impossible, and indeed we already see a slow, less-r…

It's shocking to me that here, on Hacker News, posts like these get voted down. I could understand them being regarded as unpopular on mainstream media, but HN? Wow.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#137

Post by kazagistar »

excalibur wrote: post #98
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.

Power is power, and secrecy is a multiplier. So make the data of the powerful public. If you are a government, or chose to have a sufficiently high net worth institutionally or individually, then sure, make it all public. We gain most of the same benefits, while not incurring most of the harms. Its the 1% loss in privacy for 99% of the benefit.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#138

Post by kazagistar »

golemotron wrote: post #93
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.

The goal isn't selfish. Its collectively reducing the power of the scrutinizer by taking a small hit overall to protect yourself and others.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#139

Post by kazagistar »

onion2k wrote: post #27
cousin_it wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grandparent's statement is pretty absolute, but I find myself in agreement with it. Data collection is the right place to intervene, because once collected, data can be copied and misused at any time in the future. > 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. Such logging isn't technically necessary to serve web…

It's spying if you didn't consent to it. There's no explicit consent but the fact you've told your computer to download some code and run it looks a lot like implied consent.

That's true of malware too. Consent is different from actions.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#140

Post by munmaek »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #97
tomxor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bigges…

There is no alternative, because facebook isn't just "a protocol and some clients/servers". As long as it's -the- social network to be on, then it will always be just that. You can't compete with social culture just with mere programming.
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