[HN Gopher] FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and ...
___________________________________________________________________
FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming
Companies
Author : nabla9
Score : 493 points
Date : 2024-09-19 16:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ftc.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ftc.gov)
| GeekyBear wrote:
| This portion is particularly problematic:
|
| > many companies engaged in broad data sharing that raises
| serious concerns regarding the adequacy of the companies' data
| handling controls and oversight.
| mrmetanoia wrote:
| It would be wonderful if the staff report recommendations were
| taken seriously by our legislators. I think I'll send a copy of
| this to my reps and say hi.
| ryanisnan wrote:
| I love the cognitive dissonance on display within the federal
| government.
|
| One arm: "everyone is a criminal; spy on everyone"
|
| Other arm: "hey you shouldn't really harvest all of that data"
| bitwize wrote:
| And it's not just here.
|
| The EU: Unlike the barbarians across the pond, we actually
| protect people's privacy rights.
|
| Also the EU: ChAt CoNtRoL
| ryanisnan wrote:
| The problem seems deeply fundamental to what it means to be a
| human.
|
| On one hand, there's a lack of clear leadership, unifying the
| societal approach, on top of inherently different value
| systems held by those individuals.
|
| It seems like increasingly, it's up to technologists, like
| ones who author our anti-surveillance tools, to create a free
| way forward.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| this view presupposes the state as "just another actor" as
| opposed to a privileged one that can take actions that
| private actors can't
| Karunamon wrote:
| Those privileged actions are mostly irrelevant when
| discussing mass surveillance. Doubly so since they can just
| buy or acquire the data from corps.
| lupusreal wrote:
| In the matter of corporations vs governments, if you tally
| up number of people shot it's clear which of the two is
| more dangerous. You would think Europe of all regions would
| be quick to recognize this.
|
| I don't _like_ corporations spying on me, but it doesn 't
| scare me nearly as much as the government doing it. In fact
| the principle risk from corporations keeping databases is
| giving the government something to snatch.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| because the government has a monopoly on violence. i
| would much prefer that to corporations being able to wage
| war themselves
| lupusreal wrote:
| Who is arguing for corporations to wage war? What an
| absolutely insane strawman. What I am arguing against is
| letting governments grant themselves the ability to spy
| on their own populations on an unprecedented scale,
| because governments _" waging war"_ (mass murder) against
| their own people is a historically common occurrence.
| immibis wrote:
| The EU has multiple parts. One part keeps asking for chat
| control, and another part keeps saying no.
| jlarocco wrote:
| The cognitive dissonance is in the voters and users.
|
| Even right here on HN, where most people understand the issue,
| you'll see conversations and arguments in favor of letting
| companies vacuum up as much data and user info as they want
| (without consent or opt-in), while also saying it should be
| illegal for the government to collect the same data without a
| warrant.
|
| In practice, the corporations and government have found the
| best of both worlds: https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-purchase-
| location-data-wray-... Profit for the corporation, legal user
| data for the government.
| spacemadness wrote:
| HN is filled with folks that wrote the code in question, or
| want to create similar products. And they hate to have it
| pointed out that these tools may cause harm so they thrash
| around and make excuses and point fingers. A tale as old as
| this site.
| mrmetanoia wrote:
| I often have to remind myself who hosts this board and that
| I am hanging out on a site for successful and aspiring
| techno-robber-barons.
| sabbaticaldev wrote:
| > I am hanging out on a site for successful and aspiring
| techno-robber-barons.
|
| that's how we first arrive here (all of us). Time pass
| tho and most around fail then we become proper people
| capable of reasoning
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Complete with egotistical and ironic appropriation of the
| word _hacker_.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Explaining that modern technology is user-hostile and
| destructive to the society is nowhere else more on-topic
| than Paul Graham's ego blog. While it might be true to
| say the site is "for" robber barons, There are a lot more
| users here than the ones you described.
| itronitron wrote:
| And in Europe, everyone and their dog uses WhatsApp
| ale42 wrote:
| Not everyone but almost... and it's the same in other
| places (was already the case in Buenos Aires when I went
| there a few years ago). And of course when you tell people
| that there are better alternatives, many of them don't want
| "another app"... (but then they install one full of
| trackers to hope get some kind of prize at the local
| supermarket).
| BeetleB wrote:
| Anti-disclaimer: I'm not one of those folks.
|
| However, that's not at all a cognitive dissonance.
| Fundamentally, there's a difference between governments and
| private companies, and it is fairly basic to have different
| rules for them. The government cannot impinge on free speech,
| but almost all companies do. The government cannot restrict
| religion, but to some extent, companies can. Etc.
|
| Of course, in this case, it's understandable to argue that
| _neither_ side should have that much data without consent.
| But it 's also totally understandable to allow only the
| private company to do so.
| jlarocco wrote:
| There is fundamentally a difference between corporations
| and the government, but it's still a cognitive dissonance.
| These aren't the laws of physics - we _chose_ to have
| different rules for the government and corporations in this
| case.
|
| There are plenty of cases where the same rules apply to
| both the government and corporations.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| There isn't a single intellectually honest harm associated
| with the majority of app telemetry and for almost all ad data
| collection. Like go ahead and name one.
|
| Once you say some vague demographic and bodily autonomy
| stuff: you know, if you're going to invoke "voters," I've got
| bad news for you. Some kinds of hate are popular. So you
| can't pick and choose what popular stuff is good or what
| popular stuff is bad. It has to be by some objective
| criteria.
|
| Anyway, I disagree with your assessment of the popular
| position anyway. I don't think there is really that much
| cognitive dissonance among voters at all. People are sort of
| right to not care. The FTC's position is really unpopular,
| when framed in the intellectually honest way as it is in the
| EU, "here is the price of the web service if you opt out of
| ads and targeting."
|
| You also have to decide if ad prices should go up or down,
| and think deeply: do you want a world where ad inventory is
| expensive? It is an escape valve for very powerful networks.
| Your favorite political causes like reducing fossil fuel use
| and bodily autonomy benefit from paid traffic all the same as
| selling junk. The young beloved members of Congress innovate
| in paid Meta campaign traffic. And maybe you run a startup or
| work for one, and you want to compete against the vast
| portfolio of products the network owners now sell. There's a
| little bit of a chance with paid traffic but none if you
| expect to play by organic content creation rules: it's the
| same thing, but you are transferring money via meaningless
| labor of making viral content instead of focusing on your
| cause or business. And anyway, TikTok could always choose to
| not show your video for any reason.
|
| The intellectual framework against ad telemetry is really,
| really weak. The FTC saying it doesn't change that.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| The intelligence agencies literally use ad data to do
| "targeted killing" what are you even talking about?
|
| Ex-NSA Chief: 'We Kill People Based on Metadata'...
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Can you define a harm suffered by the people that the FTC
| represents? What about the EU beneficiaries of the GDPR?
| This is sincere, it is meant to advance to a real and
| interesting conversation.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| I think privacy violations are a harm in themselves, but
| you seem to have already dismissed this issue, so I'll
| move on. How about behavioral manipulation via
| microtargeting, economic harm via price discrimination,
| reselling of the data via monetization to unscrupulous
| aggregators or third parties, general security reduction
| (data and metadata sets could be used for APT, etc), or
| the chilling effect of being tracked all the time in this
| way?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > How about behavioral manipulation via microtargeting...
|
| I don't know. Ads are meant to convince you to buy
| something. Are they "behavioral manipulation?" Are all
| ads harmful?
|
| > ...economic harm via price discrimination...
|
| Should all price discrimination be "illegal?" This is
| interesting because it makes sense for the FTC and for
| anti-trust regulators to worry about consumer prices.
| Price discrimination in software services - the thing I
| know about - helps the average consumer, because it gets
| richer people to pay more and subsidize the poor.
|
| > reselling of the data via monetization to unscrupulous
| aggregators or third parties
|
| "Unscrupulous" is doing a lot of work here.
|
| > ...general security reduction...
|
| Gmail and Chrome being free ad subsidized has done a lot
| more for end user security than anything else. Do you
| want security to be only for the rich? It really depends
| how you imagine software works. I don't know what APT
| stands for.
|
| > chilling effect of being tracked all the time in this
| way?
|
| Who is chilled?
|
| I guess talk about some specific examples. They would be
| really interesting.
| walrushunter wrote:
| So terrorists? You're concerned data logging may harm
| terrorists?
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| I got my start in the military in anti-terrorism and I
| find your comment foolishly naive, provacative, and
| short-sighted beyond measure.
| photonthug wrote:
| > There isn't a single intellectually honest harm
| associated with the majority of app telemetry and for
| almost all ad data collection. Like go ahead and name one.
|
| You've already signaled that you're ready and willing to
| dismiss any of the many obvious reasons why this is bad.
| But let's flip it. What intellectually honest reason do you
| have for why it would be wrong if I'm watching you while
| you sleep? If I inventory your house while you're away, and
| sell this information to the highest bidder? No bad
| intentions of course on my part, these things are just my
| harmless hobby and how I put bread on the table.
|
| In my experience literally everyone who argues that we
| don't really have a need for privacy, or that concerns
| about it are paranoid or that there's no "real" threat..
| well those people still want their own privacy, they just
| don't respect anyone else's.
|
| More to the point though, no one needs to give you an
| "intellectually honest" reason that they don't want to be
| spied on, and they don't need to demonstrate bad intentions
| or realistic capabilities of the adversary, etc. If someone
| threatens to shoot you, charges won't be dropped because
| the person doesn't have a gun. The threat is extremely
| problematic and damaging in itself, regardless of how we
| rank that persons ability to follow through with their
| stated intent.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > What intellectually honest reason do you have for why
| it would be wrong if I'm watching you while you sleep? If
| I inventory your house while you're away, and sell this
| information to the highest bidder?
|
| This is an interesting idea, but it's a pretty far
| analogy from app telemetry or ad data collection. If
| you're really saying, "would it be wrong for me as a
| camera app developer to collect the videos end users
| record?" I suppose the answer would really be, "It
| depends." Like that's what Instagram does, it collects
| videos end users record. But without their permission? I
| guess not, no, but that's pretty obvious. The same would
| be true if you made firmware for security cameras, which
| happened to be pointed at my bedroom. I suppose if you
| asked for permission, and I granted it, go ahead - if you
| didn't ask for permission, I would be surprised why you
| would need to collect the videos as a firmware developer.
| The house inventory thing is the same tack - are you
| talking about, does it make sense for Amazon to sell my
| purchase history, or something? I guess they asked for
| permission, go ahead... Nobody forces me to use Amazon or
| whatever.
|
| Instagram, Amazon, etc. do the things they do with
| permission. And I don't think anyone who is fully
| educated is surprised what the idea is for the
| transactional attribution data it collects. There's lying
| by omission, which is bad, but that is an issue of
| leadership and education. Everyone in the EU still
| chooses telemetry and free over no telemetry and paid
| service, when it is spelled out to them. It's too bad
| that leadership has to be taken in that form, but there's
| no alternative in the regime they built there.
|
| If this is just a competition over the leadership and
| education of laypeople, so be it, but this real life
| experiment keeps happening, and the people who try to
| inject drama into ad telemetry keep losing, so I really
| don't think it's _just_ about lying. There is a real lack
| of harm.
