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"There’s irony in any tech company confronting the government on privacy matters, considering how much heat many take for mining their own customer information

"There’s irony in any tech company confronting the government on privacy matters, considering how much heat many take for mining their own customer information and using it for advertising and other profitable purposes." See, I don't find this very ironic. In fact, my only real issue with data mining and analysis by these sorts of companies is the way governments can demand this info without my approval. If Microsoft or Google or Apple or Amazon offer me a service and state that "hey, we'll provide this service for no cash outlay but data you submit to our servers will be analyzed to tailor search results, advertising, and other behavior to your usage" I can opt into that knowing that I'm trading targeted ads for free email or hosting or whatever. If I don't think that's a good deal, I don't use the service. If I think "OK, ads are a fair price for this stuff" then again, I'm cool with that. But just because I agree to let Google read my location to send me traffic warnings before heading out to work doesn't mean I want the FBI to grab that data without my knowledge so they can determine if I might be a troublemaker. Just because I agree to let Amazon use my Amazon searches to suggest other products I might want doesn't mean I want the DEA demanding that info to decide if the gardening gear I purchased was for tomatoes or growing cannabis. I'm perfectly aware that you pay for the things you get, whether it's directly with cash or indirectly from advertisers who pay for access to your eyeballs. Those are things I can consent to or decline. But when people with guns and the ability to throw me in jail can demand access to that info without my knowledge, I'm no longer agreeing to the same thing. It's like signing a contract where someone else has the ability to change the fine print after I've signed it.

