I used to be skeptical of the skeptics, thought they were paranoid to worry about 'big tech' snooping and tracking our lives. Turns out it is not big tech but 'big govt' that I should've been worried about. We are in danger of turning into a surveillance state
One thing I’d love to know is whether there is an upside and if so how much. How many kidnapping victims get found or violent plots foiled by this tech vs old school police work? Of course I suspect this info would be hard to get. Authorities would likely cook the books to make these things look more valuable than they really are.
New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking
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Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking
#12I wonder why are we so complacent with these kind of things? Is it really just the fact that we got our bellies full, and live in climate-controlled homes? Or has there been some degeneration of the human body brought upon us with all kinds of new artificial materials we use, that might affect our bodies in ways we can't yet comprehend; or is it a psychological thing based on the results of technological achievements…
"Is it really just the fact that we got our bellies full"
Among sociologists and political theorists, this is known as an "embourgeoisement thesis".
Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking
#13I used to be skeptical of the skeptics, thought they were paranoid to worry about 'big tech' snooping and tracking our lives. Turns out it is not big tech but 'big govt' that I should've been worried about. We are in danger of turning into a surveillance state
I've worked for the Federal Government and for a variety of ad-tech companies. I am still much more terrified of "big tech" (and small tech) than "big government".
When I worked for the government I wanted to scrape some publicly available data from the web. Because the data involved information about people I had to write up a document explaining exactly what I was using the data for, exactly what information I would be collecting and why it was necessary, explain where the data was to be stored, and most importantly specify exactly how long I needed the data and when and how it would be safely removed. This had to be approved by a privacy officer.
I was shocked, because this is data that I, as a private citizen, could easily scrape. I asked why I had to do something so involved for a project I could easily do in my spare time. The answer I got was this: Because the government has extra authority they also have extra responsibility. As government employees we have more power to impact people's lives so it is our responsibility to be very explicit is what we do and why we are doing in.
In ad-tech there are oceans of data that are not publicly available, and in the US virtually zero restriction who looks at that data and what they can do with it. I've watched people move around town via trackers when the use they web, seen where they got coffee and seen which doctor they go to. I used this information to demonstrate to the legal team at previous company to care about user privacy. They were shocked but in the end made no real policy decision. Some of the big players likely have tighter security but only for business/PR reasons. I can assure you that a random data engineer at a mid-sized tech company has far more access to your personal secrets than an FBI agent.
Don't get me wrong, there are agencies in the government that have more surveillance power than they should and it is ripe for abuse. But don't think "it's not big tech", especially since there is a ultimately a thin line between big tech and big govt.
Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking
#14I used to be skeptical of the skeptics, thought they were paranoid to worry about 'big tech' snooping and tracking our lives. Turns out it is not big tech but 'big govt' that I should've been worried about. We are in danger of turning into a surveillance state
We are a surveillance state. We(geeks) all made a fuss over it about 20 years ago and no one seemed to care so here we are. Every so often someone new realizes it, freaks out, and not much changes. I wish I weren't so cynical but at some point I just got tired of losing sleep over it.
Making a fuss just isn’t enough when the majority of people still want the devices that are being used to spy on them.
Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking
#15I used to be skeptical of the skeptics, thought they were paranoid to worry about 'big tech' snooping and tracking our lives. Turns out it is not big tech but 'big govt' that I should've been worried about. We are in danger of turning into a surveillance state
To quote the late Steve Jobs: "Government is the biggest monopoly of them all".
Considering most data collection firms will happily sell to the feds, it's really not that much of a difference in the end.
Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking
#16I used to be skeptical of the skeptics, thought they were paranoid to worry about 'big tech' snooping and tracking our lives. Turns out it is not big tech but 'big govt' that I should've been worried about. We are in danger of turning into a surveillance state
We are a surveillance state. We(geeks) all made a fuss over it about 20 years ago and no one seemed to care so here we are. Every so often someone new realizes it, freaks out, and not much changes. I wish I weren't so cynical but at some point I just got tired of losing sleep over it.
The difference is surveillance states have historically leveraged people rather than passive tracking. It’s wildly different knowing your friends, family, even children are being indoctrinated to report you for things that may or may not have happened at which point you just disappear like many people you never heard from again.
It’s actively stressful in a way that cellphones just don’t evoke.
Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking
#17When it came out that government was looking at all of the data on the internet, there was a massive effort to move to https. Everyone got involved. Why can't these same companies and organizations push for phones to be anonymous? Why should a 'phone' be primarily a person tracker that happens to have voice communications built in?
It's literally not possible because the mobile network needs to know where your phone is so it can route packets to the tower that you're connected.
Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking
#18When it came out that government was looking at all of the data on the internet, there was a massive effort to move to https. Everyone got involved. Why can't these same companies and organizations push for phones to be anonymous? Why should a 'phone' be primarily a person tracker that happens to have voice communications built in?
The Federal Government purges data that was non-encrypted after a number of years.
The Federal Government retains a copy of all https-encrypted communications indefinitely on the understanding that the encryption may be broken at some point.
The push to HTTPS was gleefully supported by the US federal government. HTTPS is not a panacea, and is generally useless for most non-sales applications.
Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking
#19I wonder why are we so complacent with these kind of things? Is it really just the fact that we got our bellies full, and live in climate-controlled homes? Or has there been some degeneration of the human body brought upon us with all kinds of new artificial materials we use, that might affect our bodies in ways we can't yet comprehend; or is it a psychological thing based on the results of technological achievements…
I think the problems affecting the system are just too widespread and bespoke for the individual to resolve. To actually understand fully the scope of tracking etc, you probably need to be qualified to be a computer engineer or someone with a similar resume. That limits the amount of the population that is even capable of comprehending the news to a small sliver. Extend that to any field: biology, law, physics, economics, etc. Popular science reporting is terrible because the writers and the readers both lack sufficient debth to put things in context. Earnest law reporting is going to take a law degree as well as a stack of books to put things in their actual context. Economics is even worse; they say a grand unifying theory of economics is impossible because of the time it takes to study all its various schools of economic theory means it cannot be done in a single human lifetime.
The great danger of having the knowledge of all things in our society be limited to a handful of siloed specialists is that it leaves a lot of room for placing opinion, biased, or slanted reporting to the same weight as the actual facts, since no one is qualified to see what is true and what isn't. It allows people who have no experience on a given issue to be in control of its outcomes, which invites graft sooner than learned experience.
Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking
#20I used to be skeptical of the skeptics, thought they were paranoid to worry about 'big tech' snooping and tracking our lives. Turns out it is not big tech but 'big govt' that I should've been worried about. We are in danger of turning into a surveillance state
I've worked for the Federal Government and for a variety of ad-tech companies. I am still much more terrified of "big tech" (and small tech) than "big government". When I worked for the government I wanted to scrape some publicly available data from the web. Because the data involved information about people I had to write up a document explaining exactly what I was using the data for, exactly what information I woul…
> Because the data involved information about people I had to write up a document explaining exactly what I was using the data for, exactly what information I would be collecting and why it was necessary, explain where the data was to be stored, and most importantly specify exactly how long I needed the data and when and how it would be safely removed.
This just sounds like a design doc, which I do regardless of if it has to get reviewed by a privacy team or I'm doing anything sensitive. Maybe it's because I've worked for mostly google & ex-googler run companies, but this is just standard practice for me.