|
| > reason that they don't want to be spied on
|
| Nobody forces you to use Instagram. If you think ad data
| attribution is a form of spying, go for it. Delete the
| free social media apps. I don't use them. I don't have
| Instagram, TikTok, etc. I spend less than 10m a week
| watching something on YouTube. I don't even have a TV in
| my house. Do you see? They are not enriching your life.
|
| > In my experience literally everyone who argues... well
| those people still want their own privacy, they just
| don't respect anyone else's.
|
| In _my_ experience this is pure projection. I respect
| when people don 't want to give permission to Instagram
| to collect ad telemetry when they choose to not install
| the app. Of course, you say these things on the Internet,
| but you, you _personally_ , are not going to migrate off
| of Gmail, which does all the same things. This is all
| really about vibes, about vibes being vibesy against
| social media, but not vibes being vibesy against Gmail,
| which would be a _major_ inconvenience to say no to, and
| it would _suck_ to have to pay $35 /mo for e-mail - at
| the very least!
| photonthug wrote:
| So basically your argument is everything is fine because
| consumers can opt out. Another tired old argument where
| even the people saying it don't really believe it.
|
| You can't even rent a hotel room without giving them an
| email and a phone number they don't need, and are looking
| to sell. If this works for you.. the person at the
| counter probably faked it rather than arguing with you.
| Some people will be happy when menus disappear and you
| need to install an app. What happens when you can't check
| out of the grocery store without the requisite likes-and-
| subscribes? What happens when your flashlight app has 37
| page ToS that says they reserve the right to steal your
| contact list for the purposes of selling flashlight apps?
| All is well because you can see in the dark, and no one
| makes you choose anything? Well I hope there's healthy
| competition amongst the manufacturers of your pacemaker,
| and they don't inform your insurance company that your
| health is deteriorating..
|
| If you've got no sense of right or wrong beyond what is
| legally permissible, just exercise your imagination a bit
| to look at the likely future, and ask yourself if that's
| how you really want to live.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| All you have to do is tell me how you are harmed by your
| email sold for marketing by a hotel room. The flashlight
| thing sounds like a bad actor that doesn't have anything
| to do with anyone's opinions about privacy, and it
| doesn't sound like it has anything to do with Meta or
| YouTube. I'd be most interested in naming a specific harm
| in something that their app telemetry does.
| photonthug wrote:
| I'm harmed because I did not consent to it, and that
| should really be enough for you. What intellectually
| honest reason do you have that it's ok to coerce others
| into things that they don't want?
| timeon wrote:
| Are you in ad telemetry industry?
| jlarocco wrote:
| > There isn't a single intellectually honest harm
| associated with the majority of app telemetry and for
| almost all ad data collection. Like go ahead and name one.
|
| The harm is the privacy violation. App telemetry needs to
| be "opt-in", and people should know who can see the data
| and how it's being used.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| >The cognitive dissonance is in the voters and users.
|
| People really need to learn to say "NO" even if that means an
| inconvenience "Your personal information might be shared with
| our business partners for metrics and a customer tailored
| experience" no thanks, "what is your phone number? so I can
| give you 10% discount" no thanks, "cash or credit?" Cash,
| thanks, "login with google/ apple/ blood sample" no thanks
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It seems entirely reasonable/consistent that we would allow
| some capabilities among publicly sanctioned, democratically
| legitimate actors while prohibiting private actors from doing
| the same.
|
| In fact, many such things fall into that category.
| daedrdev wrote:
| I would be worried if the state was conscious of what it itself
| was doing as a whole
| bee_rider wrote:
| It isn't cognitive dissonance, the state does lots of things
| we're not supposed to do. Like we're not supposed to kill
| people, but they have whole departments built around the task.
|
| Should the state do surveillance? Maybe some? Probably less?
| But the hypocrisy isn't the problem, the overreach is.
| kiba wrote:
| There are different organizations with different opinions. The
| government isn't a monolithic entity.
| cvnahfn wrote:
| The FTC is under the president's authority. This is election
| pandering, same as Zuckerberg's backpedaling on government
| censorship.
|
| This is for getting votes from the undecided.
|
| Everything will be back to normal (surveillance, data
| collection and censorship) after the election.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Begs the question of agency authority which is manifestly not
| resolved. You will find that the elections' results will
| effect the eventual resolution of the question of the unitary
| executive quite dramatically.
| munk-a wrote:
| I don't know if you've been watching but the FTC has actually
| been extremely proactive during this cycle. Lina Khan is an
| excellent steward and has pushed for a lot of policy
| improvements that have been sorely needed - including the ban
| (currently suspended by a few judges) on non-competes.
|
| It is disingenuous to accuse the FTC of election pandering
| when they've been doing stuff like this for the past four
| years consistently.
| srndsnd wrote:
| And has sued Amazon for their use of anti-competitive
| pricing.
|
| This is just what Kahn's FTC _does_.
| layer8 wrote:
| The FTC is bipartisan, no more than three of the five
| commissioners can belong to the same party. The present
| report was unanimously voted by all five.
| layer8 wrote:
| Since the federal government isn't a single mind (nor a hive
| mind), a cognitive dissonance can only be meaningfully located
| on the observer's side.
| vundercind wrote:
| Behind the ball by 15 years to start taking this seriously and
| beginning to _think about_ pushing back, but better late than
| never.
|
| Next please reign in the CRAs.
| devonbleak wrote:
| It makes me irrationally angry that I suddenly started getting
| spam emails from Experian. Like motherfucker I never consented
| for you to have my data, then you leak it all, now you're
| sending me unsolicited junk email? It's just such bullshit that
| I'm literally forced to have a relationship with these
| companies to freeze my credit or else I'm at the mercy of
| whoever they decide to release my information to without my
| authorization.
| twoodfin wrote:
| 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 (cheaper, better
| identity verification) to compete.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 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 that
| information", and the lender can go pound sand.
|
| Guarantee all the lenders will tighten up their operations
| very quickly, and consequently, so will the loans that
| appear on one's credit report.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Right. This is a problem between the lenders and the
| people who stole from the lenders. The person whose
| name/number was used shouldn't even be part of the
| transaction or part of the problem.
|
| They call it "Identity Theft" instead of what it should
| be called: Bank fraud. The term "Identity Theft" 1.
| needlessly pulls an otherwise uninvolved person into the
| mix, suddenly making it _their_ problem too, and 2.
| downplays the bank 's negligence.
|
| If someone uses my name to take out a loan, and the bank
| stupidly lets them, this shouldn't even remotely be my
| problem. I shouldn't even have to know about it. This is
| the bank's problem from their own stupidity.
| twoodfin wrote:
| 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.
| sib wrote:
| "Put all of the consequences of being defrauded by a
| borrower onto the lender" - that seems a bit strange.
|
| Imagine saying "put all of the consequences of getting
| robbed onto the bank, not the robber"
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Who bears the consequences of their home being robbed? Or
| mugged on the street? Or a contractor taking payment for
| services and then disappearing?
|
| Why are we subsidizing lenders' by putting this
| ridiculous burden on people who have nothing to do with
| the lender's business?
|
| The lender can pay to appropriately verify their
| borrower's identity, or go to court and sue for damages
| like everyone else has to.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Can you describe how you make them liable in this
| arrangement?
| twoodfin wrote:
| 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.
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| Yep. It sucks. Zero consequences of any import for those
| companies as far as I'm aware too. Tiny fines end up being
| "cost of doing business". Then they get to externalize their
| failures onto us by using terms like "Identity Theft", which
| indicates something was stolen from ME and is now MY problem.
|
| In actuality some not-well-maintained systems owned by <corp>
| were hacked or exposed or someone perpetrated fraud on a
| financial institution and happened to use information that
| identifies me. It's really backwards.
|
| PSA: If you haven't already, go freeze your credit at
| Experian, TransUnion, Equifax and Innovis. It will make the
| perpetration of this type of fraud much more difficult for
| adversaries.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| PSA pro tip: they will try to steer you toward "locking"
| your account. Don't fall for it. Freeze your account.
| Hugsun wrote:
| Do you know why they do this?
| singleshot_ wrote:
| No. I have some guesses. A credit reporting company can
| probably sell access to their data for good money if the
| account is locked but not if it is frozen?
|
| Put otherwise if a bank asks experian to look at my
| credit report and experian tells them to take a hike
| because my account is frozen, that's not worth much money
| to the bank. But that's the only credit account
| configuration that has any value to me, so I'll insist on
| it.
|
| I think "freezing" and the dynamics thereof are
| established by federal law, while "locked" is a think the
| companies made up so they had an account setting that
| they could provide that would give the illusion of
| security, while maintaining the ability to sell
| information associated with the account.
|
| In other words: evil people do evil things when we aren't
| paying sufficient attention. It's our job to hold them
| accountable.
| rkagerer wrote:
| That's not an irrational reaction.
| conradev wrote:
| For a while they were sending emails about my account that I
| was actually _unable_ to unsubscribe from[1]. I _knew_ it was
| illegal at the time, and when I finally noticed an
| unsubscribe button it was because the FTC finally
| intervened[2].
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/udy8rz/exper.
| ..
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-
| releases/2023/08/...
| itronitron wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E
| flycaliguy wrote:
| I think Snowden was bang on when in 2013 he warned us of a last
| chance to fight for some basic digital privacy rights. I think
| there was a cultural window there which has now closed.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| 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.
| Clubber wrote:
| >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.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > 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.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Un
| ite...
|
| Note: 2006 (Klien) predates 2013 (Snowden)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_S
| urveilla...
| Clubber wrote:
| >There's really nothing new from Snowden besides the
| names of a bunch of people to go kill cause they're
| spies.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_d
| isc...
| lesuorac wrote:
| You are dense. Imagine a government authorizes 10B for a
| bridge and then in 5 years a bridge shows up.
|
| Now instead, imagine in 1978 [1] a government authorizes
| "United States federal law that establishes procedures
| for the surveillance and collection of foreign
| intelligence on domestic soil" and in 2008 [2] amends it
| to not be a big deal if they're foreign or not and then 5
| years later it turns out they're doing just that.
|
| These bills are not secret. Were not secret. Have never
| been secret. It's not my fault you didn't read them but
| it doesn't make Snowden novel.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_S
| urveilla...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_S
| urveilla...
| Clubber wrote:
| >You are dense.
|
| Well, maybe you're one of those propagandists. If you
| can't attack the idea, attack the person, right?
|
| _Hand waves, nothing new to see here, carry on._
|
| The bills aren't what were exposed, it was more the
| techniques and scope. Like PRISM and XKeyScore and
| circumventing laws by sharing intelligence on US citizens
| with allies who aren't restricted by US laws. Spying on
| allied governments, etc. You know, that stuff.
|
| You should really click on the link.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_d
| isc...