Tactic 11y ago
The government has this ability with near all other relationships you have. So much so that they have codified the few that it doesn't apply to. We put lawyers, doctors, clergy and spouses in a special category but others can be required to divulge any information they have on you with the appropriate order. (What's appropriate is another discussion) Ultimately, realize that any dealing you have is open to the government if they so desire and make that part of your decision making process.
- 317070 11y ago
  As a European citizen, I have a different view on this issue. While I do trust Google/Microsoft with some of my data, and I kind of trust my own government with my data, I don't trust the U.S. government for one bit, especially its judicial system. Luckily, I don't normally need to account for that, and I'd rather keep it like that. But this is like somebody at the other end of the planet changing the small letters of my contract which I made with a local subsidiary of the American giant. The contract was between me and a local vendor, and suddenly we have the American government intervening?
  - alan_cx 11y ago
    I'm in the UK, no idea where you are. I don't trust my government one bit with my data, or any one elses. The US so called justice system literally scares the hell out of me. From a UK perspective, its terrifying. Unfortunately for UK subjects, the UK government willingly hands our data over to the US government, and equally willingly allows us to be extradited on little more than a request. Being a European Citizen offers us in the UK very little protection from the US. As others have said, I have very little problem with the likes of google and MS having a lot of data on me, as long as they use it fairly and reasonably, and Im kept informed. Of course we do have the problem of government access to that data.
    - x0054 11y ago
      Out of curiosity, which aspect of the US leal system scares you so much? I was under the impression that UK has a rather similar legal system in many respects, and has a number of problems as well. Personally I am a little scared of the French and German legal systems. And last year I read a very scary article about the Swedish legal system on HN. US is doing a lot of things wrong these days when it comes to privacy, but when compared to EU, I find it to be about the same.
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        By European standards prison sentences in the US are very very long. There is also a perception that in the US the system is loaded against people who don't have enough money to pay for a good lawyer.
deelowe 11y ago
Agreed. It's not ironic at all. If you are in the business of data mining and some competitor comes along screwing up the data mining business for you (the government's actions and it's impact on PR), you'd be very interested fixing this problem as well. Most generally didn't care about this until they became aware of the government's activities.
CosmicHorrorSam 11y ago
Hot dang, that last line is insightful. Some people will argue that whenever you let someone have data about yourself, you're implicitly giving access to practically everyone by virtue of often imperfect security. I believe that those people are full of shit.
- dkarapetyan 11y ago
  As long as there is a data silo that is not under your explicit control you have indeed implicitly granted all parties willing to invest enough to break into that silo implicit access. Where exactly is that full of shit? The problem isn't the implicit agreements. The problem is lack of control and centralization. P.S.: I'd also tone down the language. We're having a discussion and calling someone else's opinion "full of shit" defeats the purpose of having the discussion in the first place.
  - abtinf 11y ago
    Why is it that data under your control is immune to third parties "willing to invest enough to break [in]", but data trusted to an otherwise reputable service provider is not?
    - task_queue 11y ago
      If you're the government, it is easier to milk the relationship you have with telcos and the tech industry to get them to hand over data voluntarily/through the court than it is seek out a warrant to confiscate physical property in a suspect's possession which makes it obvious that they're being investigated.
  - infogulch 11y ago
    Who says that you can protect your own data silo better than the experts at company X against these 'parties willing to invest enough to break into them'? In the general case, people are notoriously awful at security. Perhaps you, dkarapetyan, can keep a secure silo, but what about everyone else? Do they have no data rights just because they haven't studied cryptography for 10 years?
wfo 11y ago
Except that companies generally reserve the right to modify their privacy policies at any time without your permission, only notification, and that's if they even follow them in the first place.
roflchoppa 11y ago
Hey man people always bring up this point, does anyone have MORE information about how that infrastructure works? I made a Facebook account for my class the other day, with nothing but my name and email. Now I'm 50 friends deep with old classmates // co-workers. Creepy. But HOW intrusive is this system?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mindslight 11y ago
It seems like you're perfectly content for Googappazon to turn around and voluntarily sell "your" data to governments. Given that it's really their data about you, they don't even need to disclose this in the TOS. The best you could hope for is for companies to loudly prevent themselves in their contracts. Of course they could end up going through commercial third parties, or any other plausibly justifiable loophole when they get serious about increasing earnings. Even if they wholeheartedly break your contract and you provably find out, what was your consideration actually worth - a few dollars? You'd be in an even weaker position to show damages than you are now with the NSA. The ability to consent/decline is indeed a powerful distinction between corporations and government - I believe our world would be much better if every association were voluntary and we could opt out of things we found harmful. But juxtaposing governments/corporations and arguing against one by wholesale endorsing of the other, especially for something as slippery as data, is a Faustian bargain.
- abritinthebay 11y ago
  > It seems like you're perfectly content if Googappazon turns around and voluntarily sells "your" data to governments, since you've consented for them to use it. Use it under the limited license you agreed to. Not to use it for any purpose at all. This is disingenuous rubbish and you know it.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    I had elaborated why the distinction between the two is but a tiny epsilon in the second paragraph. I removed the second part of the sentence you quoted so perhaps people will continue reading rather than having a knee-jerk. There is no "license" (in the sense of copyright) for the collected data, so there are no builtin penalies for violating the contract. Theoretically a company could commit to $10k in liquidated damages per deliberate privacy violation, but this could be done today so I'll consider it when I actually see such a term in a contract, especially for a free service. Since you think it appropriate to dismiss me as deliberately writing "disingenuous rubbish", I would kindly ask you to elaborate what you believe my motive is for doing so. There is certainly a powerful motive to defend private surveillance companies, even if it's just people wanting to believe in what they're creating.
SilasX 11y ago
