4 ms·

I agree with everything that you say except that if we let things get worse I believe it will be to late to make them better.

pingswept 17y ago
If we fix the problems now, wouldn't it get better in 75 years or so, when all the currently surveilled people are dead? (Admittedly, that's still a terrible situation.)
Silhouette 17y ago
There is a Pandora's box effect here, to be sure. I think the best we can hope for is for one or two really spectacular failures, by organisations on the scale of Google or Facebook, where the potential damage becomes obvious to everyone but because of the scale of the problem the plug gets pulled quickly before too much damage can be done. IMHO, this would be preferable to slowing building up lots of databases and having an endless stream of small-scale leaks, each of which is also damaging to those involved, but none of them big enough to make this a serious political issue.
- andreyf 17y ago
  Can you step me through this worst-case situation you're thinking of? People's most-emailed contacts being auto-added to their buzz stream doesn't count.
  - Silhouette 17y ago
    > People's most-emailed contacts being auto-added to their buzz stream doesn't count. Does that depend on how many people's previosly private information is now available to abusive ex-partners? Is it OK in this case, because so far only one person has come forward and exposed that threat? What if it happened to 10 people? 100? 1,000,000?
    - andreyf 17y ago
      Does that depend on how many people's previosly private information is now available to abusive ex-partners? Some people will use Buzz to announce their previously private information to the world, knowing they have abusive ex-partners. Others will stab themselves in the face with a nice pen. Neither Google nor Montblanc is to blame.
      - Silhouette 17y ago
        I think the question is, did the person make the previously private information available more widely, or did Google (or Facebook, or whoever else controls the big database and previously implied that access to that data would be restricted)?
        andreyf 17y ago
        Agreed.

pingswept 17y ago

If we fix the problems now, wouldn't it get better in 75 years or so, when all the currently surveilled people are dead? (Admittedly, that's still a terrible situation.)

Silhouette 17y ago

There is a Pandora's box effect here, to be sure. I think the best we can hope for is for one or two really spectacular failures, by organisations on the scale of Google or Facebook, where the potential damage becomes obvious to everyone but because of the scale of the problem the plug gets pulled quickly before too much damage can be done. IMHO, this would be preferable to slowing building up lots of databases and having an endless stream of small-scale leaks, each of which is also damaging to those involved, but none of them big enough to make this a serious political issue.

andreyf 17y ago
Can you step me through this worst-case situation you're thinking of? People's most-emailed contacts being auto-added to their buzz stream doesn't count.
- Silhouette 17y ago
  > People's most-emailed contacts being auto-added to their buzz stream doesn't count. Does that depend on how many people's previosly private information is now available to abusive ex-partners? Is it OK in this case, because so far only one person has come forward and exposed that threat? What if it happened to 10 people? 100? 1,000,000?
  - andreyf 17y ago
    Does that depend on how many people's previosly private information is now available to abusive ex-partners? Some people will use Buzz to announce their previously private information to the world, knowing they have abusive ex-partners. Others will stab themselves in the face with a nice pen. Neither Google nor Montblanc is to blame.
    - Silhouette 17y ago
      I think the question is, did the person make the previously private information available more widely, or did Google (or Facebook, or whoever else controls the big database and previously implied that access to that data would be restricted)?
      - andreyf 17y ago
        Agreed.