Privacy, Government, Surveillance, and You.

Strangely, I do not share your apparent optimism that an "open, free, anonymous" Internet would in any way guarantee anyone's safety or privacy.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I can see what you mean with safety, but how would a "open, free, anonymous" internet fail to give privacy?

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives

While I can agree that Fighteer's assertions are similar to paranoia or an absolute despondent attitude to the idea of privacy, I must agree with him.

Defending information, protecting it is way harder than it is to "hack it".

This does not mean that Big Brother is watching you right now and knows your fetishes and has you in a database, it just means that if someone with so much power as governments or companies WANT to know about you, they WILL, regulation notwithstanding.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

Yeah, unless you live off the grid entirely the CIA has all your shit.

There's just nothing you can do about that. If even they don't have it, they can get it and there's nothing you can do to stop them.

edited 31st Mar '17 6:56:39 PM by LeGarcon

Oh really when?

The advantage in such an arrangement would always be with the attacker. You could spend hours, days on constructing bulwarks to shield your information. You could encrypt every communication, use the best security software, be utterly paranoid about every interaction. All it takes is one mistake, and it doesn't even have to be yours. Your software could have security holes. In fact, it does have security holes. Your bank could get hacked. Your ISP could get hacked. The businesses you shop at could get hacked. And 99 percent of people will not have the tools, the time, or the savvy to protect themselves.

No, my friends, the optimism is very much on my side, because I believe that it is possible to set up a framework wherein privacy and security are as guaranteed as possible. The cynical point of view is one that says we should abandon all centralized efforts and instead cast the Internet into an "every man for himself" anarchy, one in which no "innocent" can survive for long.

So much of our modern commerce relies on the Internet, and it's going to keep increasing. Businesses want a stable environment. There's no profit motive in anarchy. Security breaches may cost you some inconvenience, but they cost enterprises tens of billions of dollars a year, and tens of billions more invested in a security patchwork that is itself something of a controlled chaos. They have every reason to work with a centralized system if it can help protect their bottom line.

edited 31st Mar '17 9:17:32 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

We wernt talking about hackers or the CIA, neither of whom are likely to bother with ordinary internet users, but your ISP selling information on you without your knowledge or permission. Stopping that is as easy as making it illegal.

It would involve defining what information is yours and what is not. That argument has gone on for ages, as the legal technicalities and definitions never caught up.

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele

Yes, that. Look, I'm in agreement with the ISP rule as part of a more general-case rule about information privacy. But I do not believe that rescinding it will Destroy Teh Internets wahh wahh. That kind of apocalyptic rhetoric only makes the people saying it look like reactionaries, and costs the overall privacy movement a lot of credibility.

Everybody in the world is not going to suddenly start using proxies. That's just not realistic.

edited 2nd Apr '17 7:17:59 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Much like Cyber has become a domain of warfare along with Air/Space, Sea and Ground, it has also become a part of normal life. It will be just another place in the world, with all the laws and control that involves. And with the same problems.

edited 2nd Apr '17 7:16:36 AM by TerminusEst

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele

Im just saying that if you disaprove of your ISP selling your browsing history to marketers, its easy to fix, just make it illegal.

Many online marketing companies (and others from related areas) would probably lobby/fight tooth and nail. Still, that is something that should be considered, no doubt.

"It's as easy as that, make it illegal." I suppose I shouldn't fall into my own version of the Perfect Solution Fallacy trap, but I keep pointing out that preventing ISPs from selling users' browsing data is merely a small part of the larger privacy fight.

edited 3rd Apr '17 7:10:02 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Well, yes, that is true, but in these days, we have to take what we can get.

I want to go back a bit to something I skipped over, but should not have.

Oh, how wrong this is. There is a multi-billion dollar marketplace for the stolen identity data of individuals. It's the meat and potatoes of the black market hacker industry. Sure, there are major hacks that can net big payouts, but there is no fish too small that it will be thrown back. Everything has a price, from user passwords to credit card data to zombie devices, and it's not even just about the risk and/or hassle for individuals. Botnets are a gargantuan problem for enterprise and government security.

Frankly, the Internet is at far more risk from security violations than it is from privacy violations. I would go so far as to say that the majority of users care far less about whether Google is tracking their web browsing (most, I would imagine, just passively accept it) and far more about whether someone is stealing their passwords and/or bank accounts.

edited 4th Apr '17 6:23:31 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Oh I'm gonna be sick. A Swedish company implants microchips in its employees. I tell you what, if my employer ever required me to put a chip in my body to be an employee, I'd fucking quit.

Hmm, April 4th...

So it's not a late April Fool's joke article.

Dammit this is disgusting.

I guess we all ought to be reading future employment contracts very carefully.

edited 4th Apr '17 8:58:12 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised

According to the article, which is fairly brief, the implantation appears to be voluntary. It's actually something of an interesting experiment — we have often talked about a future in which you no longer require cards or keys to demonstrate your identity, but rather that an implanted chip or some form of biometric data is all you need.

That the convenience of this can also lead to privacy violations is one of the horns of the dilemma. I see it as fundamentally inevitable for technology to reach a point like this, so we need to find ways to make it ethical, not ways to stop it from happening.

edited 4th Apr '17 9:02:51 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

One issue with this sort of thing is that someone is almost certainly going to find a way to exploit, steal, or "hack" it if they haven't already. It's extra creepy since the thing is inside you.

Disgusted, but not surprised

As I was reading that article, my thoughts were along the lines of, well that's just a more painful version of those hand scanners from the old movies. Plus a credit card. Ok, mildly futuristic, but I wouldn't do that.
Then I got to:

Yeah, can already see where this is going. I thought yoking employees to their desks was an American thing...

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives

It could obviously do that, and many other things. Like all technology, it's neither good nor bad inherently — what matters is the uses to which it is put. Like everything else, we need to build an ethical framework around implanted RFID devices such that they are used responsibly.

Let's take a less invasive example: most of us have cell phones, and they can easily be adapted as identity devices. If a company issues phones to its employees, it could in theory track their location in the building at all times. There are differences in terms of precision and that you could, if you wanted to evade tracking, leave your phone at your desk or whatever. But the fundamental ethics are very similar.

Or, since most companies issue ID badges to their employees, what's to stop them from putting RFID chips in those badges? Isn't it pretty much the same thing? It's not like companies can't figure out when you go to the bathroom or what you purchase at the cafeteria if they want to, even without tracking devices.

Edit: For some reason we keep having this fixation on the technology over the ethics. It's weird.

edited 4th Apr '17 9:45:23 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I wouldn't say so, it's a matter of perception. Technology you can touch and feel. Ethics are in the mind.

Understandably, people don't trust, or more radically, believe in ethics.

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele

And you can lie about your ethics.

Tech can be reverse-engineered. And circumvented.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

About Ethics, x-posting this from the mass transit thread. Uber didn't discover any new tech or put chips in its drivers, but the article lays out the Most Triumphant Example so far of how current tech and feedback from surveillance, are used to control employee (and customer) behavior.

How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons

Haven't the first clue of what protections against this kind of thing would look like. Also, this is a very long article. There's much more of interest.

edited 5th Apr '17 6:50:01 AM by CenturyEye

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives

These tricks are way too similar to the ones used to manipulate people into wasting thousands of dollars on shitty "freemium" games like Game of War: Fire Age.

edited 5th Apr '17 6:52:12 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised

Well, yeah. That is how the "Freemium" game market works. You have to pay careful attention to avoid being drawn in and spending way more money than you intended.

Again, though, I should stress that the technology has little to do with this, except in that it makes the delivery of these strategies easier.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"