A truly great read, in particular when it comes to how the author explains the fallacy of the "nothing to hide" argument. I will definitely be re-using some of these examples in my own conversations.
That said, there is a sad irony to the proposed solutions. Having to take measures to hide from the authorities is precisely what Anne Frank and her oppressed peers had to go through, and we all know how well that panned out for them. It is also, in its own way, a form of self-censorship and a huge impediment to one's freedom.
Not to say that I don't appreciate the author's advice on this, as I do take some these measures myself, but the problem first and foremost is the ridiculous escalation of power by those in charge. The article even discusses some of the core issues on this matter:
Although the law is incomprehensible to the governed, ignorance of the law is not a defense when you’re prosecuted by the government.
As well as:
The institution of government is defined by its monopoly on both the creation and enforcement of law.
There needs to be real transparency, accountability and separation of concerns. Short of a revolution, I'm unfortunately not completely sure how this can be achieved. One of my hopes is that those who advocate and profit from this disgusting system will be exposed by this very system. Another hope is that people at large will downright refuse the legitimacy of the current system, in an organized and peaceful enough fashion that an alternate coherent system can safely emerge.
This article is surprisingly thorough. While many important topics are discussed, I believe one in particular contains a lesson that is extremely important for HN readers that are currently implementing tomorrow's popular technologies. Consider the story of Miep, and why we are able to read and learn from Anne Frank's writings today. (emphasis in the original)
Miep ... never read [Anne Frank's diary] *out of respect for Anne’s privacy*.
[She] said if she’d read it she would have felt obligated to destroy it since
it was filled with damning information, including her name and all the others
who helped the family survive, including an (illegal) underground supply network.
This statement is the clearest explanation I have ever read for why some of us have such a strong reaction to the organizations like Facebook, Google, and anybody else that is using "surveillance as a business model". Miep had the decency to respect Anne's privacy and not read her personal information.
When a business like Google asks people for personal information, they usually claim the information "isn't very important" or that they just want to run statistics over it to so the can select better advertisements. Websites regularly use google-analytics-style tracking to try and extract what people read and for how long (or where they point their mouse) so they can do similar statistics tricks. Absolutely everybody wants to merge all that with a vague notion that unifying everything through a (usually 3rd party) "social network" will somehow become profitable.
What personal data are they trying to exploit ("monetize")? The names (and aliases) people use, the connections to their family and what they discuss. Just the "metadata" from something like gmail is probably enough to map out any "supply network". These business that are creating "big data" are making any future "Anne Frank" impossible to hide, and are guaranteeing that any future Miep is captured.
So why do they do this? I see only two options: hubris or collaboration. Reading any HN thread on the subject will revel a lot of people who dismiss the idea of fascism and totalitarianism rising again (I guess they are waiting for actual death camps or something). They insist that they are simply trading some of their privacy for a useful service (that is still owned an operated by someone else), while ignoring that they are forcing their choice onto others when they insist on using Google's email or Facebook's chat servers. Worse, implicit in the argument that they are trading away "their" privacy is the hubris that assumes what is true today will continue, unchanged into the future.
Her father’s disclosure a decade earlier of a single piece of data,
their religion, destroyed his family. The disclosure was a legal
requirement to be issued a passport.
We never know the changes the future will bring, and to presume that you know that some piece of data is "safe" today and will continue to be "safe" in the future requires such a massive amount of hubris that I have a hard time believing it. Which bring me to the other option: they could simply be collaborators, willing to sell their friends and neighbors - and their own future - to anybody that promises enough profit.
sigh - I'm going to stop here, before I say something unkind. I will end with the suggestion that if you liked this article at all, you should watch Aral Balkan's talk[1], which discusses a lot of similar themes.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 29.9 ms ] threadDoes indeed deserve to be at the top of HN.
That said, there is a sad irony to the proposed solutions. Having to take measures to hide from the authorities is precisely what Anne Frank and her oppressed peers had to go through, and we all know how well that panned out for them. It is also, in its own way, a form of self-censorship and a huge impediment to one's freedom.
Not to say that I don't appreciate the author's advice on this, as I do take some these measures myself, but the problem first and foremost is the ridiculous escalation of power by those in charge. The article even discusses some of the core issues on this matter:
As well as: There needs to be real transparency, accountability and separation of concerns. Short of a revolution, I'm unfortunately not completely sure how this can be achieved. One of my hopes is that those who advocate and profit from this disgusting system will be exposed by this very system. Another hope is that people at large will downright refuse the legitimacy of the current system, in an organized and peaceful enough fashion that an alternate coherent system can safely emerge.When a business like Google asks people for personal information, they usually claim the information "isn't very important" or that they just want to run statistics over it to so the can select better advertisements. Websites regularly use google-analytics-style tracking to try and extract what people read and for how long (or where they point their mouse) so they can do similar statistics tricks. Absolutely everybody wants to merge all that with a vague notion that unifying everything through a (usually 3rd party) "social network" will somehow become profitable.
What personal data are they trying to exploit ("monetize")? The names (and aliases) people use, the connections to their family and what they discuss. Just the "metadata" from something like gmail is probably enough to map out any "supply network". These business that are creating "big data" are making any future "Anne Frank" impossible to hide, and are guaranteeing that any future Miep is captured.
So why do they do this? I see only two options: hubris or collaboration. Reading any HN thread on the subject will revel a lot of people who dismiss the idea of fascism and totalitarianism rising again (I guess they are waiting for actual death camps or something). They insist that they are simply trading some of their privacy for a useful service (that is still owned an operated by someone else), while ignoring that they are forcing their choice onto others when they insist on using Google's email or Facebook's chat servers. Worse, implicit in the argument that they are trading away "their" privacy is the hubris that assumes what is true today will continue, unchanged into the future.
We never know the changes the future will bring, and to presume that you know that some piece of data is "safe" today and will continue to be "safe" in the future requires such a massive amount of hubris that I have a hard time believing it. Which bring me to the other option: they could simply be collaborators, willing to sell their friends and neighbors - and their own future - to anybody that promises enough profit.sigh - I'm going to stop here, before I say something unkind. I will end with the suggestion that if you liked this article at all, you should watch Aral Balkan's talk[1], which discusses a lot of similar themes.
[1] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...