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_and_Mitchell_defecti
| on
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
|
| Et cetera. These aren't new issues. The obsession with
| Snowden as a messianic figure is unhelpful in
| contextualizing the information.
| Clubber wrote:
| >The obsession with Snowden as a messianic figure is
| unhelpful in contextualizing the information.
|
| Damn the gall, give it a rest. Again, methods and scope.
| Which one of those exposes PRISM, XKeyScore and the NSA
| infiltrating Google servers? Which one of those exposes
| the companies that willingly "integrated" with the NSA?
|
| Which of those exposes US government spying on allied
| governments, recording private conversations, etc?
|
| Saying Snowden didn't reveal anything is a silly hill to
| die on. What is your prerogative in minimizing the
| exposure? Do you work for one of the companies implicated
| in participating in prism or something?
|
| Microsoft joined PRISM on 9/11/2007 (fitting)
|
| Yahoo joined PRISM on 3/12/08
|
| Google joined PRISM on 1/4/09
|
| Facebook joined PRISM on 6/3/09
|
| YouTube joined PRISM on 9/24/10
|
| Skype joined PRISM on 2/6/11
|
| AOL joined PRISM on 3/11/11
|
| Apple, the last holdout on the list, joined PRISM 10/12
| (after Jobs died).
|
| OP, this is why it seems nobody cares, there's plenty of
| people trying to sway public opinion on the matter by
| minimizing it. Nobody wants to believe their government
| would do things like this, so when someone offers that,
| "hey it's not so bad," they want to believe it. We've
| always been at war with Eastasia.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| Weird take. You have all these aspersions to cast on me
| and saying I'm trying to "sway public opinion by
| minimizing" when I'm literally telling one person to
| _learn more_ about these subjects so they 'll be less
| ignorant.
| simoncion wrote:
| > 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>
| roenxi wrote:
| There was something substantially new after Snowden
| though - prior to his leaks if you pointed out what the
| US government was likely up to people would laugh at the
| idea and ask for more sources. Afterwards they tended
| just accept it.
|
| There was a big cultural shift from the default
| assumption in polite company being "They're spying on
| Middle Easterners" to "they're spying on everyone,
| everywhere" when talking about US spying.
| digging wrote:
| > 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.
| immibis wrote:
| 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.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| 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.
| digging wrote:
| > I think people don't really understand what an enormous
| sleeping dragon the entire thing is.
|
| Isn't that what I said? Mostly we're debating semantics.
| My deeper point is that it's counterproductive and
| borderline misanthropic to argue "People just don't care
| about evil being done!" whereas the argument that "People
| seriously have no idea yet what they're 'agreeing' to"
| opens the door to actual solutions, for one inclined to
| work on them.
| neom wrote:
| But what is the "enormous sleeping dragon" my mom, dad,
| little sister, and teenage cousins need to understand? -
| and, even once it's patently clear, does it with
| certainly not result in another "...and???"
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's also a vast amount of people that were just too
| young to be aware of Snowden's revelations. These people
| are now primarily on TikTok what not, and I doubt there's
| much in those feeds to bring them to light while directly
| feeding the beast of data hoarding.
| davisr wrote:
| > I've seen no evidence of this
|
| Over 99% of Americans point a camera at themselves while
| they take a shit.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| And I'd bet over 99% of those people have never once
| considered that said camera could even be capable of
| saving any data without them operating it.
| davisr wrote:
| Very doubtful they've not considered it. When I go to
| coffee shops, I see maybe a quarter-to-half the laptops
| have a shade over the webcam. But when I see people using
| their phones, I've never once seen them use a shade,
| piece of tape, or post-it note.
|
| They use the front-facing camera of their phone so often
| that the temporary inconvenience of removing a shade
| outweighs the long-term inconvenience of malware snapping
| an exposing photo.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| The cover over the webcam might not be for security per
| se. It could be they don't want anyone at work - or home?
| - to accidentally see where they are. If you cover the
| camera you don't have to worry any such accidents.
|
| My gut says that for most people is the reason.
| digging wrote:
| But do you think they're taking a measured inventory of
| the possible consequences, both personal and societal,
| and saying, "No, I don't value that" ?
|
| _Extremely few_ decisions that people make are deeply
| calculated with cold logic. Most decisions are
| _primarily_ unconscious, automatic, and emotional.
|
| Example: A persons hears it's good to have a webcam
| cover, so they get one. Nobody mentions doing it for
| their phone, so they never even think about it. Then
| someday a friend does mention it, but that would be an
| inconvenient change, so the person's gut puts up
| resistance against considering it too strongly. They give
| in to their emotional response, instead of doing the hard
| work of changing their emotions based on the knowledge
| they have.
|
| At no point in the above scenario would the person state
| "I don't think mass surveillance is a bad thing." For me,
| that's why _I_ mean when I say people "aren't ok with
| it."
|
| If one's definition of people being "ok with mass
| surveillance" just means they tolerate it, that they
| don't _sufficiently_ resist it (and what level of
| resistance is sufficient? For a person with a webcam
| cover but no phone cam cover? Does adding a phone cam
| cover mean they 've declared their opposition to mass
| surveillance?), then how can you say people aren't okay
| with literally everything evil or wrong? Most people just
| won't summon enough activation energy to fight any given
| injustice around them, no matter how egregious it is.
| That's not a reflection of their morals and values, it's
| a reflection of how fucking tired we all are.
|
| I would challenge you to offer up in detail how strongly
| you have worked to resist mass surveillance in your life.
| You're logged in and posting on HN, so my guess is, you
| haven't worked hard enough at it according to someone's
| metric. Do you have a cover on your phone camera? Just
| the front one or both? Do you have a cover on the
| microphones? Do you let others add your number in their
| contacts or do you refuse to ever give out your real
| phone number?
| timeon wrote:
| When I explain to anyone about privacy and some
| service/products answer usually is 'yeah but it is more
| convenient so...'
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Snowden couldn't convince people that the privacy he was
| talking about meant a limit on government power. Not
| sensitive data. And honestly, nobody cares about anyone
| taking a shit.
|
| You can advocate for limiting govt. power ("LGP") without
| leaking any NSA docs. I don't think a single story about
| "LGP" changed due to the leaks. Everyone knows the
| government can do a lot of violence on you. So it's very
| hard.
|
| If you're a high drama personality, yeah you can conflate
| all these nuanced issues. You can make privacy mean
| whatever you want.
| verisimi wrote:
| Best comment I've seen on hn, maybe ever. Perfect
| refutation, comic, on point.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| 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. ..."
| tommiegannert wrote:
| >> 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.
|
| Isn't feeling powerless and being ok with it, ultimately
| the same thing: Complacency
| zo1 wrote:
| Not true at all. I'm a tech person, understand it all and
| the implications, and I'm not being a doomer about it.
|
| The more people faff about and fight for privacy as a
| misguided absolute, the less discussions we can have
| about ethical, safe and managed uses of surveillance.
| Privacy advocates have this weird habit of thinking they
| speak for everyone, which they don't.
| EGreg wrote:
| Over ten years ago I wrote about the root of the problem:
| https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169
|
| And here is a libertarian solution:
| https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-
| chang...
| newsclues wrote:
| The long term consequences of 9/11.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Facebook Employees Explain Struggling To Care About Company's
| Unethical Practices When Gig So Cushy
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DiBc1vkTig
| xyst wrote:
| an onion parody/satire video, lol
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related earlier this week:
|
| _Instagram Teen Accounts_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41572041
| mgraczyk wrote:
| "these surveillance practices can endanger people's privacy,
| threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from
| identify theft to stalking."
|
| Is there any evidence that any of these things have ever happened
| as a result of this sort of data collection? I'm not talking
| about data posted to social media, I'm talking about the specific
| data collection described in this FTC press release.
| mu53 wrote:
| I have been stalked and harassed by an Apple employee using
| data they were able to glean from their access at Apple.
|
| The impossible part is proving the abuse. All of these
| companies keep their database, access controls, and everything
| they possible can about these data lakes secret. The simple
| fact of the matter is that you will never have any evidence
| someone looked you up in a database.
|
| It is really easy to walk the line, but be obvious enough to
| intimidate.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Apple wasn't listed and (outside the app store) doesn't
| collect the data described in the press release.
| drawkward wrote:
| So imagine the possible abuses by people at companies who
| do.
| stiffenoxygen wrote:
| They mentioned practices that corporations do. I think any
| corporation that collects data on you counts here. I don't
| think its worth it to only talk about the examples provided
| in the article.
| stiffenoxygen wrote:
| They absolutely do, in fact they even tried to encrypt user
| data to not be as invasive as other companies but the FBI
| sued them and said no you can't do that, you need to keep
| that data so we can subpoena you.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Your comment is really coming across as "well, nothing bad has
| happened yet so who cares?" If that's not the case, please let
| me know how you meant it. If it is the case, surely you can
| imagine a world in which dragnet surveillance of people who
| have an expectation of privacy can be abused by corporations,
| institutions, or private individuals. It really doesn't take a
| lot of imagination to picture this world.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| It's been ubiquitous for around 20 years now (Google started
| doing mass surveillance for display ads in the early 2000s)
| and nothing bad has happened, so yes that's my point.
|
| If nothing bad happens for decades, and that is inconsistent
| with your model of danger, then the model is probably wrong
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Your argument boils down to "yes, someone has had a gun
| pointed at my head for quite some time now, but they
| haven't pulled the trigger yet so I don't see the problem."
| mgraczyk wrote:
| 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
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > 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 all, in any meaningful way.
| immibis wrote:
| What was the fallout last time this happened? Was it like
| pulling the triggers of guns pointed at people's heads?
| mgraczyk wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| If you don't think anything bad happens from personal data
| being accessed without one's consent, please reply to this
| comment and share:
|
| 1. Your full name
|
| 2. Your home address
|
| 3. Your social security number (if you're American)
|
| 4. Your mother's maiden name
|
| If you're right, then you have nothing to worry about.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| None of this data is included in the FTC report. They are
| not talking about this.
|
| My full name is Michael Graczyk, I live in San Francisco,
| none of these companies know any more detail than that
| about the questions you asked
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > none of these companies know any more detail than that
| about the questions you asked
|
| I suspect you mean that you haven't provided these
| companies with these details. What reason do you have to
| think they don't know those details?
| mgraczyk wrote:
| They don't know these details because they have never
| asked. It's not the sort of detail that would be useful
| for ads (except my home address)
| tway_GdBRwW wrote:
| Michael, I disagree with your point but I recognize your
| integrity. You just posted your name and city, and your
| HN profile shares more personal information.
|
| I respect that you are willing to stand behind your
| claim. Best of success with your current venture.
| tway_GdBRwW wrote:
| > nothing bad has happened
|
| ummm, WTF?
|
| 10x increase in teen suicide doesn't qualify as "bad"?
|
| or repeated DOJ lawsuits against Facebook because their
| advertising practices result in highly effective racial
| discrimination?
| drawkward wrote:
| Wait for the AI tools Larry Ellison wants to give to law
| enforcement to retroactively connect/hallucinate the dots.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Not only is there evidence of harms, there are is a whole
| industry focused on fixing the problem for those wealthy enough
| or incentivized enough to care.
|
| Do a bit of googling, but ADINT and RTB tracking will get you
| there for search terms.
|
| Or, continue being confidently dismissive of something serious
| people are taking very seriously. I am sorry if this FTC report
| targeted the source of your RSUs or otherwise motivated set of
| incentives, but there's no free lunch. The consequences are
| finally landing of your viewpoint, done collectively, over the
| last decade.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| > targeted the source of your RSUs or otherwise motivated
|
| I don't currently have any financial interest in any of these
| companies
|
| > but ADINT and RTB tracking will get you there for search
| terms.
