Obama was promoting The Age of Surveillance Capitalism over seven years ago now. Industry insiders have known all this since 1999. Yet almost every single person I know carries a cellphone and drives a car with telemetry, things that are entirely optional. Most humans use Meta products regularly; also optional. For all the feigned outrage, people want this, and will work hard every day to pay for the next iteration of the surveillance apparatus.
PS: Something in this vein that many people are unaware of is that the 6G standard for cell towers is planned to include ISAC (Integrated Sensing and Communication). I haven’t heard a single AFK person talk about this.
By leveraging mobile network infrastructure – towers, spectrum, antennas, and some hardware – ISAC can detect, locate, and track objects (including passive ones with no electronics). This will enable a wide range of use cases such as UAV airspace monitoring, autonomous vehicle safety, industrial automation, and immersive AR experiences. Commercial deployment is expected alongside 6G rollouts in the 2030 timeframe
> For all the feigned outrage, people want this, and will work hard every day to pay for the next iteration of the surveillance apparatus.
My sad realization is that the Buddhists were right all along. The primary drivers of human mind, before self-purification, are greed, anger, and ignorance. What you are describing here is greed. People want to get useful things for free. This is the core of the problem. If people were, by default, expecting to pay for everything they use, spying on them would not be accepted. Instead, they want stuff for free and they choose to be willfully blind to the spying.
It's hard for me to take this perspective seriously when you describe a cellphone as "entirely optional". Our society is structured around the assumption that you'll have not just a cellphone, but a smartphone. Without acknowledging that, how can we have a realistic discussion? Many businesses require you to use a smartphone in some way. Some government services also require one.
Before cellphones, there were payphones everywhere for people to use when they needed to get into contact. Now there are hardly any left in most countries, so your ability to communicate would actually be worse than in the pre-cellphone era. Sure you could ask someone to use their phone, but if a stranger asked me that these days I would likely refuse.
> Most humans use Meta products regularly; also optional. For all the feigned outrage, people want this, and will work hard every day to pay for the next iteration of the surveillance apparatus.
This is a perfect example of the revealed-preference fallacy. The use of providers like Meta does not reflect a well-informed, freely chosen preference. Meta spends a ton of money to squash competition, remove viable alternatives, and to make their products addictive.
Traversing life without a cell phone is a fun experiment. Here and there I forget mine and spend a day without the distraction - glorious way to spend time.
5G edge devices already have support for mmWave and beamforming. The ability to track the micromovements of a person’s trachea as they think in words (”internal monologue”) and reconstruct their thoughts from movement data reduces to a software problem: the hardware is there and the algorithms have been established in literature.
- Consumers largely do not know these things. They are either not disclosed, or buried within a TOS that they cannot read. This is all done on purpose. The reason the TOS is obtuse, long, inaccurate, and updated weekly is so you won't read or understand it.
- In most markets there is no choice. For smartphones you do not have a choice, both Apple and Google do extensive surveillance. If you want to bank, get a job, and all around be successful, you have to swallow the surveillance cost. If you want a new car, again, no choice. If you work a job, again, no choice on the computer or software.
- It is not reasonable to expect consumers to do extensive research on everything they buy. Consumers have lives, children, jobs. They're not going to sit and spend 10+ hours researching every thing they buy, especially when most of that research is fruitless.
- There are tradeoffs with everything. Yes we can use Linux, I sure do. But for other consumers, now they need to spend a lot of time understanding that. Yes we can use Graphene OS, but certain apps won't work.
As someone who regularly attempts to give up a cell phone, it is not optional. A not insignificant number of things require it. It is the expectation society is now built around and therefore it is not an option. A car without telemetry is for the time being still optional. I take very good care of my old vehicles hoping I never need a new one.
I don't think they are optional in today's world. There's a lot of places where it would be prohibitive to try to live without a smartphone and what does it even cost to remove telemetry from a car?