>It's like signing a contract where someone else has the ability to change the fine print after I've signed it. I don't disagree with your points about government access to this cloud information ... but this point would carry a lot more weight if these services didn't routinely get away with unilaterally changing their privacy terms. I also really doubt people have well-formed beliefs about exactly which privacy rights they are giving up for these services, and government agents would probably be in a lot more trouble if they misled you about which rights you were waiving.
- SonicSoul 11y ago
  Sounds like you're saying that frequent privacy rights changes and people not understanding their own rights in some way justifies this ?
- compactmani 11y ago
  Last I checked, the government gets in zero trouble when misleading you about which rights you are waiving. I thought that was quite clear by now?
  - thomasahle 11y ago
    Maybe they just forgot? http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com
axelfreeman 11y ago
You say that you don't want (your data) to be abused and you don't want to have problems because of that. Nobody wants that in any other case. It's not that special. Only the subject has changed to digital data on the internet. (German guy here. My english could be bad.)
- CosmicHorrorSam 11y ago
  My general understanding of the difference here is that, while you're correct that we don't want any of our information- our mail, phone calls, movements, etc.- to be abused and give us problems, the issue here is that law enforcement DOES have a legal and legitimate need to look at all those things sometimes with a warrant, issued by a judge, who has reviewed the evidence collected so far and deemed there to be probable cause. The situation we fear will come about instead is this one: law enforcement has access to all of our data, uses our data to find probable cause, present this to a judge, and arrest us. It's upside down- law enforcement is supposed to be limited in what it can do until it 'picks up the scent' of criminal activity, after which it can use an expanded power set. If we give law enforcement a greatly expanded power set to use before it has 'picked up the scent' of criminal activity, we would foolish not to expect all kinds of abuse (especially given the nature of 'big data'-driven methods of 'picking up the scent').
np422 11y ago
If google makes a mistake when data-mining my e-mail, I may get an inappropriate ad displayed next to my e-mail. It the authorities make a mistake when looking at my data, I may end up in jail or on the no fly list.
rayiner 11y ago
> But just because I agree to let Google read my location to send me traffic warnings before heading out to work doesn't mean I want the FBI to grab that data without my knowledge so they can determine if I might be a troublemaker Constitutionally, privacy is a pretty cut-and-dry concept. Information is either private or not. Private information isn't "information I don't want the government to have" it's "information I don't want anyone else to have." I'm not saying we couldn't restructure the law to express what you're talking about. But it's not just a matter of extending our existing principles to this new situation. You're throwing the concept of "privacy" on its head by saying that you have this information that's "private" but that at the same time some third-party entity (and its employees) actively sifts through to target advertising to you.
- LordKano 11y ago
  Constitutionally, privacy is a pretty cut-and-dry concept. Private information isn't "information I don't want the government to have" it's "information I don't want anyone else to have." You are incorrect. Your line of thinking runs in direct opposition to Roe V. Wade. You can share information with your doctor that you specifically do not want the government to have. There's nothing special about doctors, in a constitutional sense. They are a third party providing a service and it is most certainly possible to have shared information with a third party that is still private.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    I'm talking about "privacy" in the 4th amendment sense. The Griswold "privacy" line of cases is pretty much totally inapplicable outside the reproduction/sexual activity/family planning context, largely because they conjure up a "right to privacy" that doesn't really exist in the Constitution.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - ytpete 11y ago
      I'm still not sure about your claim that private information consists _only_ of "information I don't want anyone else to have." You can share information with another trusted party and still have an expectation of privacy (such that the government needs a warrant to compel access to that information). Conversely, you can have information that you don't share with another living soul, and the government can also compel access to that information - e.g. a warrant to search your private belongings. The standard for how the government can access your information doesn't automatically change depending on whether you've shared it with 0 or > 0 people.
aluhut 11y ago
Yeah that opt out theory was nice some years ago. Now it's not that simple anymore. Most of the times you just have no choice. What right has Amazon to do this? They get their share from the fact that I buy stuff though them. So I pay and still get analyzed. There are many more services that work like that. You can get around some of them by spending much money or acquiring special skills that would allow you to run things on your own but all that will remain a solution for few. The majority is trapped because data mining became natural. The legend of "free for data" now just applies to everyone. It went so far that some advertise with the fact that they DONT data mine. Privacy as a product. Also it's not like this majority ever understood what they are saying yes to. You know that long awful text nobody reads. The government looks very small to me if I consider all the other data mining parties currently active. Even with what Snowden toughed us. This fear that now somebody really connects the dots is a healthy one. Strangely the revelations did not lead to the same conclusions regarding the private sector. Good marketing. My workaround to this: I teach people how to create and manage useful fake identities.
- rarepostinlurkr 11y ago
  Not useful enough to be able to acquire a bank account, which requires a drivers license or social security number, which then requires a birth certificate. And as it turns out, it seem acquiring any of these things for purposes of a false identity is illegal. So much for remaining anonymous online just because I'd like to be, not because I need to be.
  - aluhut 11y ago
    Yeah...well. I was talking about normal people like my friends and family ;)
xorcist 11y ago
Sure you can, and that behaviour is rather mainstream by now, but it wasn't long ago it was considered very egoistical. Every time you install an app and you agree to upload your contact list to someone? That data was not yours to share. Every time you put a little tracking script on your web page in exchange for traffic graphs it is your customers data you sell. Not your. Every time you email me everything I write ends up indexed under my email address, to be sold to another company and cross referenced. I didn't agree to this. That like button you put up that reports all your visitors behaviours? Not your data.
nickbauman 11y ago
I don't see the irony either. I believe the critical difference is that corporations aren't (or at worst case shouldn't) in the business of using data in a way that they can legitimize the use force against their customers. Unlike government.