|
| These are good things, do you have any examples of harm that
| has been caused by ADINT or RTB? Prosecuting criminals
| doesn't count for me
| srndsnd wrote:
| 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.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| 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.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| If you aren't directly harmed yet what liability would they
| have? I imagine if your identity is stolen and it can be tied
| to a breach then they would already be liable.
| drawkward wrote:
| Surveillance apologist.
| kibwen wrote:
| The fact that my data can be stolen in the first place is
| already outrageous, because I neither consented to allowing
| these companies to have my data, nor benefit from them having
| my data.
|
| It's like if you go to an AirBNB and the owner sneaks in at
| night and takes photos of you sleeping naked and keeps those
| photos in a folder on his bookshelf. Would you be okay with
| that? If you're not directly harmed, what liability would
| they have?
|
| Personal data should be radioactive. Any company retaining it
| better have a damn good reason, and if not then their company
| should be burned to the ground and the owners clapped in
| irons. And before anyone asks, "personalized advertisements"
| is not a good reason.
| pc86 wrote:
| I mean it's pretty clear that you _are_ directly harmed if
| someone takes naked photos of you without your knowledge or
| consent and then keeps them. It 's not a good analogy so if
| we want to convince people like the GP of the points you're
| making, you need to make a good case because that is not
| how the law is currently structured. "I don't like ads" is
| not a good reason, and comments like this that are seething
| with rage and hyperbole don't convince anyone of anything.
| drawkward wrote:
| 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?
| simoncion wrote:
| 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 scenario
| kibwen describes SHOULD be illegal. But I ALSO believe
| that it should be SUPER illegal for a company to fail to
| secure data that it has on me. Regardless of whether they
| are retaining that information because there is literally
| no way they could provide me with the service I'm paying
| them for without it, or if they're only retaining that
| information in the hopes of making a few pennies off of
| it by selling it to data brokers or whoever, they
| _should_ have a VERY SERIOUS legal obligation to keep
| that information safe and secure.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's pretty clear that you are directly harmed if
| someone takes naked photos of you without your knowledge
| or consent and then keeps them_
|
| Sure. In those cases, there are damages and that creates
| liability. I'm not sure what damages I've ever faced from
| any leak of _e.g._ my SSN.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean most people won't until that day they find out
| theirs a house in Idaho under their name (and yes I've
| seen just this happen).
|
| The problem here is because of all these little data
| leaks you as an individual now bear a cost ensuring that
| others out there are not using your identity and if it
| happens you have to clean up the mess by pleading it
| wasn't you in the first place.
| pc86 wrote:
| The real kicker is trying to prove _which_ leak your SSN
| came from. If your SSN gets leaked by 3 different
| companies, and 6 months later someone uses your identity
| to commit some crime, you can 't have each company share
| 1/3 of the blame.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I don't think thats a proper parallel.
|
| I think a better example would be You (AirBnB Host) rent a
| house to Person and Person loses the house key. Later on
| (perhaps many years later), You are robbed. Does Person
| have liability for the robbery?
|
| Of course it also gets really muddy because you'll have
| renting the house out for those years and during that time
| many people will have lost keys. So does liability get
| divided? Is it the most recent lost key?
|
| Personally, I think it should just be some statutory
| damages of probably a very small amount per piece of data.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The particular problem comes in because the amount of
| data lost tends to be massive when these breaches occur.
|
| It's kind of like the idea of robbing a minute from
| someone's life. It's not every much to an individual, but
| across large populations it's a massive theft.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Sure and if you pay a statutory fine times 10 million
| then it becomes a big deal and therefore companies would
| be incentivized to protect it better the larger they get.
|
| Right now they probably get some near free rate to offer
| you credit monitoring and dgaf.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| > I think a better example would be You (AirBnB Host)
| rent a house to Person and Person loses the house key.
|
| This is not a direct analogue, a closer analogy would be
| when the guest creates a copy of the key (why?) without
| my direct consent (signing a 2138 page "user agreement"
| doesn't count) and at some later point when I am no
| longer renting to them, loses the key.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I'm still much more interested in the answer to who is
| liable for the robbery.
|
| Just the Robber? Or are any of the key-copiers (instead
| of losers w/e) also?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I don't really care about the answer to that specific
| question, where there's only one household.
|
| What I will say is the guy that has copies of 20000
| people's keys should get in trouble if he loses his
| horde.
| 8note wrote:
| This version loses multiple parts of things that are
| important
|
| 1. I have no control over what was stored 2. I have no
| control over where the storage is
|
| The liability in this case is the homeowner/host, as you
| should have and had full ability to change out the locks.
|
| To make it more similar, I think you'd need one of the
| guests to have taken some amount of art off the wall, and
| brought it to a storage unit, and then the art later was
| stolen from the storage unit, and you don't have access
| to the storage unit.
|
| It's not as good as the naked pictures example because
| what's been taken is copies of something sensitive, not
| the whole thing
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > You (AirBnB Host) rent a house to Person
|
| this is outrageously incorrect analogy.. you ASSUME
| property ownership in the first statement. Where are
| personal legal records analogous to owned property? by
| whom?
| ryandrake wrote:
| That's the big problem with relying on tort law to curb
| this kind of bad corporate behavior: The plaintiff has to
| show actual injury or harm. This kind of bad behavior
| _should_ be criminal, and the state should be going after
| companies.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _before anyone asks, "personalized advertisements" is not
| a good reason_
|
| The good reason is growth. Our AI sector is based on, in
| large part, the fruits of these data. Maybe it's all
| baloney, I don't know. But those are jobs, investment and
| taxes that _e.g._ Europe has skipped out on that America
| and China are capitalising on.
|
| My point, by the way, isn't pro surveillance. I enjoy my
| privacy. But blanket labelling personal data as radioactive
| doesn't seem to have any benefit to it outside emotional
| comfort. Instead, we need to do a better job of specifying
| _which_ data are harmful to accumulate and why. SSNs are
| obviously not an issue. Data that can be used to target
| _e.g._ election misinformation are.
| thfuran wrote:
| So you're saying it's all vastly valuable and that's why
| it is right that it is taken without consent or
| compensation?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's all vastly valuable and that's why it is right
| that it is taken without consent or compensation?_
|
| No, I'm saying it's a common with a benefit to
| utilisation. A lot of discussions around data involve
| zealouts on both sides. (One claiming it's the god-given
| right to harvest everyone's personal information. The
| other acting like it's the crime of the century for their
| email address to be leaked.)
| rockskon wrote:
| See - your problem is you think you're talking to
| politicians, Facebook-era journalists, disinfo activists.
|
| Most people here have thought more about the the topic of
| privacy in the modern era far more than what some 70 year
| old politician has.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| >I neither consented to allowing these companies to have my
| data, nor benefit from them having my data.
|
| I think both of those are debatable.
| drawkward wrote:
| Go ahead, post your phone number here. It's not directly
| harmful.
| blondelegs wrote:
| 1-800-call-FEDS
| drawkward wrote:
| Bahahaha :)
| idle_zealot wrote:
| That's the whole problem with "liability", isn't it? If the
| harms you do are diffuse enough then nobody can sue you!
| bunderbunder wrote:
| 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, and we therefore decide that
| the behavior just shouldn 't be allowed in the first place.
| This is why there are building codes that don't allow certain
| ways of doing the plumbing that tend to lead to increased
| risk of raw sewage flowing into living spaces. The point
| isn't to punish people for getting poop water all over
| someone's nice clean carpet; the point is to keep the poop
| water from soaking the carpet in the first place.
| supertrope wrote:
| 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...
| bunderbunder wrote:
| 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.
| halJordan wrote:
| This is the traditional way of thinking, and a good question,
| but it is not the only way.
|
| An able bodied person can fully make complaints against any
| business that fails their Americans with Disabilities Act
| obligation. In fact these complaints by able bodied well-
| doers is the de facto enforcement mechanism even though these
| people can never suffer damage from that failure.
|
| The answer is simply to legislate the liability into
| existence.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The same way you can get ticketed for speeding in your car
| despite not actually hitting anyone or anything.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I get a feeling that liability is the missing piece in a lot of
| these issues. Section 230? Liability. Protection of personal
| data? Liability. Minors viewing porn? Liability.
|
| Lack of liability is screwing up the incentive structure.
| brookst wrote:
| I think I agree, but people will have very different views on
| where liability should fall, and whether there is a malicious
| / negligent / no-fault model?
|
| Section 230? Is it the platform or the originating user
| that's liable?
|
| Protection of personal data? Is there a standard of care
| beyond which liability lapses (e.g. a nation state supply
| chain attack exfiltrates encrypted data and keys are broken
| due to novel quantum attack)?
|
| Minors viewing porn? Is it the parents, the ISP, the
| distributor, or the creator that's liable?
|
| I'm not here to argue specific answers, just saying that
| everyone will agree liability would fix this, and few will
| agree on who should be liable for what.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's not a solvable problem. Like most tech problems it's
| political, not technical. There is no way to balance the
| competing demands of privacy, security, legality, and
| corporate overreach.
|
| It might be solvable with some kind of ID escrow, where an
| independent international agency managed ID as a not-for-
| profit service. Users would have a unique biometrically-
| tagged ID, ID confirmation would be handled by the agency,
| ID and user behaviour tracking would be disallowed by
| default and only allowed under strictly monitored
| conditions, and law enforcement requests would go through
| strict vetting.
|
| It's not hard to see why that will never happen in today's
| world.
| malfist wrote:
| > It's not a solvable problem
|
| Lawnmower manufacturers said the same thing about making
| safe lawnmowers. Until government regulations forced them
| to
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| https://i.imgur.com/mXU28ta.jpeg
|
| Specifically, 1970.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Well, something to consider is that part of why
| everything is so much expensive these days is that a lot
| of the solutions to those problems add costs. That cost
| needs to be absorbed by the price.
|
| One of the reasons it's so expensive to build a house is
| safety regulations. They exist for a reason, but they
| nevertheless add a substantial cost to building a house.
| If you had mandated such a cost to people living in 1870
| then a lot fewer people could've afforded a house.
| malfist wrote:
| Building codes are written in blood.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| In fact you can say that about most regulations of any
| sort, this seems to hit people's brains in the same way
| as how anti-vaxxers are so cavalier about things like
| Measles because we effectively eradicated it via
| vaccination (except it's now making a comeback thanks to
| anti-vaxxers) and people have forgotten how horrible it
| is, in the same way people forget, sure, houses used to
| be cheaper to build. And they also burned down a hell of
| a lot more, or were constructed poorly and not to code,
| or were built too close together, etc. etc. etc.
|
| Just about every regulation that exists for every product
| or thing or way of doing something was written not even
| after _a death,_ that 's usually not enough, it needs to
| be a _substantial number of deaths that can be directly
| linked to the thing the regulation covers_ and only
| _then_ does it become law.
| brookst wrote:
| Well, perpetual motion is also considered unsolvable.
| Perhaps the right regulation would make it happen?
|
| Or... maybe that line of reasoning isn't super strong.
| malfist wrote:
| There's a big difference between breaking the physical
| laws of the universe and Big Tech not wanting to spend
| money on moderators.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >Protection of personal data? Is there a standard of care
| beyond which liability lapses (e.g. a nation state supply
| chain attack exfiltrates encrypted data and keys are broken
| due to novel quantum attack)?
|
| There absolutely should be, especially for personal data
| collected and stored without the express written consent of
| those being surveilled. They should have to get people to
| sign off on the risks of having their personal data
| collected and stored, be legally prevented from collecting
| and storing the personal data of people who haven't
| consented and/or be liable for any leaking or unlawful
| sharing/selling of this data.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| I agree. Let me tell you about what just happened to me. After
| a very public burnout and spiral, a friend rescued me and I
| took a part time gig helping a credit card processing company.
| About 2 months ago, the owner needed something done while I was
| out, and got their uber driver to send an email. They emailed
| the entire customer database, including bank accounts, socials,
| names, addresses, finance data, to a single customer. When I
| found out, (was kept hidden from me for 11 days) I said "This
| is a big deal, here are all the remediations and besides PCI we
| have 45 days by law to notify affected customers." The owner
| said "we aren't going to do that", and thus I had to turn in my
| resignation and am now unemployed again.
|
| So me trying to do the right thing, am now scrambling for work,
| while the offender pretends nothing happened while potentially
| violating the entire customer base, and will likely suffer no
| penalty unless I report it to PCI, which I would get no reward
| for.
|
| Why is it everywhere I go management is always doing shady
| stuff. I just want to do linuxy/datacentery things for someone
| who's honest... /cry
|
| My mega side project isn't close enough to do a premature
| launch yet. Despite my entire plan being to forgo VC/investors,
| I'm now considering compromising.
| mikeodds wrote:
| As in.. his actual Uber driver? He just handed his laptop
| over?
