He's running for governor of California. He's apparently having trouble getting 6,000 signatures or $5000 to get on the ballot, so he's probably not a serious candidate.
Signature collection legally started only two days ago ;)
The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All
171–179 of 179 posts
Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pre-WW2 census in Germany was conducted by IBM and included religion and other family origin related questions. Fast forward a few years and the Nazi regime used census results to go after every family that was undesirable for them using the census data they bought from IBM. Privacy and anonymity are not needed until they are desperately required.
This can be read as if IBM did this unknowingly and only before WW2. But IBM knew what they were assisting with, and even pre-WW2 was already assisting the Nazi regime of 1933-1939. And they didn't stop come WW2, if anything IBM opened new subsidiaries and continued throughout the second world war. "(...) IBM leased, rather than sold, its machines. The company retained control of punch-card supply and provided servic…
Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All
#173Protecting your anonymity isn't a sign that you're hiding something because you have done something wrong. It is because you're cautious. Even the most benign information can be use against you. European Jews in the early 1900s gave census takers the info yhat they were Jews. Decades later that info was collated with punch card machines by the Nazis to build family trees to hunt them down. This is an example of how "…
Unfortunately similar to US census data being used to intern Japanese during the war.
This is also happening right now with ICE combing through the various federal databases that they previously didn't have access to.
But the worst thing is that the sheer amounts of compute available to even fairly small organizations, never mind governments, means that it's so easy to data mine stuff like that. And now there's AI to do the same with unstructured data. And meanwhile our corporate overlords are happy to profit from it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46349281
Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All
#174I disagree What really matters is judiciary due process and the legitimacy of a government. Companies are the ones gathering data, it's not the government doing it. Before the internet, governments already had data on their citizens. The internet makes it more difficult for the government to catch criminals and fraudsters. If you live in Russia or China or under Trump's administration, there are good reasons to hide.…
> Before the internet, governments already had data on their citizens.
Indeed, and there were some notorious examples of how that was abused for large scale oppression (with Holocaust being the pinnacle), so why would we want them to have even more data.
Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry to be pedantic but your article points out that x% have convictions, xx% have no convictions, and does not take into account who of them are illegal (undocumented). I don't ask for much, is there a specific story of ONE case where somebody was deported (not detained) who is - US citizen or - legal document immigrant with no crimes and violations? if you give me that then I will use this next time when argui…
Sure: Andy Hernandez Romero, who is among hundreds and perhaps thousands of completely rule-following asylum seekers who have been deported without due process in violation of our own Constitution and asylum laws.
thank you, just saw this.
it looks like a similar case of US insane gang classification system talked about by last week tonight https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rlR8d9JVWtQ
it's obviously stupid. even if they say "only criminals are deported", when legal system classifies a guy for tattoos and being non white as criminal, it's a useless justification https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr4z640dlz3o.amp
but right wingers will still say, the guy was not a legal resident yet and literally just arrived via the border without any visa etc.
Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both of these are not good responses and are easily discounted by most people ("I don't take nude photos"/"I never tell anyone my pin"). Average people see zero equivalence between sending nudes or their bank pin to a specific stranger and Google keeping a record of every website they've ever visited.
Surely the "I never tell anyone my pin" is just an admission that they do have something to hide? The point is that there are many things that should be kept private/secret and often the need for that secrecy isn't obvious to people who have never been in particular situations. A woman trying to escape from an abusive relationship may need to keep her location secret to avoid being murdered by her ex, but your typica…
It's just so weird you would bring your hatred of a "typical White male" strawman into this discussion when most people on this website are White and male and are themselves arguing for full stop privacy for everyone.
You could have named any other group (and been far more accurate in your assumption of a disregard for privacy, by the way) but you chose White men (like the ones who codified "a right to privacy" in the first place). Why?
Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have missed the point of the story. GP is not a customer of Ovo energy. They sent him a bill in error . “Companies cannot just go charge random people” And yet they do. Anyone can send anyone a bill.
OP said "Ovo Energy made a clerical error and sent me a bill, leading to a dispute." I don't see what a company in that situation hopes they can accomplish without a contract for providing the service. Even if they knew OP's meter number.
> I don't see what a company in that situation hopes they can accomplish
If you replace the word "company" in your sentence with "employee", do you come to a different conclusion?
A "company" is merely an amalgamation of the employees under it. When it comes to customer service you're often left feeling the impact of individual employees and the motivators that influence them. For example, metrics about times spent on calls, number of tickets worked on, new accounts created, resolutions that end in the company's favour etc.
You're absolutely right that Ovo energy has no legal basis to charge money to OP, and he would very likely win his dispute. But the _employee_ gets the ticket put in front of them and is heavily incentivised to close the ticket quickly and in the company's favour. The employee won't be the one going to court, and might not even be the person who picks the ticket up next when OP indignantly responds.
So if OP's meter number is as easily accessible as OP's address and the question for the employee quickly comes down to either: - Update OPs bill with the "correct" meter number. Meter number now matches address, bill is now valid. Submit response and bill. Move on to next ticket.
- Update ticket with "correct" address, send bill to other address. (new addressee may pay or may make same claim as OP). Submit response and send bill. Move on to next ticket.
The support employee doesn't know which option is actually the correct one unless they spend time digging into the issue to actually solve it well. But everything in the customer support world is almost always set up to disincentivise this. The result is the employee making the quickest choice that matches with their incentives of closing ticket and the company getting money.
Whether the employee acted rightly or wrongly doesn't really matter much, they're not the ones going to court over it. They might not even end up being reprimanded.
(If you can't tell I've been through the wringer on this multiple times and finding leverage to get the customer support employees to solve your case well is increasingly a nightmare.
Sorry for the long response).
Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have missed the point of the story. GP is not a customer of Ovo energy. They sent him a bill in error . “Companies cannot just go charge random people” And yet they do. Anyone can send anyone a bill.
Anyone can send a bill but you can just throw it in the trash without even responding if there is not contract...
This can and does end up with letters from collection agencies and debt collectors knocking on your door.
Unfortunately the dystopian levels incompetence of massive PLCs means it's often less hassle to quickly prove your correctness, regardless of things like burden of proof etc.
Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
OP said "Ovo Energy made a clerical error and sent me a bill, leading to a dispute." I don't see what a company in that situation hopes they can accomplish without a contract for providing the service. Even if they knew OP's meter number.
> I don't see what a company in that situation hopes they can accomplish If you replace the word "company" in your sentence with "employee", do you come to a different conclusion? A "company" is merely an amalgamation of the employees under it. When it comes to customer service you're often left feeling the impact of individual employees and the motivators that influence them. For example, metrics about times spent o…
You make a good point. Getting decent customer/tax payer service is becoming increasingly rare in the name of metrics/efficiency/profit.
I feel fortunate I did not yet have to deal with the particular brand of madness you describe.