Tactic 11y ago

The government has this ability with near all other relationships you have. So much so that they have codified the few that it doesn't apply to. We put lawyers, doctors, clergy and spouses in a special category but others can be required to divulge any information they have on you with the appropriate order. (What's appropriate is another discussion) Ultimately, realize that any dealing you have is open to the government if they so desire and make that part of your decision making process.

317070 11y ago
As a European citizen, I have a different view on this issue. While I do trust Google/Microsoft with some of my data, and I kind of trust my own government with my data, I don't trust the U.S. government for one bit, especially its judicial system. Luckily, I don't normally need to account for that, and I'd rather keep it like that. But this is like somebody at the other end of the planet changing the small letters of my contract which I made with a local subsidiary of the American giant. The contract was between me and a local vendor, and suddenly we have the American government intervening?
- alan_cx 11y ago
  I'm in the UK, no idea where you are. I don't trust my government one bit with my data, or any one elses. The US so called justice system literally scares the hell out of me. From a UK perspective, its terrifying. Unfortunately for UK subjects, the UK government willingly hands our data over to the US government, and equally willingly allows us to be extradited on little more than a request. Being a European Citizen offers us in the UK very little protection from the US. As others have said, I have very little problem with the likes of google and MS having a lot of data on me, as long as they use it fairly and reasonably, and Im kept informed. Of course we do have the problem of government access to that data.
  - x0054 11y ago
    Out of curiosity, which aspect of the US leal system scares you so much? I was under the impression that UK has a rather similar legal system in many respects, and has a number of problems as well. Personally I am a little scared of the French and German legal systems. And last year I read a very scary article about the Swedish legal system on HN. US is doing a lot of things wrong these days when it comes to privacy, but when compared to EU, I find it to be about the same.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      By European standards prison sentences in the US are very very long. There is also a perception that in the US the system is loaded against people who don't have enough money to pay for a good lawyer.

deelowe 11y ago

Agreed. It's not ironic at all. If you are in the business of data mining and some competitor comes along screwing up the data mining business for you (the government's actions and it's impact on PR), you'd be very interested fixing this problem as well. Most generally didn't care about this until they became aware of the government's activities.

CosmicHorrorSam 11y ago

Hot dang, that last line is insightful. Some people will argue that whenever you let someone have data about yourself, you're implicitly giving access to practically everyone by virtue of often imperfect security. I believe that those people are full of shit.

dkarapetyan 11y ago
As long as there is a data silo that is not under your explicit control you have indeed implicitly granted all parties willing to invest enough to break into that silo implicit access. Where exactly is that full of shit? The problem isn't the implicit agreements. The problem is lack of control and centralization. P.S.: I'd also tone down the language. We're having a discussion and calling someone else's opinion "full of shit" defeats the purpose of having the discussion in the first place.
- abtinf 11y ago
  Why is it that data under your control is immune to third parties "willing to invest enough to break [in]", but data trusted to an otherwise reputable service provider is not?
  - task_queue 11y ago
    If you're the government, it is easier to milk the relationship you have with telcos and the tech industry to get them to hand over data voluntarily/through the court than it is seek out a warrant to confiscate physical property in a suspect's possession which makes it obvious that they're being investigated.
- infogulch 11y ago
  Who says that you can protect your own data silo better than the experts at company X against these 'parties willing to invest enough to break into them'? In the general case, people are notoriously awful at security. Perhaps you, dkarapetyan, can keep a secure silo, but what about everyone else? Do they have no data rights just because they haven't studied cryptography for 10 years?

