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 won't get the technical solutions we need that address core societal issues. Instead we have an cancerous culture in engineering that threatens our position among other first world countries. Not all engineers have the same commitment to ethics and unfortunately the most unethical don't have the proper economic incentives for respecting human rights, liberty, and dignity. It's time to take a stand for privacy, against the exploitation of technology, and against unethical human experimentation. Georgia Tech's campus is a good place to start...
Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
31–40 of 166 posts
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#32The myth of "partially anonymize" data is infuriating. As an academic exercise I've begun to pore over Privacy Policies for web new services I find, specifically how my account info will be used with third parties. No new consumer oriented web product in their right mind would advertise "we monetize your data with third parties", but they all include language in their Privacy Policies about sharing "partially anonymi…
Exactly. There is no such thing as "anonymized data", there is only "not enough context" and "I need more computing power!". It's important to understand what one is up against when fighting for privacy. Incidentally, that's part of the reason why I'm having this feeling, that the future is a choice - "privacy or progress, pick one". Because if you really, really care about privacy and anonymity, the sheer amount of…
Yeah it's tricky because online consumer tracking is just the evolution of a methodology which has been in place for a long time (like supermarket club cards you mentioned). Working in marketing gives you a sense of just how pervasive it is, what tricks are at one's disposal, and I think an individual company should be allowed to know how consumers use and value a their products, but being able to sell that information to a third-party is where the line needs to be drawn.
I don't know if Congress is the solution (http://thehill.com/policy/technology/215457-big-data-lobbyis...), I don't believe any branch of the US government has enough of an understanding with tech issues to pass effective regulation. I hope to be proven wrong though.
The most realistic way, in my opinion, to achieve some degree of reform is by encouraging businesses at a grassroots level to just simply not engage in these kinds of practices. That's an even tougher sell to many businesses than getting Congress to pass a law, but I'm heartened by companies like DuckDuckGo who build a product around the idea of "user privacy above all else". I think if that idea becomes popular enough and new businesses become noble enough to stick to their principals on issues of privacy (vs selling out to make $$) we might have an effective solution.
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#33The myth of "partially anonymize" data is infuriating. As an academic exercise I've begun to pore over Privacy Policies for web new services I find, specifically how my account info will be used with third parties. No new consumer oriented web product in their right mind would advertise "we monetize your data with third parties", but they all include language in their Privacy Policies about sharing "partially anonymi…
/* spelling/autocorrect: it's 'pore over', not 'pour over' */
Fixed, cheers
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
You trust them? How do you know this just makes you more suspicious and gives them more of an illogical basis for placing you under increased surveillance.
Sure I trust them. The moment it's discovered that they've failed to hold up their end of the bargain, they're out $30 x some significant percentage of the users of that service per month. That's not chump change (to say nothing of the potential class action lawsuit for utterly failing to hold up a contract while continuing to charge customers for the services stipulated in said contract).
We assume that we are entitled to some sort of protection because we've paid for a service, but that didn't stop these companies from unlawfully participating or turning a blind eye to unwarranted and unrestrained violations of privacy. If you believe some court centered process will protect you from abuse you are sadly mistaken. Of course it is no issue until the fascists come after you....
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#35Sometimes I think privacy is bound to die because of nuclear bombs. What stops a country sneaking bombs into another? We need total knowledge of what's in the city. But maybe I'm wrong, I haven't thought it through.
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#36And 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…
I have personally found that a hosts file can reduce the need for a bunch of those addons - it can block not only ads, but also many forms of tracking. I've found it very refreshing when surfing the web.
For reference, I use: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#37And 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…
There is a chance that some extensions will interfere with each other. For instance, Ghostery mentions this on their options page: Warning! When combined with other cookie monitoring addons such as Beef Taco, Cookie Monster, and Google Opt-Out, this feature can cause unresponsive script errors. If you experience this error, please try disabling this feature or conflicting addons.
That kind of problem used to happen with DOS TSRs (the equivalent of multitasking extensions or daemon processes). It's funny to think that the reason for browser extension incompatibilities is kind of analogous to the reason for TSR incompatibilities: both of them will hook function calls in the system whose functionality they're extending, and make assumptions about how they can alter, act on, or cancel the function call without breaking things, and whether or how it needs to be passed along afterwards. If only one extension is loaded, these assumptions aren't stressed very much, but when several are loaded the assumptions can conflict.
(That analogy isn't perfect because the TSRs also had an issue about patching the interrupt descriptor table, which is where the system looks up the location of an interrupt handler; one common problem was that if TSRs weren't unloaded in the same order in which they were loaded, the table could be "restored" with values that were not actually current, which I don't think is a problem that has an equivalent for browser extensions!)
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#38The myth of "partially anonymize" data is infuriating. As an academic exercise I've begun to pore over Privacy Policies for web new services I find, specifically how my account info will be used with third parties. No new consumer oriented web product in their right mind would advertise "we monetize your data with third parties", but they all include language in their Privacy Policies about sharing "partially anonymi…
/* spelling/autocorrect: it's 'pore over', not 'pour over' */
I upvoted you, but I also enjoy seeing these kinds of mistakes which either get me to imagine new metaphors, and/or (like in this case) get me to learn about real-world things.
Turns out that pour-over is a coffee brewing method:
http://coffee.wikia.com/wiki/Pour-Over_Filtration_Brewing
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except for the lack of data. Don't share things you consider private (and that are indeed private and not just things you don't want to expose but can't really do so, like your own face) with those who you don't trust. This is the most secure approach among all possibilities.
So, consider "Hey, tomorrow is angersock's 34th birthday! We're organizing a surprise party in his hometown of jonestown!". Now, they've given away my age, birthdate, and where I was born. That's the sort of information that, while private and something I don't give away, they know and give away without thinking.
Who is it you don't want to have that information?
The government already knows (it's part of your SSN information), and any private company that cares will just make you give that info to them as part of the cost of service. You'll do it too, because you don't want to be unable to drive or have a mortgage.
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#40And 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.