Live data from Hacker News

The Privacy Revolution in Action

tcsltesting.blogspot.com

1–10 of 21 posts

Re: The Privacy Revolution in Action

#2
I personally think this will all go back somewhat. With which I mean, information about us being collected without our knowledge and everybody having all their data made available to big companies.

One reason for me to believe this, is that it's already getting somewhat creepy, even for the general public. When the new invigilation systems at china get demonized in public media, people will start to care about privacy a lot more. Which will open a lot of market space for companies focusing on privacy. Apple is one company I have in mind here. But, especially with articles about homomorphic encryption coming up more regularly and a lot of research on how to train ML systems with anonymization on end user devices (a blog post about Siri and differential privacy comes to mind) going on, I think companies will start to cater more to those needs of society. End-to-end encryption is already a standard feature in new messenger applications.

Another good sign, at least in Europe, is GDPR.

Re: The Privacy Revolution in Action

#3
post #2

I personally think this will all go back somewhat. With which I mean, information about us being collected without our knowledge and everybody having all their data made available to big companies. One reason for me to believe this, is that it's already getting somewhat creepy, even for the general public. When the new invigilation systems at china get demonized in public media, people will start to care about privac…

I disagree. I think that companies have such a vast and strong grasp on public discourse, opinion, and even whole countries, that it will only get worse and worse. I'm sure some companies will sell "privacy" at a premium for the few that can afford it, but I don't see any future where there will be actual riots in the streets for privacy.

Re: The Privacy Revolution in Action

#4
The author states that RSA collecting data isn’t “wrong.”

Let me share a harsh reality: Nobody has to do anything wrong other than the act of collecting and storing the data itself - someone else can infiltrate, hack and leak the data - look at equifax.

The privacy revolution is very well under way.

The other day I was reading this post from APNIC and realized that even they are data mining[1], and nobody noticed because they just used different vocabulary.

[1] https://blog.apnic.net/2018/05/21/what-drives-ipv6-deploymen...

Re: The Privacy Revolution in Action

#5
Amazing write-up.

"Mass psycological persuasion" -- isn't that just politics, though? I am wondering if the privacy revolution isn't just a cheapening of a service (effective one-to-many communication) that only governments and churches could afford in the past?

I think the real scary stuff hasn't happened yet, thankfully. When identity becomes enough of a _fuzzy_ notion for most people, borders will need to be redrawn, or eliminated completely. Then there will be a big war.

Re: The Privacy Revolution in Action

#6
post #2

I personally think this will all go back somewhat. With which I mean, information about us being collected without our knowledge and everybody having all their data made available to big companies. One reason for me to believe this, is that it's already getting somewhat creepy, even for the general public. When the new invigilation systems at china get demonized in public media, people will start to care about privac…

It's good that you are both aware and optimistic. Personally, I don't share this viewpoint. But I hope your optimism is well-founded.

China is indeed the canary in the coal mine. Lack of privacy there is explicit and almost universally accepted.

Will this become the new normal? Nobody knows, but I believe the answer is - yes it will. In the medium term, the world will come to follow, rather than reject China's approach.

To mitigate such an eventuality, we must study and take guidance from privacy outliers in China.

Re: The Privacy Revolution in Action

#7
post #3
post #2

I personally think this will all go back somewhat. With which I mean, information about us being collected without our knowledge and everybody having all their data made available to big companies. One reason for me to believe this, is that it's already getting somewhat creepy, even for the general public. When the new invigilation systems at china get demonized in public media, people will start to care about privac…

I disagree. I think that companies have such a vast and strong grasp on public discourse, opinion, and even whole countries, that it will only get worse and worse. I'm sure some companies will sell "privacy" at a premium for the few that can afford it, but I don't see any future where there will be actual riots in the streets for privacy.

Yeah I have to agree here. I don't see this getting any better. Look at how many people are willing to give up their entire lives worth of privacy to FB just so they can chat to friends, which they could do on any number of IMs and other services.

People just don't care.

It's a very very tiny minority who actually do, and the big companies and Governments are quite happy to ignore that problem until it goes away, as the vast majority pf people are steam-rolling any chance of privacy mattering in the future by accepting all this.

Re: The Privacy Revolution in Action

#8
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think that companies have such a vast and strong grasp on public discourse, opinion, and even whole countries, that it will only get worse and worse. I'm sure some companies will sell "privacy" at a premium for the few that can afford it, but I don't see any future where there will be actual riots in the streets for privacy.

Yeah I have to agree here. I don't see this getting any better. Look at how many people are willing to give up their entire lives worth of privacy to FB just so they can chat to friends, which they could do on any number of IMs and other services. People just don't care. It's a very very tiny minority who actually do, and the big companies and Governments are quite happy to ignore that problem until it goes away, as…

I agree they don't care, now at least.

My opinion's that they will, after the situation in China will have been demonized in public media / books.

Re: The Privacy Revolution in Action

#9
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I have to agree here. I don't see this getting any better. Look at how many people are willing to give up their entire lives worth of privacy to FB just so they can chat to friends, which they could do on any number of IMs and other services. People just don't care. It's a very very tiny minority who actually do, and the big companies and Governments are quite happy to ignore that problem until it goes away, as…

I agree they don't care, now at least. My opinion's that they will, after the situation in China will have been demonized in public media / books.

But it won't, there's too much money involved to demonize China. And there are many other such examples of mass surveillance from the five eyes, CCTVs in major cities, less and less "freedom" in the web. Just this week in my country (western European) the whole database of everyone that enters and leaves the country was moved from the police to the secret services, to avoid any kind of scrutiny.

Re: The Privacy Revolution in Action

#10
Highly recommend everyone to read "Weapons of Math Destruction" by Cathy O'Neil. I have tried to stop using services that collect my data as much as possible, and when anyone throws the arguement "you must have something to hide" it's good to have a few real life examples of why everyone should fight back against data collection and information brokers.
Post reply on HN