wfo 11y ago

Except that companies generally reserve the right to modify their privacy policies at any time without your permission, only notification, and that's if they even follow them in the first place.

roflchoppa 11y ago

Hey man people always bring up this point, does anyone have MORE information about how that infrastructure works? I made a Facebook account for my class the other day, with nothing but my name and email. Now I'm 50 friends deep with old classmates // co-workers. Creepy. But HOW intrusive is this system?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

mindslight 11y ago

It seems like you're perfectly content for Googappazon to turn around and voluntarily sell "your" data to governments. Given that it's really their data about you, they don't even need to disclose this in the TOS. The best you could hope for is for companies to loudly prevent themselves in their contracts. Of course they could end up going through commercial third parties, or any other plausibly justifiable loophole when they get serious about increasing earnings. Even if they wholeheartedly break your contract and you provably find out, what was your consideration actually worth - a few dollars? You'd be in an even weaker position to show damages than you are now with the NSA. The ability to consent/decline is indeed a powerful distinction between corporations and government - I believe our world would be much better if every association were voluntary and we could opt out of things we found harmful. But juxtaposing governments/corporations and arguing against one by wholesale endorsing of the other, especially for something as slippery as data, is a Faustian bargain.

abritinthebay 11y ago
> It seems like you're perfectly content if Googappazon turns around and voluntarily sells "your" data to governments, since you've consented for them to use it. Use it under the limited license you agreed to. Not to use it for any purpose at all. This is disingenuous rubbish and you know it.
- mindslight 11y ago
  I had elaborated why the distinction between the two is but a tiny epsilon in the second paragraph. I removed the second part of the sentence you quoted so perhaps people will continue reading rather than having a knee-jerk. There is no "license" (in the sense of copyright) for the collected data, so there are no builtin penalies for violating the contract. Theoretically a company could commit to $10k in liquidated damages per deliberate privacy violation, but this could be done today so I'll consider it when I actually see such a term in a contract, especially for a free service. Since you think it appropriate to dismiss me as deliberately writing "disingenuous rubbish", I would kindly ask you to elaborate what you believe my motive is for doing so. There is certainly a powerful motive to defend private surveillance companies, even if it's just people wanting to believe in what they're creating.

SilasX 11y ago

>It's like signing a contract where someone else has the ability to change the fine print after I've signed it. I don't disagree with your points about government access to this cloud information ... but this point would carry a lot more weight if these services didn't routinely get away with unilaterally changing their privacy terms. I also really doubt people have well-formed beliefs about exactly which privacy rights they are giving up for these services, and government agents would probably be in a lot more trouble if they misled you about which rights you were waiving.

SonicSoul 11y ago
Sounds like you're saying that frequent privacy rights changes and people not understanding their own rights in some way justifies this ?
compactmani 11y ago
Last I checked, the government gets in zero trouble when misleading you about which rights you are waiving. I thought that was quite clear by now?
- thomasahle 11y ago
  Maybe they just forgot? http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com

axelfreeman 11y ago

You say that you don't want (your data) to be abused and you don't want to have problems because of that. Nobody wants that in any other case. It's not that special. Only the subject has changed to digital data on the internet. (German guy here. My english could be bad.)

CosmicHorrorSam 11y ago
My general understanding of the difference here is that, while you're correct that we don't want any of our information- our mail, phone calls, movements, etc.- to be abused and give us problems, the issue here is that law enforcement DOES have a legal and legitimate need to look at all those things sometimes with a warrant, issued by a judge, who has reviewed the evidence collected so far and deemed there to be probable cause. The situation we fear will come about instead is this one: law enforcement has access to all of our data, uses our data to find probable cause, present this to a judge, and arrest us. It's upside down- law enforcement is supposed to be limited in what it can do until it 'picks up the scent' of criminal activity, after which it can use an expanded power set. If we give law enforcement a greatly expanded power set to use before it has 'picked up the scent' of criminal activity, we would foolish not to expect all kinds of abuse (especially given the nature of 'big data'-driven methods of 'picking up the scent').

