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Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

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Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#61

Post by oconnore »

j2kun wrote: post #57
oconnore wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all fine, but there is zero evidence that any company is doing that. Furthermore, even if a company was using differential privacy to anonymize data between the collection and the processing step, there is no way to prove that the data is being handled appropriately before and during the collection step. Also, there is no way for a company to prove that they continue to handle data appropriately over time. The…

It is a new field, I admit, but it shows there's a false dichotomy between privacy and stopping all data collection and analysis. LeapYear Innovations [1] looks like they have some clients who care about differential privacy. [2] [1]: http://www.leapyearinnovations.com/ [2]: http://www.leapyearinnovations.com/shroudbase

It's not a false dichotomy: most of the time data collection and analysis does not preserve privacy. In all cases, you can't guarantee that.

You also didn't respond to this:

> Furthermore, even if a company was using differential privacy to anonymize data between the collection and the processing step, there is no way to prove that the data is being handled appropriately before and during the collection step. Also, there is no way for a company to prove that they continue to handle data appropriately over time.

Any company using shroudbase can choose to stop using shroudbase at any time, or accidentally introduce a bug into their collection method, or start also saving the data in MySQL at collection time.

Tools like that are useful to distribute data from trusted to non-trusted parties. You still have to trust the analytics and advertising companies doing the collection.

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#62

Post by Matachines »

TruthWillFree wrote: post #31

The fight for privacy has to start at universities. At Georgia Tech, the faculty are routinely involved in unwarranted surveillance and testing out their fundamentally flawed ideas to sell off to the national security apparatus. Such tests I would classify as being human experimentation with a critical need for more transparency with the public. Without a broad education that contains humanities, arts, and ethics we…

University is the last place for privacy conscious programmers.

Colleges use Google Apps (including e-mails), the student body (for the most part) all want to work for Google/Facebook/etc, college culture encourages social media (plenty of clubs almost exclusively do their planning and events on FB) and students look up to the founders of the aforementioned companies, or other non-privacy conscious tech people.

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#63

Post by TruthWillFree »

linkregister wrote: post #56
TruthWillFree wrote: post #31

The fight for privacy has to start at universities. At Georgia Tech, the faculty are routinely involved in unwarranted surveillance and testing out their fundamentally flawed ideas to sell off to the national security apparatus. Such tests I would classify as being human experimentation with a critical need for more transparency with the public. Without a broad education that contains humanities, arts, and ethics we…

What kind of surveillance is going on there? What kind of experiments are happening there?

They psychologically torture and harass people to produce false confessions or force people to do things against their will. Think what happened to Aaron Swartz, but on crack... Chicago, I'm sure is no different... http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-polic...

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#64

Post by cbr »

hackuser wrote: post #51
antr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read Gabriel's post, and I pretty much agree (and do) with what he says. Due to these shared believes I've been using DDG quite a bit, I even deleted the Google search app from my phone, and instead been using DDG's iOS app as my default mobile search engine. However, every time I use DDG it hurts a bit. The quality of the results are very far behind from that of Google's. I many times end up doing a Google se…

> many times end up doing a Google search in incognito mode because DDG just doesn't cut it The sample is only searches where DDG fails; inevitably, every other search engine will provide better results. (That doesn't mean DDG is better or worse than Google; it only means that this methodology doesn't provide infromation on that topic.)

    The sample is only searches where DDG fails; inevitably,
    every other search engine will provide better results.
That's not guaranteed. You could try the search on Google in an incognito tab and decide you think the results are actually worse.

(But yes, it is a skewed sample.)

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#65

Post by happyscrappy »

Choose what? To live like Stallman? Even his data leaks all over the place. Absolute privacy, like all absolutes, is a sandcastle in the path of an incoming tide. I am all for encrypted comm but metadata is almost as bad and virtually unavoidable. Why was no one creeped out that Starfleet always knows where every crew member is at all times?

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#66

Post by username223 »

Aoyagi wrote: post #58
justcommenting wrote: post #2

I've also noticed the quality of DuckDuckGo search results has been steadily improving, especially over the past year. I would encourage anyone who tried it and went back to another search engine to consider giving DuckDuckGo another shot--you may be pleasantly surprised!

Actually, I've noticed that DGG is way overdoing guessing. More often than not I get results that are only similar to the search query in some way instead of actually what I'm looking for. This has been getting worse over time for me.

Both DDG and Google hatefully over-guess. I understand their motivation -- people typing natural-language queries with smartphone-level typos and expecting to get answers -- but as someone long used to simple keyword queries, I wish I could have the old system back. Programmers trying to make computers "smart" seem not to understand that unless they're almost flawless, users will just have more trouble trying to work around the "smartness" to tell the computers what they actually want.

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#67

Post by kardos »

fixermark wrote: post #6

People are willing to trade personally-identifiable information for a Snickers bar.* Until and unless that changes, privacy doesn't have sufficient value to change the status quo very much. *Really, they'll even trade it for intangible gold. http://candycrushgametactics.com/get-free-gold-bars-in-candy...

Why is someone else's poor choice regarding privacy a justification for abandoning the fight for privacy?

There's always a subset of people who don't care. There was a time when women didn't have the right to vote, and although I wasn't around during that time, I'm sure there was a subset of women who didn't care. Their apathy is not a justification for withholding that right from the rest.

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#68

Post by hawleyal »

fixermark wrote: post #6

People are willing to trade personally-identifiable information for a Snickers bar.* Until and unless that changes, privacy doesn't have sufficient value to change the status quo very much. *Really, they'll even trade it for intangible gold. http://candycrushgametactics.com/get-free-gold-bars-in-candy...

Newsflash, people are stupid.

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#69

Post by XzetaU8 »

hackuser wrote: post #40
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #18

And there are indeed a few solutions that actually grant you partial relief from the pains of online tracking. First, switch your search engine, email and other major services where your personal information is heavily tracked to good private alternatives. Second, add EFF’s HTTPS Everywhere plugin to your browser, which will encrypt web site connections where possible. Third, add EFF’s Privacy Badger plugin to your b…

A related question: If someone with expertise or data could compare the effectiveness of tracker-blocking solutions, such as Ghostery and Disconnect, it would be helpful.

µBlock vs Adblock Plus vs Ghostery vs Disconnect vs No blocker https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-and-other...

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#70

Post by tnhh »

drdaeman wrote: post #12
dasboth wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As an academic exercise I've begun to pour over Privacy Policies for web new services" This is something I've been thinking of doing. I don't suppose you've shared these anywhere online by any chance? I always thought that would make a good site - somewhere where you can look up certain services' privacy policies in layman's terms. I suspect a good one already exists.

https://tosdr.org/

http://www.docracy.com/tos/changes is also good for tracking changes. And today I saw a talk about http://commonterms.org/ which could be useful if widely implemented.
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