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Yes. The owner is old, and going blind, but refuses to sell
| or hand over day to day ops to someone else, and thus must
| ask for help on almost everything. I even pulled on my
| network to find a big processor with a good reputation to
| buy the company, but after constant delays and excuses for
| not engaging with them, I realized to the owner the
| business is both their "baby" and their social life,
| neither of which they want to lose.
| TinyRick wrote:
| Why would you resign? You could have reported it yourself and
| then you would have whistleblower protections - if the
| company retaliated against you (e.g. fired you), you then
| would have had a strong lawsuit.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Because I don't want to be associated with companies that
| break the law and violate regulations knowingly. I've long
| had a reputation of integrity, and it's one of the few
| things I have left having almost nothing else.
| TinyRick wrote:
| So you would rather be known as someone who had an
| opportunity to report a violation, and chose not to? From
| my perspective it seem like you decided _against_ acting
| with integrity in this situation - the moral thing would
| have been to report the violation, but you chose to look
| the other way and resign.
| qup wrote:
| I wonder if I was part of the database that got emailed.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Very unlikely, this is a very small operation with a tiny
| customer base.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > it seem like you decided against acting with integrity
| in this situation ... you chose to look the other way and
| resign.
|
| I agree with this statement.
|
| This isn't a judgement, we all have to make choices; the
| "right" choice (the one that aligns with integrity) is
| usually the one that will be the least self-serving and
| even temporarily harmful. They did what was right for
| them, that's okay, but it was not the choice of
| integrity.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| How is quitting right for them? They chose a path that's
| bad for the users _and_ bad for them.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| Because that is the choice they made for themselves.
|
| How it plays out after is another matter entirely. But
| the choice was what they seemed to think was right, for
| them, at the time. Thus it was the right choice for them.
| It doesn't mean it was the right choice in terms of
| integrity, or the right choice for me, or you or anyone
| whose data got caught up in it. Nor was it right choice
| in receiving a paycheck the next week.
|
| But the way it was explained, it doesn't seem like they
| went out of their way to pick a "wrong" choice,
| specifically. They picked what they felt was the right
| one, for them, at that time. There were less ethical
| options to choose as well, and those were not picked
| either.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Someone choosing an action does not at all mean it's the
| right choice for them.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| I believe we are talking two separate things.
|
| You appear to be talking about the external consequences
| of choices, while I am talking about them making a choice
| based on what they believed was the inner rightness of
| their choice. They did not want to be associated with a
| company like that, so they made the choice to not be --
| because it aligned with their inner knowing of not
| wanting to be a part of that company. The right or
| wrongness in terms of external consequences is not what
| makes the choice, right or wrong -- _for them_
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| But they left the vast majority of the morality on the
| table. They even talked to a lawyer to _avoid_ reporting.
| So in the sense of making the choice that aligns with
| inner rightness and makes them moral, they still made a
| bad choice.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > making the choice that aligns with inner rightness
|
| Again, I am talking about -- them -- not anyone one else
| or what anyone else _thinks_ of it outside of them. I am
| not talking about "inner rightness" in general, I am
| talking "what they believed was the inner rightness of
| their choice" -- Their inner rightness. You seem to be
| talking about what -- you and/or others -- may believe
| from an outside perspective. My outside perspective is
| they made the choice that did not align with integrity.
| But that does not mean that was not the right choice for
| them.
|
| And again, they made the right choice, for them -- at
| that time. How that plays out after is neither here nor
| there and in your labeling it a "bad" choice for them is
| akin to saying that they have no real agency over their
| choices, and we outside of them are the final say in what
| is good or bad for that person.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Again, I am talking about things internal to that
| specific person just as much as you are. Not external
| anything.
|
| You are trying to focus on what they _believed in that
| moment_ , but I see no reason to use that in an analysis
| of whether their actions fit their own morals. Sometimes
| people make mistakes even by their own rules. If we only
| care about what someone thought right in the heat of the
| moment, that category of mistake would be impossible, and
| it's not impossible. Saying that mistakes are possible is
| not overriding agency.
|
| The core of it is in this line _" the choice was what
| they seemed to think was right, for them, at the time.
| Thus it was the right choice for them"_. I don't agree
| with that logic at all. Humans are not good enough at
| following their own motivations and principles. They are
| impulsive and bad at analysis. You can't assume that
| their choices will always be consistent with their
| personal parameters of right and wrong.
|
| Also, saying I think someone made a mistake is not
| denying agency. Don't be so melodramatic. Nowhere am I
| claiming to have the final say. I merely have the right
| to an opinion.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| I was never talking about if they made a mistake or not.
| That is after the fact and outside the scope of what I
| have been saying. I know it matters, but that is not
| within the scope of my first comment that started this.
|
| I took the little information they gave and from that the
| only true logical conclusion was they made the right
| choice for them at that moment. Full Stop.
|
| You're the one bringing the extra opinions into the
| matter and reading into a simple thing far too much. Most
| of the above I agree with you on outside of this
| particular thread. It has nothing to do with the very
| narrow scope of my original comment and attempted
| clarification.
|
| Neither of us can know 100% what was right or wrong for
| them in that moment, but based on the information of A.
| no longer feeling right about being associated with a
| place for reasons that they deemed important enough to
| come to this conclusion -- and B. aligning actions with
| that inner knowledge; makes it the right action (choice)
| for that person. If they changed their mind later, it
| does not change the immutable facts of that moment. It
| simply provides a new set of choices and options that is
| outside the scope of my original comment.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > I was never talking about if they made a mistake or
| not. That is after the fact and outside the scope of what
| I have been saying. I know it matters, but that is not
| within the scope of my first comment that started this.
|
| When I say mistake here, I specifically mean "mistake as
| far as their goal of making the right choice". And I mean
| that in the moment, using knowledge they have at that
| time, just like you're defining "right choice". Nothing
| after the fact nor outside the scope.
|
| > I took the little information they gave and from that
| the only true logical conclusion was they made the right
| choice for them at that moment. Full Stop.
|
| I don't see how they gave enough information to be sure,
| but more importantly you seemed to make a generic
| statement that _anyone_ making a choice like that would
| be making the right choice, and that 's what I really
| object to.
|
| > You're the one bringing the extra opinions
|
| I am not! Please stop misreading me! Why won't you listen
| to what I'm saying about my own argument?
|
| > Neither of us can know 100% what was right or wrong for
| them in that moment,
|
| Please explain how "neither of us can know 100%" can be
| true at the same time as "only true logical conclusion
| was they made the right choice for them at that moment.
| Full Stop."
|
| > A, B
|
| Remember that not reporting the company was also part of
| the choice they made. The basic description of the choice
| was to report, quit, both, or neither, and they chose to
| quit.
|
| > If they changed their mind later, it does not change
| the immutable facts of that moment. It simply provides a
| new set of choices and options that is outside the scope
| of my original comment.
|
| I'm not talking about whether someone might change their
| mind later with new information, per se. I'm making the
| objectively true claim that people don't always think
| things through, meaning their choice might fail to
| represent the knowledge and priorities they had _at the
| time_.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Since this thread seems interested, I will reveal the
| main issue being that based on my analysis, reporting to
| PCI and the state AG would have absolutely destroyed this
| (very) small business and the businessowner, someone who
| helped me in a very rough time, and thus I felt both
| options were bad/wrong, but resigning without
| whistleblowing was the better of the two options. I
| appreciate the analysis and really hope I made the right
| choice, and if I change my mind, I can still whistleblow
| on this, which has been a solace in the struggle in this
| decision.
| ValentinA23 wrote:
| The DOJ has just launched a corporate whistleblower program,
| you should look into it maybe it covers your case:
|
| https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-division-
| corporate...
|
| >As described in more detail in the program guidance, the
| information must relate to one of the following areas: (1)
| certain crimes involving financial institutions, from
| traditional banks to cryptocurrency businesses; (2) foreign
| corruption involving misconduct by companies; (3) domestic
| corruption involving misconduct by companies; or (4) health
| care fraud schemes involving private insurance plans.
|
| >If the information a whistleblower submits results in a
| successful prosecution that includes criminal or civil
| forfeiture, the whistleblower may be eligible to receive an
| award of a percentage of the forfeited assets, depending on
| considerations set out in the program guidance. If you have
| information to report, please fill out the intake form below
| and submit your information via
| CorporateWhistleblower@usdoj.gov. Submissions are
| confidential to the fullest extent of the law.
| aftbit wrote:
| >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 only way
| to engage with it AND keep your hands clean is to be in a
| position that lets you blind yourself to the problem. At the
| end of the day, we are all still complicit in enabling slave
| labor and are beneficiaries of policies that harm the poor
| and our environment in order to enrich our lives.
|
| >unless I report it to PCI, which I would get no reward for.
|
| You may be looking at that backwards. Unless you report it to
| PCI, you are still complicit in the mishandling of the
| breach, even though you resigned. You might have been better
| off reporting it over the owner's objections, then claiming
| whistleblower protections if they tried to terminate you.
|
| This is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer, I am not your
| lawyer, etc.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| I did verify with an attorney that since I wasn't involved
| and made sure the owner knew what was what, that I had no
| legal obligations to disclose.
| HansardExpert wrote:
| What about your moral obligation?