The EFF or some other watchdog should put out some public ads that depict corporations as a creepy person stalking someone:
It's a lot more disgusting and universally hated when you hear about a peeping tom, or a pervert, or a jealous ex hounding someone,
but when faceless corporations and governments do it to EVERYBODY 24/7, everyone's like, ehh.
I mean, right now, just think about me, clicking on your HN profile, googling your name, going through all your public photos.. Don't you find me repulsive just talking about that?
It's about intention. I don't want someone threatening or evil going through my info but don't mind stuff being public in general, like this comment for example.
Pretty difficult when a lot of government people are in it looking for any opportunity to get into bed with private sector for their own individual gain, and when corporations have far more spending power and far less bureaucratic lag than governments. Governments are also just as hungry for data as corporations are.
And if you think a government has any interest in protecting their people, well, that is simply inaccurate in practice.
The government exists to organise and pacify its people, to prevent unpredictable or counter-productive behaviour. Primarily to protect the government from its people.
Regulation doesn't protect people, it protects the government, corporations, or both, in the same way HR protects the company from its employees. The people benefit coincidentally, if at all.
Corporations are the ones who make money for the government.
The people elect the leaders, and the corporations bankroll the operations. Every time a new hot startup comes about, the government anticipates an army of highly paid (read: top tax bracket) individuals being cultivated.
It has always been too cheap and easy for corporations to influence the government. The roi is tremendous. It is a problem that makes those hundred year old math proofs that AIs have solved small potatoes.
Honestly I can live with it because I know that my country will never turn into a theocracy or a dictatorship. That would require people to bow to a higher power than themselves and develop actual beliefs lol.
> Until recently, only spies and criminals had to worry this obsessively about their private statements being picked up by electronic equipment.
> But soon, the average person might need to deploy surveillance countermeasures.
Already there. If you want privacy and anonymity online, you're looking at literal terrorist cell tier tradecraft. That means pulling up documents written by people from the "counterterrorism community" and "intelligence community" and learning how all of these "clandestines" operate.
Unlinking one's identity from one's actions and speech requires some serious OPSEC now. It requires constant, never ending effort. It requires perfect execution and discipline.
This is paranoid. It is not that hard. HN famously can’t keep people out of here. They make new accounts. It’s not enough to IP ban. It’s impossible to retarget people even without vpn, all I need is a different cell tower.
I interact at various levels of anon all the time, it’s easy just cover your:
While this is true, it's not an all-or-nothing game. A little bit of countersurveillance is better than none, even if you're not that savvy. We can win by gradually raising the per capita cost of surveillance until it's infeasible to surveil everybody. Individual digital sovereignty will be achieved eventually, but we won't get there in a single step. Start small and iterate. Even simple things like periodically wiping browser cache or changing the apps you use can meaningfully raise the cost.
or just get on the alternet. If you and your peers care about communicating and you dont feel like doing state witch craft, the easiest thing is to just setup your own opt in systems and not use facebook, etc. run your own IRC server, file share, whatever. self host. it's easier than ever. Don't use discord, run your own communities, etc.
> Apple is rumored to be developing an AI pin or pendant that would serve as an iPhone’s constant eyes and ears; many other products of this type are on the way. AI accessories could one day be as widespread as AirPods.
But why? Don't we already have phones, watches, glasses, tags, and airpods? If they were making a siri version of alexa/echo, then maybe that would make sense, but do we really need a specific apple device just to ai?
I feel like sooner or later we all hollow out a little more. All this data is either used to prevent crime or to influence your thoughts and what you do in the world. Outsourcing your thinking to something else leads to digital dementia. What is the point of all of this technology?
It is the over-reaction to 911. The 3-letter agencies were all traumatized by not knowing in advance that they pushed every single anti-privacy initiative possible. Like the PATRIOT ACT which was already written when 911 happened.
The current administration has shown that they use all these recording stuffs in order to persecute their political enemies.
