I’m deeply frustrated on reading this, but not shocked really. It seems like people are being numbed into helplessness and powerlessness while they’re still ignorant and unaware. By the time many people realize how bad the privacy situation is and the impact it could have, resignation to the status quo may be the only choice — corporations and governments collecting and using data in ways people consider grossly inappropriate, creepy and a violation of their dignity and freedom — would be “too big and too rigid to change”.
I fear the worst is yet to come, and people’s neglect of these issues (for whatever reason) is going to be an irreversible crime against future generations (like climate change). How dare we consent to these or accept these or let these be?
People are very adaptable and will consider all that data collection less and less 'grossly inappropriate, creepy and a violation of their dignity'. XIX century Americans would consider an income tax in a peacetime 'grossly inappropriate, creepy and a violation of their dignity' after all.
The method they are using is take advantage of the size and complexity of our society -- if they make subtle changes in small silos within our society, we will fail to notice as very few people watch the world at such a macro-level.
> people's neglect of these issues
SJ Res 34 was a prime example -- most major social mediums attempted to censor it among other things from the general society. Now, ISPs are allowed to harvest and sell your data to the highest bidder. Terrible.
How can we fix this?
1. Vote for the right people.
2. Write them letters (not emails) telling them how much they suck if they don't do things for the benefit of people.
3. Stop using things like youtube etc. This gives WAY TOO MUCH narrative power to the overlords running those sites (and their overlords who control them -- do you seriously think the Alex Jones thing was a bunch of unique, coincidental decisions to ban Alex Jones independent of what any other site will do given that they all cut him collectively, at the same time? I'm not in any way saying his rhetoric is good or not -- but he was censored, and his free speech was blocked).
4. Understand that the constitution was a draft of laws from a long time ago and our overall makeup/structure of society has changed -- we really need to make new laws to keep society safe, secure and prosperous.
> 2. Write them letters (not emails) telling them how much they suck if they don't do things for the benefit of people.
I believe a prerequisite for these is more awareness among the people who vote. The ones in power don’t seem to care. The ones who care about privacy are not numerous enough (depends on the country) to vote the right people into power or get any traction on legislation and enforcement of laws.
I still feel that the Edward Snowden revelations didn’t achieve much at all in terms of real and long lasting change (perhaps my expectations are too high).
At the same time, I don’t mean to imply that we’re not seeing more awareness and concern from the masses. We need this to be accelerated and for the masses to be energized to take action. Lots of work to do still!
> The constitution repealed restrictions on voting and added universal direct suffrage and the right to work to rights guaranteed by the previous constitution. In addition, the constitution recognized collective social and economic rights including the rights to work, rest and leisure, health protection, care in old age and sickness, housing, education and cultural benefits.
The author states that RSA collecting data isn’t “wrong.”
Let me share a harsh reality: Nobody has to do anything wrong other than the act of collecting and storing the data itself - someone else can infiltrate, hack and leak the data - look at equifax.
The privacy revolution is very well under way.
The other day I was reading this post from APNIC and realized that even they are data mining[1], and nobody noticed because they just used different vocabulary.
Highly recommend everyone to read "Weapons of Math Destruction" by Cathy O'Neil. I have tried to stop using services that collect my data as much as possible, and when anyone throws the arguement "you must have something to hide" it's good to have a few real life examples of why everyone should fight back against data collection and information brokers.
"...the realization hit me, that if Good Guys like Google and RSA were collecting all this information, it was a given that Bad Guys were too, and we have no idea just who is."
Google is neither the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy'. They aren't there to look out for your best interests and we'd all be much better if we stop ascribing human qualities to gigantic corporations.
No other company tracks your online behaviour at such industrial scale as Google - and gets so little scrutiny for it.
For most of the tech community, Google's level of tracking is perfectly fine because Google has never had a data breach (that we know of). That somehow makes everything fine.
When it comes to matters of privacy, there's a lot of hypocrisy from the tech community.
"Don't be evil" was one of the most successful pieces of feel good propaganda I've ever seen from any corporation. People still regularly quote it as "proof" that Google is an altruistic entity which only spies on you to "provide you with a better experience" and "change the world" (with "for the better" being implied).
It's amazing how easy it is to get the majority of people to completely shut down their critical thinking abilities. In this case, it only took 3 words.
>It's amazing how easy it is to get the majority of people to completely shut down their critical thinking abilities. In this case, it only took 3 words.
One amusing thing I have noticed is that how fast all of the internet got converted into google catcha system which was originally supposed to convert books, but now a days just show traffic lights, cars, buses and fire hydrants. And no one, bats an eye. And even worse, still calls google the "good guy".
Do you know how many images it makes you click if you try to access it with a clean state?
"Mass psycological persuasion" -- isn't that just politics, though? I am wondering if the privacy revolution isn't just a cheapening of a service (effective one-to-many communication) that only governments and churches could afford in the past?
I think the real scary stuff hasn't happened yet, thankfully. When identity becomes enough of a _fuzzy_ notion for most people, borders will need to be redrawn, or eliminated completely. Then there will be a big war.
I personally think this will all go back somewhat. With which I mean, information about us being collected without our knowledge and everybody having all their data made available to big companies.
One reason for me to believe this, is that it's already getting somewhat creepy, even for the general public. When the new invigilation systems at china get demonized in public media, people will start to care about privacy a lot more. Which will open a lot of market space for companies focusing on privacy. Apple is one company I have in mind here. But, especially with articles about homomorphic encryption coming up more regularly and a lot of research on how to train ML systems with anonymization on end user devices (a blog post about Siri and differential privacy comes to mind) going on, I think companies will start to cater more to those needs of society. End-to-end encryption is already a standard feature in new messenger applications.
It's good that you are both aware and optimistic. Personally, I don't share this viewpoint. But I hope your optimism is well-founded.
China is indeed the canary in the coal mine. Lack of privacy there is explicit and almost universally accepted.
Will this become the new normal? Nobody knows, but I believe the answer is - yes it will. In the medium term, the world will come to follow, rather than reject China's approach.
To mitigate such an eventuality, we must study and take guidance from privacy outliers in China.
I disagree. I think that companies have such a vast and strong grasp on public discourse, opinion, and even whole countries, that it will only get worse and worse. I'm sure some companies will sell "privacy" at a premium for the few that can afford it, but I don't see any future where there will be actual riots in the streets for privacy.
Yeah I have to agree here. I don't see this getting any better. Look at how many people are willing to give up their entire lives worth of privacy to FB just so they can chat to friends, which they could do on any number of IMs and other services.
People just don't care.
It's a very very tiny minority who actually do, and the big companies and Governments are quite happy to ignore that problem until it goes away, as the vast majority pf people are steam-rolling any chance of privacy mattering in the future by accepting all this.
But it won't, there's too much money involved to demonize China. And there are many other such examples of mass surveillance from the five eyes, CCTVs in major cities, less and less "freedom" in the web. Just this week in my country (western European) the whole database of everyone that enters and leaves the country was moved from the police to the secret services, to avoid any kind of scrutiny.
I fear the worst is yet to come, and people’s neglect of these issues (for whatever reason) is going to be an irreversible crime against future generations (like climate change). How dare we consent to these or accept these or let these be?