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FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

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Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#141

Post by arminiusreturns »

aftbit wrote: post #130
arminiusreturns wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Let me tell you about what just happened to me. After a very public burnout and spiral, a friend rescued me and I took a part time gig helping a credit card processing company. About 2 months ago, the owner needed something done while I was out, and got their uber driver to send an email. They emailed the entire customer database, including bank accounts, socials, names, addresses, finance data, to a single…

>Why is it everywhere I go management is always doing shady stuff. Well here's a cynical take on this - management is playing the business game at a higher level than you. "Shady stuff" is the natural outcome of profit motivation. Our society is fundamentally corrupt. It is designed to use the power of coercive force to protect the rights and possessions of the rich against the threat of violence by the poor. The onl…

I did verify with an attorney that since I wasn't involved and made sure the owner knew what was what, that I had no legal obligations to disclose.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#143

Post by dylan604 »

OkeyDokey2 wrote: post #134
srndsnd wrote: post #31

To me, what's missing from that set of recommendations is some method to increase the liability of companies who mishandle user data. It is insane to me that I can be notified via physical mail of months old data breaches, some of which contained my Social Security number, and that my only recourse is to set credit freezes from multiple credit bureaus.

[flagged]

This does nothing for them being able to continue with shadow profiles and inferences about you based on data they gather from others in your social network. It is well beyond "data you provide". Like waaaaay beyond.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#144

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

brookst wrote: post #115
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a feeling that liability is the missing piece in a lot of these issues. Section 230? Liability. Protection of personal data? Liability. Minors viewing porn? Liability. Lack of liability is screwing up the incentive structure.

I think I agree, but people will have very different views on where liability should fall, and whether there is a malicious / negligent / no-fault model? Section 230? Is it the platform or the originating user that's liable? Protection of personal data? Is there a standard of care beyond which liability lapses (e.g. a nation state supply chain attack exfiltrates encrypted data and keys are broken due to novel quantum…

It's not a solvable problem. Like most tech problems it's political, not technical. There is no way to balance the competing demands of privacy, security, legality, and corporate overreach.

It might be solvable with some kind of ID escrow, where an independent international agency managed ID as a not-for-profit service. Users would have a unique biometrically-tagged ID, ID confirmation would be handled by the agency, ID and user behaviour tracking would be disallowed by default and only allowed under strictly monitored conditions, and law enforcement requests would go through strict vetting.

It's not hard to see why that will never happen in today's world.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#145

Post by simoncion »

drawkward wrote: post #74
pc86 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it's pretty clear that you are directly harmed if someone takes naked photos of you without your knowledge or consent and then keeps them. It's not a good analogy so if we want to convince people like the GP of the points you're making, you need to make a good case because that is not how the law is currently structured. "I don't like ads" is not a good reason, and comments like this that are seething with rag…

What is the harm? It is not obvious to me, if the victim is unaware...unless you are alleging simply that there is some ill-defined right to privacy. But if that is so, why does it apply to my crotch and not my personal data?

These are exactly my questions. If I never, ever know about those pictures and never, ever have my life affected by those pictures, what is the actual harm to me?

If the answer to them ends up being "Well, it's illegal to take non-consensual nudie pictures.", then my follow-up question is "So, why isn't the failure to protect my personal information also illegal?".

To be perfectly clear, I do believe that the scenario kibwen describes SHOULD be illegal. But I ALSO believe that it should be SUPER illegal for a company to fail to secure data that it has on me. Regardless of whether they are retaining that information because there is literally no way they could provide me with the service I'm paying them for without it, or if they're only retaining that information in the hopes of making a few pennies off of it by selling it to data brokers or whoever, they should have a VERY SERIOUS legal obligation to keep that information safe and secure.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#146

Post by positus »

aftbit wrote: post #130
arminiusreturns wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Let me tell you about what just happened to me. After a very public burnout and spiral, a friend rescued me and I took a part time gig helping a credit card processing company. About 2 months ago, the owner needed something done while I was out, and got their uber driver to send an email. They emailed the entire customer database, including bank accounts, socials, names, addresses, finance data, to a single…

>Why is it everywhere I go management is always doing shady stuff. Well here's a cynical take on this - management is playing the business game at a higher level than you. "Shady stuff" is the natural outcome of profit motivation. Our society is fundamentally corrupt. It is designed to use the power of coercive force to protect the rights and possessions of the rich against the threat of violence by the poor. The onl…

The problem isn't society or profit motivation. It's people. Humanity itself is corrupt. There aren't "good people" and "bad people". There's only "bad people." We're all bad people, just some of us are more comfortable with our corruption being visible to others to a higher degree.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#147

Post by Clubber »

lesuorac wrote: post #119
Clubber wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's really nothing new from Snowden besides the names of a bunch of people to go kill cause they're spies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disc...

You are dense. Imagine a government authorizes 10B for a bridge and then in 5 years a bridge shows up. Now instead, imagine in 1978 [1] a government authorizes "United States federal law that establishes procedures for the surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence on domestic soil" and in 2008 [2] amends it to not be a big deal if they're foreign or not and then 5 years later it turns out they're doing just…

>You are dense.

Well, maybe you're one of those propagandists. If you can't attack the idea, attack the person, right?

Hand waves, nothing new to see here, carry on.

The bills aren't what were exposed, it was more the techniques and scope. Like PRISM and XKeyScore and circumventing laws by sharing intelligence on US citizens with allies who aren't restricted by US laws. Spying on allied governments, etc. You know, that stuff.

You should really click on the link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disc...

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#148

Post by dylan604 »

digging wrote: post #89
orthecreedence wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden pointed and everyone looked at his finger. It was a huge shame, but a cultural sign that the US is descending into a surveillance hell hole and people are ok with that . As someone who was (and still is) vehemently against PRISM and NSLs and all that, it was hard to come to terms with. I'm going to keep building things that circumvent the "empire" and hope people start caring eventually.

> and people are ok with that I've seen no evidence of this. People mostly either don't understand it for feel powerless against it.

There's also a vast amount of people that were just too young to be aware of Snowden's revelations. These people are now primarily on TikTok what not, and I doubt there's much in those feeds to bring them to light while directly feeding the beast of data hoarding.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#149

Post by davisr »

digging wrote: post #89
orthecreedence wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden pointed and everyone looked at his finger. It was a huge shame, but a cultural sign that the US is descending into a surveillance hell hole and people are ok with that . As someone who was (and still is) vehemently against PRISM and NSLs and all that, it was hard to come to terms with. I'm going to keep building things that circumvent the "empire" and hope people start caring eventually.

> and people are ok with that I've seen no evidence of this. People mostly either don't understand it for feel powerless against it.

> I've seen no evidence of this

Over 99% of Americans point a camera at themselves while they take a shit.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#150

Post by OkeyDokey2 »

dylan604 wrote: post #143
OkeyDokey2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This does nothing for them being able to continue with shadow profiles and inferences about you based on data they gather from others in your social network. It is well beyond "data you provide". Like waaaaay beyond.

[flagged]
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