> influence your thoughts and what you do in the world
it is explicitly meant to do this -- that's the point of marketing and propaganda.
marketing exists to change consumer behavior. what do you think google or facebook intended to do w/ all of the data it's slurping up?
if they could beam a laser at your head to do full on mind control they would, and would auction off timeshare of the lasers to the highest bidder. failing that, they have to use more subtle methods
Looking at this from a perspective of someone who's searching for a job, I can promise you that even if you are recorded, there's next to zero chance your recording is being analyzed in any meaningful way.
You'd imagine that if this global surveillance was so ubiquitous, finding a match between an employee and employer would've been an... easier problem. However, even though supply is only a little larger than demand, the nature of this supply is to oversaturate the matching system, which then defaults to... I don't even know what, perhaps dropping 99% of all applications at random? Only taking 1% of those who applied sooner? Must be something like that.
Anyways, recording everything is a way to overwhelm the system with useless data. It would be much scarier if recording was selective.
> Meanwhile, only a few academics and small companies are defending us from these technologies. “The thing about cat-and-mouse games is that we know how they usually end up for the mouse,” Hartzog said. “And in this case, the cat includes some of the most powerful corporations to ever exist.”
This again points to how these problems have less to do with tech than with our socioeconomic system. The obvious solution (or step towards a solution) is to just shatter all such large tech companies. There should not be any companies powerful enough to do things like this.
What is more shocking is how deeply undermined democracies are.
A good example is the age sniffing. You literally have the same restrictive law coming up in all democracies, with only miniscule differences. This is not a coincidence.
73 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 20.3 ms ] threadPS: Something in this vein that many people are unaware of is that the 6G standard for cell towers is planned to include ISAC (Integrated Sensing and Communication). I haven’t heard a single AFK person talk about this.
it's easy to fall into complain hole, as that seems to fulfill the 1st part
but 2nd part is as much or even more valuable
https://www.ericsson.com/en/6g/isac
My sad realization is that the Buddhists were right all along. The primary drivers of human mind, before self-purification, are greed, anger, and ignorance. What you are describing here is greed. People want to get useful things for free. This is the core of the problem. If people were, by default, expecting to pay for everything they use, spying on them would not be accepted. Instead, they want stuff for free and they choose to be willfully blind to the spying.
Before cellphones, there were payphones everywhere for people to use when they needed to get into contact. Now there are hardly any left in most countries, so your ability to communicate would actually be worse than in the pre-cellphone era. Sure you could ask someone to use their phone, but if a stranger asked me that these days I would likely refuse.
This is a perfect example of the revealed-preference fallacy. The use of providers like Meta does not reflect a well-informed, freely chosen preference. Meta spends a ton of money to squash competition, remove viable alternatives, and to make their products addictive.
- Consumers largely do not know these things. They are either not disclosed, or buried within a TOS that they cannot read. This is all done on purpose. The reason the TOS is obtuse, long, inaccurate, and updated weekly is so you won't read or understand it.
- In most markets there is no choice. For smartphones you do not have a choice, both Apple and Google do extensive surveillance. If you want to bank, get a job, and all around be successful, you have to swallow the surveillance cost. If you want a new car, again, no choice. If you work a job, again, no choice on the computer or software.
- It is not reasonable to expect consumers to do extensive research on everything they buy. Consumers have lives, children, jobs. They're not going to sit and spend 10+ hours researching every thing they buy, especially when most of that research is fruitless.
- There are tradeoffs with everything. Yes we can use Linux, I sure do. But for other consumers, now they need to spend a lot of time understanding that. Yes we can use Graphene OS, but certain apps won't work.
Zero people want to be surveilled. They want the other benefits that come with technology and reluctantly accept, as a cost, some lower of privacy.
Yikes, was not aware of this
It's a lot more disgusting and universally hated when you hear about a peeping tom, or a pervert, or a jealous ex hounding someone,
but when faceless corporations and governments do it to EVERYBODY 24/7, everyone's like, ehh.
