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The Fantasy of Opting Out

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Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#71

Post by pixl97 »

worldsayshi wrote: post #45
pdkl95 wrote: post #12

> Obfuscation may be our best digital weapon. From Dan Geer's talk "Cybersecurity as Realpolitik" (which everyone should hear[1]/read[2]): >> There are so many technologies now that power observation and identification of the individual at a distance. They may not yet be in your pocket or on your dashboard or embedded in all your smoke detectors, but that is only a matter of time. Your digital exhaust is unique hence…

Misrepresentation is a good way to improve the training data sets for intelligence agencies.

Yep, as an individual there is a very limited pool of activities that you can and will misrepresent yourself in, and you will tend to do that in low entropy also.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#72

Post by dwighttk »

llarsson wrote: post #5

I cannot help but wonder if the use of such tools as the ones listed in the article are not just "privacy theater", in the same sense that we have come to realize that much of what happens in the name of security is just "security theater". Ironically, of course, is that much of what happens in the name of security is exactly what takes away our privacy in the first place. What is needed is for people to tangibly suf…

> What is needed is for people to tangibly suffer from lack of privacy. It is obvious to people how they suffer from lack of security.

And because it is obvious we have more and more security theater...

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#73

Post by hrktb »

Merrill wrote: post #69

Security by obscurity is no security at all. What is needed is stronger individual rights to access, correct, delete, and control the use of any information collected about us, as well as strong prohibitions on the use of data against our individual and collective interests.

The point is not security though, but privacy. At its base privacy is obscurity.

Also you seem to advocate for every single individual to run a race against the rest of the world to not misuse their data. We both wish there was decent safeguards, I am way more pessimistic about any effective rights regulation though (I think it’s just way too hard for any legislation body).

Not saying nothing should be done on the elgal anr regulation side, but that it’s only a tiny drop in what is needed for us to preserve privacy.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#74

Post by qubex »

AdNauseam and similar obfuscation mechanisms strongly remind me of Neal Stephenson’s ‘bogons’ he introduced in his cinderblock-sized (and eminently enjoyable) novel Anathem. In that regard, he appears to have been highly prescient: hiding signal in reams of random noise (and random meta-noise about both signal and noise). http://www.virtustate.com/fake-news-advertising-and-bogons-s...

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#75

Post by gutnor »

pixl97 wrote: post #71
worldsayshi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misrepresentation is a good way to improve the training data sets for intelligence agencies.

Yep, as an individual there is a very limited pool of activities that you can and will misrepresent yourself in, and you will tend to do that in low entropy also.

On the other hand if you are just a mostly normal guy with a dark secret, your normal life generates enormous amount of data and that's fairly easy to misrepresent the tiny bit you want to hide.

If you are an avid facebook, instagram, youtube, reddit, twitter user, it should be fairly easy to hide your plan for world domination on HN.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#76

Post by pixl97 »

fouc wrote: post #2

>Those who know about us have power over us. Obfuscation may be our best digital weapon. Interesting, we could use tools like deepfake to fake images & videos of ourselves in order to increase the level of obfuscation. Perhaps we can even analyze our writing styles and then use GPT-2 to produce writing that matches our styles, and flood the web with that. Anonymity through noise.

Not really, you're still giving them the real signal.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#77

Post by hrktb »

imgabe wrote: post #59
missosoup wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always-on surveillance is the ultimate prison. Foucault articulated this very clearly back in the 70s in Discipline and Punish. You don't need walls, you don't even need guards. You just need an ever-present observer and a fear of being observed doing something 'undesirable'. Perhaps the genie isn't going back in the bottle, but rolling over and reiterating the 'if you have nothing to hide...' fallacy is not a produc…

Nowhere did I say anything about "...nothing to hide". I am saying we need to, via legislation, weaken governmental and corporate authority, and increase personal authority so that the data collected cannot be used to harm us. Because the real fantasy here is that there is some way the data is not going to be collected.

If we agree that data will be collected whatever laws we put in place, under the same premises can’t we agree that it will be misused as well ?

Problem with laws to me is that they are only binding to some portion of the actors. Some government actors have a mandate to work around the law, and other organisations have divisions dedicated to avoid triggering these laws. Regulation is only part of the solution.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#78

Post by sokoloff »

d3nj4l wrote: post #63

This article talks about the cost of opting out, but doesn't go into some of the more insidious ways in which companies have made it harder and harder to do so. I recently opened the Downloads app on my new Mi phone only to find a notice asking me to grant authorization to Xiami to "... collect, process and use [my] personal data" in order to use the app[1]. Why does a basic downloads app need to gather and analyze m…

> Why can't I use a version of the app that doesn't collect that data

Because that particular developer hasn’t chosen to offer you that deal. If you don’t like the deal vendor X is offering, don’t use vendor X. Particularly in the case of a phone app, you tend to have a lot of choice. If vendor Y provides you a deal you like better, why not use them?

You might find that vendors who offer those terms might bundle them with other terms you don’t prefer (like charging money directly for the app or service).

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#79

Post by stereolambda »

This is one of the better articles on the subject, not written in inside-tech-bubble terms. I think they also describe something we may call "obfuscation of power": formally you can opt out, in practice you cannot, and people who have power over you are lost in a soup of legal entities. So first, you are alienated to face surveillance alone as an individual, taking all blame for losing your freedom because you "chose" it. Second, it's hard to even name the surveillers (one of the 500 "trusted partners"?). There's now a parallel discussion on AI black boxes which can further serve similar purposes. ("It was not our decision, some AI did it".)

The sooner it will be commonly framed as a question of freedom (i.e. absence of arbitrary power of other people above you [1]), and as a question in the interest of society as a whole, the better.

[1] I'd take the opportunity to plug Quentin Skinner's "How should we think about freedom", "A genealogy of liberty" or a similar talk, where he challenges the tradition of understanding freedom as absence of direct interference. I think this stuff would be beneficial for politics nowadays.

Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out

#80

Post by matz1 »

Altheasy wrote: post #11

The author: Privacy does not mean stopping the flow of data; it means channeling it wisely and justly to serve societal ends and values and the individuals who are its subjects, particularly the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. You are wrong, privacy mean stopping the flow of the data completely. No one should spy on your life.

Disagree. Information wants to be free. Good luck trying to stop the flow of data. The solution of privacy should be embrace the flow of data or even increase it by increasing transparency. Sure, there are going to be issue in regards data being public and thats what should be fixed instead.
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