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| People are so quick to judge without knowing the details,
| the situation is more complex than I'm willing to go into
| here, and I'm comfortable with my decision.
| positus wrote:
| 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.
| ragnese wrote:
| > 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.
| positus wrote:
| I understand your perspective, but I maintain that "good"
| (morally pure) isn't a category any of us belong to.
| We're all lying, hateful people to one extent or another,
| and lying hateful people aren't "good", even if we
| haven't lied or hated as much as other lying, hateful
| people. "Less evil" isn't synonymous with "good".
|
| The argument that profit motivation is the origin of
| shady business practices ignores the existence of those
| businesses which pursue profit in an ethical manner. The
| company I work for, for instance, is highly motivated to
| produce a profit, but the way we go about obtaining that
| profit is by providing our customers with products that
| have real value, at fair (and competitive) prices, and by
| providing consistently excellent customer support. Our
| customers are *very* satisfied with our products and
| services, and they show their satisfaction with extreme
| brand loyalty. The profit we make year over year allows
| us to increase the quality of life for our employees, and
| keeps our employees highly motivated towards serving our
| customers. We pursue the good of our customers alongside
| our own, and we avoid shady business practices like the
| plague.
| aftbit wrote:
| See also "The Good Place" which is an absolute sleeper of
| a TV show.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| What is this even supposed to mean? Profit motivation is
| a concept invented by humans for humans to apply. If it
| leads to unexpected or undesirable outcomes then it's a
| bad idea. A system that requires all participants be
| paragons of some definition of virtue to produce good
| results is fundamentally unsuited for human beings.
| throwaway92024 wrote:
| No. There are no good or bad people. But people do good
| or bad things, all the time.
| bilekas wrote:
| > To me, what's missing from that set of recommendations is
| some method to increase the liability of companies who
| mishandle user data.
|
| As nice as this is on paper, it will never happen, lobbyist
| exists. Not to be tinfoil hat but why would any lawmaker slap
| the hand that feeds them.
|
| Until there is an independent governing body which is permitted
| to regulate over the tech industry as a whole it wont happen.
| Consider the FDA, they decide which drugs and ingredients are
| allowed and that's all fine. There could be a regulating body
| which could determine the risk to people's mental health for
| example from 'features' of tech companies etc. But getting that
| body created will require a tragedy. Like why the FDA was
| created in the first place. [1]
|
| That's just my 2cents.
|
| 1 : https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-history/milestones-us-
| food....
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _There could be a regulating body which could determine the
| risk to people 's mental health for example from 'features'
| of tech companies etc._
|
| I think ideas like this is why it's not going to happen.
|
| Our understanding of mental health is garbage. Psychiatry
| used to be full of quackery and very well still might be.
| Treatment for something like depression boils down to "let's
| try drug in a random order until one works". It's a field
| where a coin-flip rivals the accuracy of studies. Therefore
| any regulating body on that will just be political. It will
| be all about the regulators "doing something" because
| somebody wrote enough articles (propaganda).
|
| Problems like this are why people aren't interested in
| supporting such endeavors.
| intended wrote:
| That is not the treatment for depression.
|
| this argument reduces mental health to medication, which
| leaves aside everything from the history of mental health
| (asylums, witch burnings to today), leaps in medicine (from
| lobotomies, to SNRIs, bipolar meds and more), to simply
| better diagnoses.
|
| There are certainly tons of people here who have benefited
| from mental health professionals - overextending the flaws
| in psych simply to dismiss the idea of a watchdog is
| several unsupported arguments too far.
| night862 wrote:
| I disagree, in brief because the practical side of
| psychiatry is medication-dominated, mostly because
| medical research is difficult and expensive.
|
| There are some non-medication treatments for some
| psychiatric symptoms such as those caused by trauma
| (Prominently, EMDR) that some hail as actual cures, and
| even maybe depression (I am clearly not a doctor.) but in
| the case of depression I think you'll find its quite
| medication-heavy.
|
| The reason for this is that psychiatrists are Medical
| Doctors and Psychiatry is a medical field which is of
| course bounded by the means of medical science. This is
| not to say there is some "magic" at work which science
| could never understand--not at all. It is merely the case
| that medical doctors are a research paper oriented bunch,
| and most of the medical research which makes it into
| practice is either relating to anatomy or pharmaceutical
| interventions.
|
| Most of the treatments we have are pharmaceutical
| medications because most of our research dollars have
| gone into pharmaceutical research.
|
| I decided to edit this comment to add: In my personal
| opinion, is probable that psychiatrists et all, writ
| large as it were, have already figured out how to cure
| depression. Only, we cannot really manage to employ it
| because it isn't a pill, therapy, device or surgery.
| throwaway92024 wrote:
| Ironically, the proposed biological mechanism behind EMDR
| is totally incorrect, and everyone knows it, outside of
| some diehard polyvagal theory (also totally bunk)
| adherents. But the treatments do work for a lot of
| people, probably because it's just exposure therapy by
| another name.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Psychiatry is useful in the way Statistics is useful for
| math models we don't fully understand. Statistics let's us
| get at answers with enough data even though we don't really
| understand the underlying model at play.
|
| There a whole host of 'sciences' that are kind of 2nd tier
| like this, Psychiatry being one of them. Once we understand
| enough Neuroscience, it's likely to me Psychiatry will get
| consumed by Neuroscience which will splinter into more
| useful for day to day life categories as it grows (like a
| psychiatrist)
|
| Super book on the subject and also talks about the rising
| bar for individual culpability as we understand more about
| the brain: https://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-
| David-Eagleman...
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Through civil disobedience is the only way stuff like this
| happens in America. You're right about the incentives to
| those in power, but how do you think we got emancipation2,
| women's suffrage, organized labor rights, prohibition and the
| end to prohibition?
| samfundev wrote:
| While I also worry about lobbying, we'll have to lobby
| harder.
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm completely sympathetic to making companies more liable for
| data security. However, until data breaches regularly lead to
| severe outcomes for subjects whose personal data was leaked,
| and those outcomes can be causally linked to the breaches in an
| indisputable manner, it seems unlikely for such legislation to
| be passed.
| Onavo wrote:
| Then instead of regulating the companies, make SSN easily
| revokable and unique per service. I don't understand why
| Americans are so oppposed to a national ID despite the fact
| that every KYC service use SSNs and driver licenses.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Because they're the mark of the beast or a step towards
| fascism or something.
|
| I don't think it would take much to convert real IDs into a
| national ID, they are as close to as they can get without
| "freaking people out".
| Nevermark wrote:
| Emphasizing that the number can be changed would really
| help there.
|
| People could even generate their own number (private
| key), which they never gave out, and appeared differently
| to each account manager verifying it, and _still_ replace
| them.
|
| _When you choose your own number, it 's only the Mark of
| the Beast if you are the Beast! * **_
|
| _* 666, 13, 69 and 5318008 expressly prohibited._
|
| _** Our offices only provide temporary tattoos._
| mapt wrote:
| The expansion of KYC and the hegemonic dominance of our
| global financial intelligence network is a recent
| infringement on our privacy that would not necessarily pass
| popular muster if it became well-known.
|
| Most of our population is still living in a headspace where
| transactions are effectively private and untraceable, from
| the cash era, and has not considered all the ways that the
| end of this system makes them potential prey.
|
| The fact is that the market is demanding a way to identify
| you both publicly and privately, and it will use whatever
| it needs to, including something fragile like a telephone
| number 2fa where you have no recourse when something goes
| wrong. It's already got a covert file on you a mile long,
| far more detailed than anything the intelligence agencies
| have bothered putting together. The political manifestation
| of anti-ID libertarians is wildly off base.
| monksy wrote:
| The concern about organizations and the governments
| feelings that it needs to track you is a very valid
| concern. Why does the government need to make sure your
| "hand job from a friend" venmo payment to your friend is
| "legally legit"? (You can get transactions flagged for
| this and the moderator will shame you)
|
| Are you correct in what's going on? Yes. Are we placed in
| this with no option to resist? For the most part yes.
| wepple wrote:
| I forgot where I saw this, but the US govt recently announced
| that they see mass PII theft as a legitimate national
| security issue.
|
| It's not just that you or I will be inconvenienced with a bit
| more fraud or email spam, but rather that large nation state
| adversaries having huge volumes of data on the whole
| population can be a significant strategic advantage
|
| And so far we typically see email+password+ssn be the worst
| data leaked; I expect attackers will put in more effort to
| get better data where possible. Images, messages, gps
| locations, etc
| dantheman wrote:
| Perhaps you're not aware of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O
| ffice_of_Personnel_Management...
| wepple wrote:
| Very aware of that. That to me seemed like a targeted
| attack by a tracked APT group. What I'm referring to
| above is that the more vanilla attacks (ex: popular
| online mattress store gets popped) actually have national
| security implications, despite seeming like just an
| inconvenience
| grugq wrote:
| > Even minutiae should have a place in our collection,
| for things of a seemingly trifling nature, when enjoined
| with others of a more serious cast, may lead to valuable
| conclusion.
|
| -- George Washington.
| kragen wrote:
| yes, privacy is not an individual problem; it's a civil
| defense problem, and not just when your opponent is a
| nation-state. we already saw this in 02015 during the daesh
| capture of mosul; here's the entry from my bookmarks file:
|
| _https://www.facebook.com/dwight.crow/media_set?set=a.1010
| 475... "#Weaponry and morale determine outcomes. The 2nd
| largest city of Iraq (Mosul) fell when 1k ISIS fighters
| attacked "60k" Iraqi army. 40k soldiers were artifacts of
| embezzlement, and of 20k real only 1.5k fought - these
| mostly the AK47 armed local police. An AK47 loses to a
| 12.7mm machine gun and armored suicide vehicle bombs.
| Finally, the attack was personal - soldiers received calls
| mid-fight threatening relatives by name and address. One
| army captain did not leave quickly enough and had two
| teenage sons executed." #violence #Iraq #daesh_
|
| of course the americans used this kind of personalized
| approach extensively in afghanistan, and the israelis are
| using it today in lebanon and gaza, and while it hasn't
| been as successful as they hoped in gaza, hamas doesn't
| exactly seem to be winning either. it's an asymmetric
| weapon which will cripple "developed" countries with their
| extensive databases of personal information
|
| why would a politician go to war in the first place if the
| adversary has the photos and imeis of their spouse,
| siblings, and children, so they have a good chance of
| knowing where they are at all times, and the politician
| can't hope to protect them all from targeted assassination?
|
| the policy changes needed to defend against this kind of
| attack are far too extreme to be politically viable. they
| need to be effective at preventing the mere existence of
| databases like facebook's social graph and 'the work
| number', even in the hands of the government. many more
| digital pearl harbors like the one we saw this week in
| lebanon will therefore ensue; countries with facebook,
| credit bureaus, and national identity cards are inevitably
| defenseless
|
| imposing liability on companies whose data is stolen is a
| completely ineffective measure. first, there's no point in
| punishing people for things they can't prevent; databases
| are going to get stolen if they're in a computer. second,
| the damage done even at a personal level can vastly exceed
| the recoverable assets of the company that accumulated the
| database. third, if a company's database leaking got your
| government overthrown by the zetas or daesh, what court are
| you going to sue the company in? one operated by the new
| government?
| treypitt wrote:
| Are you saying you think more critical government
| databases than OPM or security clearance rosters are
| inevitably going to be breached? I'd like to think the
| government or corporation can effectively protect some
| databases at least...
| kragen wrote:
| those are already pretty bad, but i think the really
| dangerous ones are things like verizon's billing records
| and customer location history, credit card transaction
| histories, license plate registrations, credit bureau
| histories, passport biometrics, enough voice recordings
| from each person for a deepfake, public twitter postings,
| etc.