I mean, right now, just think about me, clicking on your HN profile, googling your name, going through all your public photos.. Don't you find me repulsive just talking about that?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oR4jTvxPruw
Corporations aren't people. They do not and cannot present a personal threat to you.
Even your trailing example falls flat on this: for the activity to be distressing you had to recontextualize it back to the individual level.
we need a government that is antagonistic towards corporations that are abusing us.
it’s wild how much influence they have and how little pushback the government ever gives them when they clearly abuse us from every direction.
And if you think a government has any interest in protecting their people, well, that is simply inaccurate in practice.
The government exists to organise and pacify its people, to prevent unpredictable or counter-productive behaviour. Primarily to protect the government from its people.
Regulation doesn't protect people, it protects the government, corporations, or both, in the same way HR protects the company from its employees. The people benefit coincidentally, if at all.
The people elect the leaders, and the corporations bankroll the operations. Every time a new hot startup comes about, the government anticipates an army of highly paid (read: top tax bracket) individuals being cultivated.
You gotta be on somebody's books
The lowdown a picture of your face
Your injured looks The sacred and profane
The pleasure and the pain
Somewhere your fingerprints remain concrete
No CAPTCHA, no geo-blocking, no archive.today annoyances
No Javascript, text-only
Option 1
Option 2 Option 3 Option 4@dang, please consider updating.
> But soon, the average person might need to deploy surveillance countermeasures.
Already there. If you want privacy and anonymity online, you're looking at literal terrorist cell tier tradecraft. That means pulling up documents written by people from the "counterterrorism community" and "intelligence community" and learning how all of these "clandestines" operate.
Unlinking one's identity from one's actions and speech requires some serious OPSEC now. It requires constant, never ending effort. It requires perfect execution and discipline.
I interact at various levels of anon all the time, it’s easy just cover your:
-Network (geo/IP)
-Device (useragent, cookies)
-Fingerprints (browser vendor, screen size)
And you’re off to trolling
This is an odd formulation. What is one's identity other than one's actions (physical body) and speech (mental state serialized into language)?
No kidding?
But why? Don't we already have phones, watches, glasses, tags, and airpods? If they were making a siri version of alexa/echo, then maybe that would make sense, but do we really need a specific apple device just to ai?
you don't say...
When I look at something these days I ask the question "On the whole does this benefit society?"
Society here been scale specific, so local community, wider community, population of my country, population of the world.
I.e. bin policies changes by my local council aren't going to affect someone in Africa and so on.
Depressingly the answer is almost always in aggregate... No.
We seem to be determined to allow the worst of us to make things worse for us to their own benefit.
Also, it lays the groundwork to absolutely crush dissent in the future .
It is the over-reaction to 911. The 3-letter agencies were all traumatized by not knowing in advance that they pushed every single anti-privacy initiative possible. Like the PATRIOT ACT which was already written when 911 happened.
The current administration has shown that they use all these recording stuffs in order to persecute their political enemies.
it is explicitly meant to do this -- that's the point of marketing and propaganda.
marketing exists to change consumer behavior. what do you think google or facebook intended to do w/ all of the data it's slurping up?
if they could beam a laser at your head to do full on mind control they would, and would auction off timeshare of the lasers to the highest bidder. failing that, they have to use more subtle methods
You'd imagine that if this global surveillance was so ubiquitous, finding a match between an employee and employer would've been an... easier problem. However, even though supply is only a little larger than demand, the nature of this supply is to oversaturate the matching system, which then defaults to... I don't even know what, perhaps dropping 99% of all applications at random? Only taking 1% of those who applied sooner? Must be something like that.
Anyways, recording everything is a way to overwhelm the system with useless data. It would be much scarier if recording was selective.
This again points to how these problems have less to do with tech than with our socioeconomic system. The obvious solution (or step towards a solution) is to just shatter all such large tech companies. There should not be any companies powerful enough to do things like this.
A good example is the age sniffing. You literally have the same restrictive law coming up in all democracies, with only miniscule differences. This is not a coincidence.