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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

#151

Post by OkeyDokey2 »

alsetmusic wrote: post #42
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.

Regulation is key, but I don’t see it as likely when our society is poisoned by culture war bs. Once we put that behind us (currently unlikely), we can pass sane laws reigning in huge corporations.

[flagged]

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

#152

Post by ragnese »

positus wrote: post #146
aftbit wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> We're all bad people, just some of us are more comfortable with our corruption being visible to others to a higher degree.

If the GP's story is true (and I have no reason to suspect otherwise), then there are clearly differences in the degree of "badness" between people. GP chose to resign from his job, while his manager chose to be negligent and dishonest.

So, even if we're all bad people, there are less bad and more bad people, so we might as well call the less bad end of the spectrum "good". Thus, there are good and bad people.

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

#153

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

simoncion wrote: post #145
drawkward wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 scenari…

> to fail to secure data that it has on me

Just want to point out that the company is usually also doing what it can to get other information about you without your consent based on other information it has about you. It's a lot closer to the "taking non-consensual nudie pictures" than "fail to secure data" makes it sound.

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

#154

Post by simoncion »

lesuorac wrote: post #66
Clubber wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and people are ok with that. All the propagandists said he was a Russian asset, as if even if that were true, it somehow negated the fact that we were now living under a surveillance state. >Snowden pointed and everyone looked at his finger. This is a great way of putting it.

> it somehow negated the fact that we were now living under a surveillance state. There's long been surveillance programs and also numerous laws outlining the responsibilities of telecom provides to enable wire tapping. There's really nothing new from Snowden besides the names of a bunch of people to go kill cause they're spies. FISA [1] isn't a private law either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.…

> There's long been surveillance programs and also numerous laws outlining the responsibilities of telecom provides to enable wire tapping.

Laws which the telecoms were knowingly and willfully breaking for years.

You do remember that Congress gave them retroactive immunity? [0][1] You do know that this was only granted because people COULD sue (and were suing) them because of the information made public by Snowden and others?

[0] https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/retroactive-tele...>

[1] See Title II of the this bill https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/house-bill/6304>

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

#155

Post by bunderbunder »

supertrope wrote: post #108
bunderbunder wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why thinking of it in terms of individual cases of actual harm, as Americans have been conditioned to do by default, is precisely the wrong way to think about it. We're all familiar with the phrase "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", right? It's better to to think of it in terms of prevention. This fits into a category of things where we know they create a disproportionate risk of harm,…

Safety rules are written in blood. After a disaster there’s a push to regulate. After enough years we only see the costs of the rules and not the prevented injuries and damage. The safety regulations are then considered annoying and burdensome to businesses. Rules are repealed or left unenforced. There is another disaster…

Tangentially, there was an internet kerfuffle about someone getting in trouble for having flower planters hanging out the window of their Manhattan high rise apartment a while back, and people's responses really struck me.

People from less dense areas generally saw this as draconian nanny state absurdity. People who had spent time living in dense urban areas with high rise residential buildings, on the other hand, were more likely to think, "Yeah, duh, this rule makes perfect sense."

Similarly, I've noticed that my fellow data scientists are MUCH less likely to have social media accounts. I'd like to think it's because we are more likely to understand the kinds of harm that are possible with this kind of data collection, and just how irreparable that harm can be.

Perhaps Americans are less likely to support Europe-style privacy rules than Europeans are because Americans are less likely than Europeans to know people who saw first-hand some of what was happening in Europe in the 20th century.

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

#156

Post by twoodfin »

trinsic2 wrote: post #129
twoodfin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My pet solution has been to make the credit reporters liable for transmitting false information to the CRAs. Chase tells Experian I opened a new line of credit with them, but it later is demonstrated that it was a scammer with my SSN? Congratulations, $5,000 fine. Of course this all gets priced in to the cost and availability of consumer credit. Good! Now the lenders have an incentive to drive those costs down (cheap…

Can you describe how you make them liable in this arrangement?

You can challenge entries your credit report today. Win the challenge, whoever reported the entry is liable to the Feds. Maybe add a modest bounty for the injured taxpayer.

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

#157

Post by mgraczyk »

orthecreedence wrote: post #85
mgraczyk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm arguing that it's not actually a gun, and my evidence is that there are 2 billion "guns" that have been pointed at 2 billion people's heads for years, and nobody has been hurt. It's more like a flashlight than a gun

> It's more like a flashlight than a gun I disagree, and again, implore you to use your imagination. If private messages ( not just yours but someone elses ) were to suddenly be public or institutional knowledge, what damning things might happen? What influence might some have over others? What dynamics could or would shift as a result? I'm comfortable making the claim that you aren't really thinking this through, at…

The FTC press release is not talking about private messages, that is not the kind of data they are asking to protect. Private messages are already generally protected in the way the FTC is asking for.

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

#158

Post by twoodfin »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #80
twoodfin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My pet solution has been to make the credit reporters liable for transmitting false information to the CRAs. Chase tells Experian I opened a new line of credit with them, but it later is demonstrated that it was a scammer with my SSN? Congratulations, $5,000 fine. Of course this all gets priced in to the cost and availability of consumer credit. Good! Now the lenders have an incentive to drive those costs down (cheap…

The solution is much simpler. Put all of the consequences of being defrauded by a borrower onto the lender. If a lender wants to be repaid, then they need to show the borrower all the evidence they have for proof that the borrower entered into the contract. If all a lender has is the fact that a 9 digit number, date of birth, name, and address were entered online, then the borrower simply has to say “I did not enter…

Lenders hand over bad loans to collection agencies (“accept the consequences”) all the time. Cost of doing business. That an innocent person’s credit is destroyed is just collateral damage from their perspective.

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

#159

Post by ajsnigrutin »

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.

But won't you think of the children!

(EU is trying to implement chat control again...)

We need more real-world analogies... "see, this is like having a microphone recording everything you say in this bar"... "see, this is like someone ID-ing you infront of every store and recording what store you've visited, and then following you inside to see what products you look at. See, this is like someone looking at your clothes and then pasting on higer price tags on products. ..."

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

#160

Post by orthecreedence »

immibis wrote: post #132
digging wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 people aren't ok with that. Most people around me didn't care about the Snowden revelations. It was only tech people who tightened up security.

This is my experience as well. I talked to a LOT of people after the Snowden debacle (techies and otherwise) and the general attitude was "so what? they aren't using the information for anything bad!" or "I have nothing to hide!" (in this thread, for instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41594775)

I think people don't really understand what an enormous sleeping dragon the entire thing is.

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