|
| consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_bombing_of_th
| e_Amsterdam_...:
|
| > _The 1943 bombing of the Amsterdam civil registry
| office was an attempt by members of the Dutch resistance
| to destroy the Amsterdam civil registry
| (bevolkingsregister), in order to prevent the German
| occupiers from identifying Jews and others marked for
| persecution, arrest or forced labour. The March 1943
| assault was only partially successful, and led to the
| execution of 12 participants. Nevertheless, the action
| likely saved many Jews from arrest and deportation to
| Nazi extermination camps._
|
| to avoid partisan debate, imagine a neo-nazi group takes
| over the us, which presumably we can all agree would be
| very bad. after they took over, how hard would it be for
| them to find all the jews? not just make a list of them,
| but physically find them? (much easier than it was in
| 01943, i'm sure we can agree.) how hard would it be for
| them to find all the outspoken anti-fascists? where could
| those anti-fascists hide?
|
| now, step it up a notch. how hard would it be for them to
| find all the jews _before_ they take over? it wouldn 't
| be that hard if the databases leak. and if you feel safe
| because you're not jewish, rest assured that neo-nazis
| aren't the only groups who are willing to use violence
| for political ends. _someone_ out there wants you dead
| simply because of the demographic groups you belong to.
| the reason you haven 't been seeing widespread political
| violence previously is that it hasn't been a winning
| strategy
|
| the situation is changing very fast
| intended wrote:
| Hey, on a long enough timeline the answer will tend
| towards yes.
|
| Do note, that this isn't just an Americas problem.
|
| Your data is probably on DBs in other nations.
|
| Plus - the playbook is to target weaker nations and then
| use them for staging grounds to target stronger nations.
| mapt wrote:
| "What fraction of the FBI and CIA do the Communists have
| blackmail material on?"
| EasyMark wrote:
| They'd need a lot less security if they stopped spying on us
| and saving all of our most critical ID data, period.
| deegles wrote:
| Nearly everyone's data has been leaked already. Any strong
| protections would only protect people who haven't been born
| yet imo.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Sounds like a bunch of crap the industry is already trying to
| sell the public and no its not working and yes we can do with
| out it.
| bhhaskin wrote:
| If your identity gets stolen, you should be able to sue all the
| companies that had a leak.
| nimbius wrote:
| I think the only reason were seeing this revelation from a
| federal agency after 20 years is to boost the governments case
| against tiktok.
| runjake wrote:
| YMMV, but it took me 15 minutes start to finish to freeze my
| credit with the 3 bureaus using the following instructions.
|
| https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-freeze-cre...
| saagarjha wrote:
| Ok, but this is something that shouldn't be my problem. And
| it's not just that; I have to go unfreeze it if someone needs
| to run a credit check.
| runjake wrote:
| Right, but you've got to do what's within your control,
| unless you're planning a Senate campaign and plan to resist
| significant and lucrative lobbying operations against you.
| wwmiller3 wrote:
| Unfortunately, that isn't enough to mitigate identity theft.
| Someone leveraging the recent National Public Data breach
| opened a checking and savings account using my identity (no
| credit checks are performed in doing so) then committed wire
| fraud using accounts.
| tombrossman wrote:
| YMMV indeed.
|
| Since moving overseas 15 years ago, I tried numerous times
| and it simply is not possible. All the forms require a U.S.
| mailing address to register. Same for online access to your
| Social Security account.
|
| There are an estimated 10 million Americans living overseas.
| Taken together, we are the equivalent of the 11th largest
| state. All of us completely blind to what is happening with
| our credit record and Social Security account.
|
| At this point I think the only way this gets fixed is massive
| fraud/exploitation by organized crime, so these organizations
| finally address the problem.
| closeparen wrote:
| Shared secrets are criminally negligent security architecture
| in 2024. We can authenticate identity and authorize payment
| without giving the relying party a token to leak or abuse. The
| energy behind this problem is good, but "everyone try harder to
| protect the shared secrets entrusted to you" would be a tragic
| waste of it.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| > [...] would be a tragic waste of it.
|
| The first time would have been a tragedy, from then on it has
| been farce after farce.
|
| Imagine a world where companies would have to prove the
| necessity of storing specific factoids. It would only take 1
| security researcher to prove it being unnecessary,
| invalidating that class of "legitimate interests".
|
| Today this value judgement happens in human brains, like the
| (correct) judgement in your comment. If we want to scale it
| objectively we would have to switch to formal verification. A
| whole industry of compliance checking could come to exist
| where a company wants to get its operations screened for
| compliance issues, so as not to suffer criminal negligence
| penalties.
| closeparen wrote:
| The problem here is the payments industry (continuing to
| issue and accept "credit card numbers") and the voters
| (refusing to authorize a proper national ID). An individual
| entity that has to conduct business under these
| circumstances has no real alternative.
|
| You are not being harmed by the storage or leakage of a few
| bytes, that's ridiculous. You are being harmed by the
| financial industry and government's insistence that
| knowledge of these bytes is sufficient to take your
| property or hold a debt against you.
| pkphilip wrote:
| But reveal any "classified" information about the govt and you
| will end up in jail. The severe asymmetry between what a
| citizen can do and what the govt gives itself the right to do
| is crazy.
| shawn-butler wrote:
| the full report[0] is a good read don't just read the summary..
|
| >>> But these findings should not be viewed in isolation. They
| stem from a business model that varies little across these nine
| firms - harvesting data for targeted advertising, algorithm
| design, and sales to third parties. With few meaningful
| guardrails, companies are incentivized to develop ever-more
| invasive methods of collection. >>>
|
| [0]: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Social-
| Media-6b...
| JackOfCrows wrote:
| Shocked, gambling, establishment, etc.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| 2016 Schneier on Security "Data is a Toxic Asset":
| https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_tox...
| kart23 wrote:
| > Profound Threats to Users Can Occur When Targeting Occurs Based
| on Sensitive Categories
|
| > Targeted ads based on knowledge about protected categories can
| be especially distressing. One example is when someone has not
| disclosed their sexual orientation publicly, but an ad assumes
| their sexual orientation. Another example is when a retailer
| identifies someone as pregnant and targets ads for baby products
| before others, including family, even know about the pregnancy.
| These types of assumptions and inferences upon which targeted
| advertising is based can in some instances result in emotional
| distress, lead to individuals being misidentified or
| misclassified, and cause other harms.
|
| If this is one of the biggest harms the FTC can come up with,
| then honestly as a consumer I don't really care. Having free
| youtube is worth getting a few mistargeted ads, or I CAN JUST
| TURN TARGETED ADS OFF. Advertising isn't someone harassing you,
| its an ad that I can close or just report as not being accurate.
| I'd really be interested to hear from someone who thinks getting
| a mistargeted ad is in top 10 most stressful things in their
| life.
|
| What I would really be interested in is the raw responses from
| the companies, not this report.
| macawfish wrote:
| Use your imagination?
| carb wrote:
| > I CAN JUST TURN TARGETED ADS OFF
|
| The only reason you have the option to do this is because of
| groups pushing back against advertising companies. Ad companies
| have no incentive to offer the option to disable targeting.
|
| If you like having this option available, then you should like
| this FTC report and the position they are taking.
| kart23 wrote:
| > If you like having this option available, then you should
| like this FTC report and the position they are taking.
|
| I can like other positions and actions the FTC has done, like
| requiring the ability to turn off targeted ads, and not like
| others, like this one. This is among the biggest problems in
| politics right now. Supporting a political party doesn't mean
| you need to 100% back all their opinions and policies, thats
| how change is effected in successful democratic systems.
| stiffenoxygen wrote:
| > I can like other positions and actions the FTC has done,
| like requiring the ability to turn off targeted ads, and
| not like others, like this one
|
| They weren't saying that was the case I think you're
| misunderstanding them here. But they are 100% correct, you
| are benefiting from other people fighting against this mass
| surveillance and yet speaking against it. I think you
| should do some research on why privacy is important and
| challenge yourself and your potentially entrenched beliefs.
| kart23 wrote:
| Read my first comment. I definitely agree privacy is
| important. All I'm saying is that this is not one of the
| harms we should be worrying about when saying targeted
| advertising is a problem, and I don't understand why this
| is an important issue that we should care about when
| targeted advertising can be turned off:
|
| "Profound Threats to Users Can Occur When Targeting
| Occurs Based on Sensitive Categories"
| russdpale wrote:
| instead of stupid recommendations, which are laughable, the
| government should actually enforce them.
| layer8 wrote:
| "The government" isn't a singular entity, and the FTC is an
| independent agency.
| notinmykernel wrote:
| See also: "How advertisers became NSA's best friend"[1].
|
| [1]https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/12/5204196/how-
| advertisers-...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| NB: 2013 (as is suggested by the URL).
| notinmykernel wrote:
| Do you think this effort was somehow scaled back?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I was only commenting on the publication date. HN tends to
| give weight to that.
|
| I'm not making any other implication.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Wait till the FTC discovers Full Story
| cynan123 wrote:
| Lina Khan has been on a tear. She actually seems to care about
| online human rights.
| montag wrote:
| I think this effort is positive, but a bit misdirected. Think
| data breach liability. Facebook and YouTube are willing and
| capable defenders of sensitive customer data. Watch the
| AshleyMadison documentary. Arrogant disregard for customer
| privacy and almost no culpability. These smaller, irresponsible
| players are where consumers are most vulnerable.
| gopkarthik wrote:
| Agreed. Mid-sized/smaller players are the places which have
| very poor data & security practices. Especially when they
| require PII as part of their operations.
|
| Meta, Google are much better stewards of their users data.
| One misconception I see is claiming these companies sell user
| data. I'd instead say that they sell user attention.
| justapassenger wrote:
| They don't sell user data for a very simple reason - it's a
| crappy business, as you can charge much much more with to
| recurring sales for heavily obfuscated access to the data
| than just one off selling of said data.
|
| When you think about it - initiatives are kind of aligned
| with user privacy (kind of, as there's much more to the
| story than this simplistic point of view)
| soylentcola wrote:
| The way I've always seen it is that they'd never directly
| sell user data because that is their most valuable and
| prized asset. It's what allows them to sell targeted
| access to users for so much money.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| sort-of agree .. the accuracy, timeliness and
| completeness of any real-world data will change.. many
| comments assume some kind of perfect knowledge, which is
| never the case. Selling snapshots of current profile
| understanding is not only better business, but can also
| evolves with the enterprise over years; meanwhile selling
| raw user profiles as a whole is more like "damaged goods
| at a discount" for quick profit maximizers. This said,
| "surveillance capitalism" is rife and inherently a step
| backwards from a democratic society IMHO due to
| information asymmetry, secrecy and income generation.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| The data was always a commodity to produce other goods
| (ads)
| xhevahir wrote:
| I will be surprised if she's still there six months from now.
| Trump will remove her if he becomes president; whereas if
| Harris wins, and the GOP take the Senate--a pretty likely
| scenario--I fear Harris won't hesitate to use Khan as a
| bargaining chip to gain confirmation of her appointments.
| r721 wrote:
| See also on this topic:
|
| >Two billionaire Harris donors hope she will fire FTC Chair
| Lina Khan
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/two-billionaire-harris-
| dono...
|
| >Kamala Harris' Donors Privately Urge Firing of FTC's Khan,
| SEC's Gensler
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-06/kamala-
| ha...
| Eumenes wrote:
| She is friends with JD Vance apparently
| seydor wrote:
| A little hypocritical when it comes from various government
| organizations all over the western world. Surveillance companies
| are essential for police to be able to easily gather data when
| needed fast. It is a happy accident that surveillance is so
| lucrative for advertising and also so effective for policing.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Different parts of government might disagree on the best course
| of action but I wouldn't call that disagreement _hypocrisy_ per
| se.
|
| It's also not true that it's an irresolvable conflict. Yes the
| cops can and do buy your phone location data, but even if we
| said that was fine and should continue, that doesn't also mean
| that any schmuck should be able to buy real-time Supreme Court
| justice location data from a broker.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Simple questions:
|
| Should ad prices be lower or higher?
|
| Should YouTube be free for everyone, or should it cost money?
