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> But it's NOT a personal decision. > When we have a society that so willingly accepts and even desires to live in a surveillance state, well, that's a problem

> But it's NOT a personal decision. > When we have a society that so willingly accepts and even desires to live in a surveillance state, well, that's a problem. This is a direct path to a totalitarian surveillance state that would be much much more invasive than anything written about in 1984. The cognitive dissonance in these two sentences is staggering.

cryptoz 11y ago
How so? I don't think so. Perhaps I wasn't clear. If you make a decision about what devices to buy, on a personal level, and you think that decision only affects you (a "personal decision"), that's not correct. Your decision to buy an Echo or use Siri affects me, too, and the rest of the people around you. Every time someone decides to trade some of their privacy for some convenience, they are taking away other people's privacy too, including those of us who do not share the view that it's worth it for the convenience.
- tedunangst 11y ago
  If my echo is listening to you, it's because you're in my house. So uh, keep out.
  - cryptoz 11y ago
    Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that your Echo was listening to me. What I was trying to say is that every purchase of an Echo is a signal to Amazon and to other big corporations that there is a market for these products. So they will improve the products and expand the market. I don't want that to happen; so it affects me in that way. Additionally, how long will it be until I basically can't go anywhere without there being an Echo in place? Must I stay at home and keep all electronics turned off, in order to avoid corporate surveillance robots? Will every cafe and grocery store also have them? Edit: I'm not allowed to answer any more questions right now, sorry to Pyxl101 and others. Hacker News tells me "you are submitting too fast, please slow down". Maybe I'll be able to come back later and answer your questions.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      Big retailers are already running analytics on their video surveillance. This is sort of a cheap shot but I am honestly curious, how do you reconcile this point of view with your goal of building an all seeing barometer?
      - cryptoz 11y ago
        Yes, that is actually a very good question. It's true that I create weather forecasting systems that rely on barometric pressure data that's collected from smartphones, and that those systems are privacy-sensitive. It's a difficult line, of course. My goals are to reduce the effects of global climate change by better understanding the atmosphere. If we can provide more accurate wind speed information to wind farms, more accurate solar irradiation information to agriculture businesses, etc, then we can radically improve the world's preparedness for large scale global climate change. For me, the issue here is deciding which problem is more important to work on. Mitigation of disastrous effects of climate change, or choose to not use any sensor data from smartphones due to my privacy concerns. So far I have aired on the side of climate change being a bigger problem, and that I have a helpful set of work that can make a difference, so I will do my work and hope that it helps.
      - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
        I think it's a fair question, and I'll remark that I think it's a shame that we have to distrust everyone by default because there are a number of potentially wonderful things that can be done such as pressure.net with this kind of data. As far as that goes, I definitely prefer and would be more trusting of someone who is mindful of privacy concerns than someone like Larry Ellison who I believe would squeeze every nickle of profit out of the same types of projects without regard for anyone's privacy.
    - Pyxl101 11y ago
      There is already a huge market for modern, high end mobile phones that passively record the environment constantly, in order to wake up and respond when their user says "Hey Siri" / "Ok Google" / "Hey Cortana". Users tend to carry those with them everywhere. I see that your company plans to "build[] an open platform for atmospheric data collection using smartphone sensors". It looks like you support Apple and advertise their products on your company's website: https://www.pressurenet.io/blog/iphone-6-has-barometer/ https://www.pressurenet.io/blog/iphone-6-has-barometer/ "We’re excited to start including iPhones in our study of the atmosphere!" If you believe that "every purchase[] is a signal", then what signal are you sending about Apple iPhones? I have not researched it in detail, but it seems like you're relying on data collection from large networks of smartphones in order to put together accurate weather forecasts. That's cool! But I find it hard to reconcile with the view that smartphone data collection (from people who volunteer to participate, or who use a product that has a collection feature) is invasive.
  - wfo 11y ago
    For a while it was considered creepy to have a camera on your phone at all times. There was no way to know if you were filming/photographing at any time. People in certain secure facilities or attorneys in many courtrooms weren't allowed to bring in phones with cameras because of respect for the privacy/security of the information and people within. Now there are no phones without cameras and the insistence on privacy in many of these facilities has been relaxed to saying "please don't take pictures". Not because it's not important, but because of consumer decisions on the whole demanding cameras, to the point where they are in every viable option and it's not feasible to ban them. And privacy/security are eroded. So when you make a consumer choice like this you're giving our society a tiny little push in that direction. You're pushing always-on always-recording voice monitoring software in the most intimate places of our lives to become the new norm.
  - tzs 11y ago
    It's not that simple in the United States, because of the 4th Amendment. A major factor in determining what would be an "unreasonable" search and seizure absent a warrant is what people reasonably expect when it comes to privacy. If enough people put in listening devices that report to third parties in their homes, that can shift what is a reasonably expectation of privacy to where the government can put listening devices in homes without a warrant. There was a good essay on this a while back by Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/privacy-paradox/dead-past http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/privacy-paradox/dead... Spoiler warning: that contains a major spoiler for the terrific Isaac Asimov short story "The Dead Past".