np422 11y ago

If google makes a mistake when data-mining my e-mail, I may get an inappropriate ad displayed next to my e-mail. It the authorities make a mistake when looking at my data, I may end up in jail or on the no fly list.

rayiner 11y ago

> But just because I agree to let Google read my location to send me traffic warnings before heading out to work doesn't mean I want the FBI to grab that data without my knowledge so they can determine if I might be a troublemaker Constitutionally, privacy is a pretty cut-and-dry concept. Information is either private or not. Private information isn't "information I don't want the government to have" it's "information I don't want anyone else to have." I'm not saying we couldn't restructure the law to express what you're talking about. But it's not just a matter of extending our existing principles to this new situation. You're throwing the concept of "privacy" on its head by saying that you have this information that's "private" but that at the same time some third-party entity (and its employees) actively sifts through to target advertising to you.

LordKano 11y ago
Constitutionally, privacy is a pretty cut-and-dry concept. Private information isn't "information I don't want the government to have" it's "information I don't want anyone else to have." You are incorrect. Your line of thinking runs in direct opposition to Roe V. Wade. You can share information with your doctor that you specifically do not want the government to have. There's nothing special about doctors, in a constitutional sense. They are a third party providing a service and it is most certainly possible to have shared information with a third party that is still private.
- rayiner 11y ago
  I'm talking about "privacy" in the 4th amendment sense. The Griswold "privacy" line of cases is pretty much totally inapplicable outside the reproduction/sexual activity/family planning context, largely because they conjure up a "right to privacy" that doesn't really exist in the Constitution.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - ytpete 11y ago
    I'm still not sure about your claim that private information consists _only_ of "information I don't want anyone else to have." You can share information with another trusted party and still have an expectation of privacy (such that the government needs a warrant to compel access to that information). Conversely, you can have information that you don't share with another living soul, and the government can also compel access to that information - e.g. a warrant to search your private belongings. The standard for how the government can access your information doesn't automatically change depending on whether you've shared it with 0 or > 0 people.

aluhut 11y ago

Yeah that opt out theory was nice some years ago. Now it's not that simple anymore. Most of the times you just have no choice. What right has Amazon to do this? They get their share from the fact that I buy stuff though them. So I pay and still get analyzed. There are many more services that work like that. You can get around some of them by spending much money or acquiring special skills that would allow you to run things on your own but all that will remain a solution for few. The majority is trapped because data mining became natural. The legend of "free for data" now just applies to everyone. It went so far that some advertise with the fact that they DONT data mine. Privacy as a product. Also it's not like this majority ever understood what they are saying yes to. You know that long awful text nobody reads. The government looks very small to me if I consider all the other data mining parties currently active. Even with what Snowden toughed us. This fear that now somebody really connects the dots is a healthy one. Strangely the revelations did not lead to the same conclusions regarding the private sector. Good marketing. My workaround to this: I teach people how to create and manage useful fake identities.

rarepostinlurkr 11y ago
Not useful enough to be able to acquire a bank account, which requires a drivers license or social security number, which then requires a birth certificate. And as it turns out, it seem acquiring any of these things for purposes of a false identity is illegal. So much for remaining anonymous online just because I'd like to be, not because I need to be.
- aluhut 11y ago
  Yeah...well. I was talking about normal people like my friends and family ;)

xorcist 11y ago

Sure you can, and that behaviour is rather mainstream by now, but it wasn't long ago it was considered very egoistical. Every time you install an app and you agree to upload your contact list to someone? That data was not yours to share. Every time you put a little tracking script on your web page in exchange for traffic graphs it is your customers data you sell. Not your. Every time you email me everything I write ends up indexed under my email address, to be sold to another company and cross referenced. I didn't agree to this. That like button you put up that reports all your visitors behaviours? Not your data.

nickbauman 11y ago

I don't see the irony either. I believe the critical difference is that corporations aren't (or at worst case shouldn't) in the business of using data in a way that they can legitimize the use force against their customers. Unlike government.