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Having ads does not require mass surveillance --- that's really
| just something that social media companies have normalized
| because that's the _particular_ business model and practices
| they have adopted and which makes them the most amount of money
| possible.
| goosejuice wrote:
| Well put. Targeting and more specifically retargeting is the
| problem.
|
| Most companies can't afford to not do this when their
| competitors are. Hence the need for regulation.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Those are useful questions but I don't think they're the only
| ones that matter. Here's another one for consideration:
|
| What is the minimum level of privacy that a person should be
| entitled to, no matter their economic status?
|
| If we just let the free market decide these questions for us,
| the results won't be great. There are a lot of things which
| shouldn't be for sale.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > What is the minimum level of privacy that a person should
| be entitled to, no matter their economic status?
|
| This is an interesting question: maybe the truth is, very
| little.
|
| I don't think that user-identified app telemetry is below
| that minimum level of privacy. Knowing what I know about ad
| tracking in Facebook before Apple removed app identifiers, I
| don't think any of that was below the minimum level.
|
| This is a complex question for sort of historical reasons,
| like how privacy is meant to be a limit on government power
| as opposed to something like, what would be the impact if
| this piece of data were more widely known about me? We're
| talking about the latter but I think people feel very
| strongly about the former.
|
| Anyway, I answered your questions. It's interesting that no
| one really wants to engage with the basic premise, do you
| want these services to be free or no? Is it easy to conceive
| that people never choose the paid version of the service?
| What proof do you need that normal people (1) understand the
| distinction between privacy as a barrier to government
| enforcement versus privacy as a notion of sensitive personal
| data (2) will almost always view themselves as safe from the
| government, probably rightly so, so they will almost always
| choose the free+ads version of any service, and just like
| they have been coming out ahead for the last 30 years, they
| are likely to keep coming out ahead, in this country?
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| The issue to me is that these companies have operated and
| continue to operate by obfuscating the nature of their
| surveillance to users. This isn't a system of informed
| consent to surveillance in exchange for free services; it's
| a system of duping ordinary people into giving up sensitive
| personal information by drawing them in with a free
| service. I'm almost certain this model could still exist
| without the surveillance. They could still run ads; the ads
| would be less targeted.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I didn't mean to evade your questions, but my opinion is as
| follows:
|
| Yes I want YouTube to be free, but not if that requires
| intrusive surveillance.
|
| People who pay for YouTube aren't opted out of surveillance
| as far as I can tell. So I reject the premise of your
| question, that people are choosing free because they don't
| value privacy. They haven't been given the choice in most
| cases.
|
| On a tangential note, you previously asked if ads should be
| more expensive. It's possible that ads should be _less_
| expensive, since they may be less effective than ad spend
| would suggest: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-
| advertising-actually-w...
| DaleNeumann wrote:
| "According to one estimate, some Teens may see as many as 1,260
| ads per day.200 Children and Teens may be lured through these ads
| into making purchases or handing over personal information and
| other data via dark patterns"
|
| There is a long trail of blood behind google and facebook,
| amazon... Etc...
| 93po wrote:
| Even with ad blockers, we still see tons of ads. Corporate news
| like CNN constantly has front page stories that are just paid
| promotion for some product or service wrapped in a thin veil of
| psuedo journalism. Product placement is everywhere too. Tons of
| reddit front page content is bot-upvoted content that is
| actually just a marketing campaign disguised as some TIL or
| meme or sappy story.
| walrushunter wrote:
| Blood??? Some kid spending their allowance on a shitty phone
| game does not make them bleed.
| bilekas wrote:
| More details :
| https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Social-Media-6b...
| ianopolous wrote:
| We really need e2ee social media that's designed to protect, not
| addict people.
| janalsncm wrote:
| "E2ee social media" isn't a coherent concept. E2ee has to do
| with how information is transferred not what is transferred.
| ianopolous wrote:
| Sure it is: https://peergos.org/posts/decentralized-social-
| media
|
| It is social media where only the end users' devices can
| decrypt the posts and comments. Then surveillance is not
| possible. Targeted ads are not possible.
| herf wrote:
| Please make it so my kids can watch a YouTube video required by
| school without watching 20 YouTube shorts after. That's all I
| want.
| goosejuice wrote:
| Download the video?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| <https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp>
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpv_(media_player)>
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player>
| hackerdood wrote:
| Assuming it's on a computer (big assumption for kids) you can
| install this[0] extension and customize it to do things like
| remove shorts from appearing, disable autoplay, hide
| recommended videos, etc. it's a good way to not let YouTube
| pull your focus away from you.
|
| [0] https://unhook.app/
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| Imagine the respect the government has for your intelligence
| publishing this while purchasing said surveilled user data.
| carom wrote:
| The government is large and consists of multiple organizations
| with different goals.
| bbarnett wrote:
| There is no single "the government".
|
| Instead "The Government" is like a huge community. They are all
| supposed to adhere to the same code, but like any community
| there are those members that look for a way to bypass the law,
| without quite going over it.
|
| That's what said purchases are. And even parts of the community
| in the same branch of a government department, may do what
| other parts are not even really aware of. Or agree with.
| hollerith wrote:
| Although you have a valid point, I object to your calling it
| a community because communities don't have constitutions and
| cannot throw people in jail if they break the community's
| rules. Also, a community has much less control over who
| becomes a member of the community than a government has over
| who it employs.
| timeon wrote:
| Do people really have this simplistic mindset?
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Surveillance is cancerous. It keeps on growing, feeding on
| justification for every data point "just because", and then
| eventually it kills you.
| blondelegs wrote:
| Yes thank you for listening BRAVO BRAVO BRAVO
| EasyMark wrote:
| Let's add automaker to the list as well with all the cameras and
| microphones spying in auto cabins.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| > The report found that the companies collected and could
| indefinitely retain troves of data, including information from
| data brokers, and about both users and non-users of their
| platforms.
|
| As a non-user of many social media platforms, is there anything I
| can do to prevent companies from collecting data about me? It
| feels wrong that companies you do not sign up for are still
| finding and processing data about you.
| disambiguation wrote:
| Ever stop and think it's funny that Meta, Google, etc. are worth
| billions because they figured out how to legally fill a database
| with information about you? In any other time in history some
| might call it spying, but well they figured out how to do it
| legally, and it's worth billions. Meanwhile from a technical
| standpoint, remotely logging your data is a trivial thing, with
| consent of course. It's like, we made this imaginary wall (law)
| and spent billions building a road around that wall, and thats
| equivalent to econmic prosperity. Similar idea with streaming
| services versus file sharing.
| weixiyen wrote:
| they are valuable b/c they built something billions of people
| use. I suspect the revenue loss from every one of these FTC
| recommendations being implemented would not have a material
| impact on either of the businesses you mentioned
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Spying is done without consent.
|
| Why do people keep saying social media is just a database?
| Llamamoe wrote:
| The consent you give to web services isn't much better than
| if an electrician said "hey, can you tap this button to give
| me consent to work on your house?" and then installed
| undetectable hidden microphones inside every surface in your
| apartment.
|
| All of the UX of online consent forms exists to misinform,
| trick, and get users used to agreeing to sell their digital
| soul.
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| Facebook will create shadow profiles of you even if you've
| never signed up, never created a profile. They'll take your
| number from other people's contacts via WhatsApp. They'll do
| facial scans of you on photos other people upload.
|
| Even if you've never visited their site.
|
| Where's the consent there?
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Wait --- the emperor isn't wearing any clothes?!?!?
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| I wouldn't say that. If it meets our needs/wants and we are
| willing to pay for it, that represents value, no matter how
| silly it sounds. People pay money for plenty of nonsense:
| cosmetics, junk food, DLC. The fact that it's artificially
| derived (laws begetting paid workarounds) doesn't change the
| value proposition. For data gluttons the investment in data
| acquisition pays off. There are plenty of people paying money
| to work around laws, especially tax laws. Tax decisions have
| a scale from wisdom (an individual making prudent financial
| decisions) to deviance (a company playing shell games with
| businesses and bank accounts) but the line can be blurry.
|
| I do think the situation is dystopian though. Sharing data
| without explicit case-by-case consent should be disallowed.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Interesting point
| negativeonehalf wrote:
| Targeted advertising is a good thing. It lets people who make
| stuff more efficiently connect with people who want that stuff.
|
| The FTC chair is complaining that companies "monetize that data
| to the tune of billions of dollars a year," but all this means is
| that this service is tremendously valuable.
|
| The Internet's targeted advertising system is a major achievement
| of modern information technology and data science, and we
| dismantle it at our peril.
| ickelbawd wrote:
| Really? Peril? We'll be in perilous danger if we don't maintain
| targeted, invasive ad tracking? Get a grip.
| negativeonehalf wrote:
| I am saying that we should not destroy a major source of
| prosperity. Targeted advertising is far more effective than
| untargeted because it lets you show ads to people who might
| have any interest in what you're selling.
| Loughla wrote:
| That can be done without the massive accumulation of data
| on each of us.
|
| You join a Facebook group for fashion? Ads for fashion.
|
| You join a Facebook group for woodworking? Ads for tools.
|
| See how that doesn't require any personal information?
| darby_nine wrote:
| This is truly interesting from a dialectical perspective. The
| current narrative is that data is simultaneously infinitely
| valuable and presents zero liability. This contradiction can't
| hold forever (though it can hold longer than any of us are alive,
| of course)
|
| I suspect it will break in the direction of the narrative that
| "data wasn't that valuable anyway", regardless of how
| disingenuous this sentiment is. Nothing else preserves the
| economic machine while simultaneously dismissing the concerns of
| consumers. Perhaps we'll get special protection for stuff like
| SSNs to make it seem like politicians are acting on the behalf of
| their constituents (even though a competent manager of a rational
| society would simply ban use of ssn as a form of identification
| as this is basically public information.
| advael wrote:
| I honestly think that if half of the FTC's lawsuits under Lina
| Khan succeed, she'll have more meaningful positive change in the
| life of the average American to point to than the last six or so
| presidents
| fred_bellows wrote:
| from the report: "While the Order did not explicitly request that
| the Companies report all the types of Personal Information
| collected.." Why wouldn't they ask for all the personal
| information that they collect? Can anyone explain this?
| mont_tag wrote:
| Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that surveillance
| is going on in here!
| hermannj314 wrote:
| There are pretending to take this topic seriously because there
| is an election coming up. Your government is in bed with big
| tech, no one is coming to save you, everyone is on their own,
| expect no quarter.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-09-20 23:01 UTC)