cryptoz 11y ago

How so? I don't think so. Perhaps I wasn't clear. If you make a decision about what devices to buy, on a personal level, and you think that decision only affects you (a "personal decision"), that's not correct. Your decision to buy an Echo or use Siri affects me, too, and the rest of the people around you. Every time someone decides to trade some of their privacy for some convenience, they are taking away other people's privacy too, including those of us who do not share the view that it's worth it for the convenience.

tedunangst 11y ago
If my echo is listening to you, it's because you're in my house. So uh, keep out.
- cryptoz 11y ago
  Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that your Echo was listening to me. What I was trying to say is that every purchase of an Echo is a signal to Amazon and to other big corporations that there is a market for these products. So they will improve the products and expand the market. I don't want that to happen; so it affects me in that way. Additionally, how long will it be until I basically can't go anywhere without there being an Echo in place? Must I stay at home and keep all electronics turned off, in order to avoid corporate surveillance robots? Will every cafe and grocery store also have them? Edit: I'm not allowed to answer any more questions right now, sorry to Pyxl101 and others. Hacker News tells me "you are submitting too fast, please slow down". Maybe I'll be able to come back later and answer your questions.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Big retailers are already running analytics on their video surveillance. This is sort of a cheap shot but I am honestly curious, how do you reconcile this point of view with your goal of building an all seeing barometer?
    - cryptoz 11y ago
      Yes, that is actually a very good question. It's true that I create weather forecasting systems that rely on barometric pressure data that's collected from smartphones, and that those systems are privacy-sensitive. It's a difficult line, of course. My goals are to reduce the effects of global climate change by better understanding the atmosphere. If we can provide more accurate wind speed information to wind farms, more accurate solar irradiation information to agriculture businesses, etc, then we can radically improve the world's preparedness for large scale global climate change. For me, the issue here is deciding which problem is more important to work on. Mitigation of disastrous effects of climate change, or choose to not use any sensor data from smartphones due to my privacy concerns. So far I have aired on the side of climate change being a bigger problem, and that I have a helpful set of work that can make a difference, so I will do my work and hope that it helps.
    - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
      I think it's a fair question, and I'll remark that I think it's a shame that we have to distrust everyone by default because there are a number of potentially wonderful things that can be done such as pressure.net with this kind of data. As far as that goes, I definitely prefer and would be more trusting of someone who is mindful of privacy concerns than someone like Larry Ellison who I believe would squeeze every nickle of profit out of the same types of projects without regard for anyone's privacy.
  - Pyxl101 11y ago
    There is already a huge market for modern, high end mobile phones that passively record the environment constantly, in order to wake up and respond when their user says "Hey Siri" / "Ok Google" / "Hey Cortana". Users tend to carry those with them everywhere. I see that your company plans to "build[] an open platform for atmospheric data collection using smartphone sensors". It looks like you support Apple and advertise their products on your company's website: https://www.pressurenet.io/blog/iphone-6-has-barometer/ https://www.pressurenet.io/blog/iphone-6-has-barometer/ "We’re excited to start including iPhones in our study of the atmosphere!" If you believe that "every purchase[] is a signal", then what signal are you sending about Apple iPhones? I have not researched it in detail, but it seems like you're relying on data collection from large networks of smartphones in order to put together accurate weather forecasts. That's cool! But I find it hard to reconcile with the view that smartphone data collection (from people who volunteer to participate, or who use a product that has a collection feature) is invasive.
- wfo 11y ago
  For a while it was considered creepy to have a camera on your phone at all times. There was no way to know if you were filming/photographing at any time. People in certain secure facilities or attorneys in many courtrooms weren't allowed to bring in phones with cameras because of respect for the privacy/security of the information and people within. Now there are no phones without cameras and the insistence on privacy in many of these facilities has been relaxed to saying "please don't take pictures". Not because it's not important, but because of consumer decisions on the whole demanding cameras, to the point where they are in every viable option and it's not feasible to ban them. And privacy/security are eroded. So when you make a consumer choice like this you're giving our society a tiny little push in that direction. You're pushing always-on always-recording voice monitoring software in the most intimate places of our lives to become the new norm.
- tzs 11y ago
  It's not that simple in the United States, because of the 4th Amendment. A major factor in determining what would be an "unreasonable" search and seizure absent a warrant is what people reasonably expect when it comes to privacy. If enough people put in listening devices that report to third parties in their homes, that can shift what is a reasonably expectation of privacy to where the government can put listening devices in homes without a warrant. There was a good essay on this a while back by Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/privacy-paradox/dead-past http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/privacy-paradox/dead... Spoiler warning: that contains a major spoiler for the terrific Isaac Asimov short story "The Dead Past".