6 ms·

> Now every picture posted, every comment made, every driving infraction could go into a central database to produce a person's 'trustworthiness' score. How is

> Now every picture posted, every comment made, every driving infraction could go into a central database to produce a person's 'trustworthiness' score. How is this China-only ? Can't Facebook do the same ? Can't the government force Facebook, Microsoft, etc to give out all the information that we generate in their networks ? Can't they compute such a "trustworthiness" score and sell it to your (potential) employer ? Of course they can and they will if they don't already. I've agreed to countless "license agreements" which I haven't read - I might have given some company my exclusive permission to monitor my every move... What if your agreement contained a special clause not present in other user's agreements ? There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that what is going on in China will become the status quo in a lot of other countries and this will accelerate as shit gets tougher due to all the global problems that we now face. What's even more disappointing is that these surveillance systems are most probably built on top of open source software and libraries - which have been ideologically released in order to increase the user's 'freedom', yet who would have thought ... Unfortunately the dream of a better, closer, freer world is now passing through a nightmare phase - we've built the perfect tools for crazies to do their crazy thing...

krona 10y ago
In the EU you can instruct a company to divulge everything it knows about you. Facebook will give it to you on a DVD (or at least they used to). As an instrument of control and coercion, however, there is a massive difference between a government collecting data and not telling you, and a government collecting the data and telling you they use it to calculate your worth to society. The latter seems utterly tyrannical.
- kartan 10y ago
  I prefer to know. If intelligence agencies are collecting data of citizens without their knowledge, how can they protest it? What was noteworthy about Edward Snowden leak was the confirmation of the data collection. He made public something that everybody knew.
- wu-ikkyu 10y ago
  How can you know what the "massive" difference is between the two cases since in the former case you are left in the dark as to what the information is being used for? Both cases utilize the tools of tyranny, and Facebook has shown they are more than willing to comply with whatever the host nations government wishes, lest they lose profits for their shareholders.
DanielBMarkham 10y ago
Agreed. There's a technical word for the kind of world we technical folks are helping to build. It's called a "dystopia" And while it's fun to either wave our arms around and say "But everybody's doing it!" or talking about wild dreams of a better tomorrow, the crap we've created is right here, right now. As a technical person, if you're looking for somebody to blame, there's the mirror. When I was in the armed forces and you needed something desperately that you did not have, somebody would always say "Well, you'd better grow one" We technical folks do not have the moral underpinning we need to help there be a brighter tomorrow. We're lacking the social and political theory and the historical grounding to understand what kinds of things might help and what kinds of things might hurt. Instead we just imagine how what we're making might help mankind along. News flash: imagining isn't cutting it any more. We may not have the tools we need to responsibly create the tech we're creating, but we'd better grow some.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  An "apolitical" approach to tech is very much supporting the worst of what people would like to do with said tech, as well as the best. I think people should think a lot more about the bad side of what the tech they're creating enables, and decide whether they're actually comfortable with that, and whether there's a way to achieve their goals which enables less harm.
- the8472 10y ago
  > There's a technical word for the kind of world we technical folks are helping to build. It's called a "dystopia" Consider e-cash. People would love to implement it, but banking regulation makes it difficult to actually do business through anonymous transactions. Similarly many privacy-conscious ISP operators want to throw away logs as soon as possible, but regulation forces them to retain data. Sure, the likes of facebook and google do thrive on gobbling up more data. But others who want to improve privacy are actually actively hampered by politics. This creates an asymmetric landscape.
  - wodencafe 10y ago
    It always comes down to big companies and big gov't.
3pt14159 10y ago
1. Secrets that are widely known don't stay secret for long. Snowden leaked a lot of documents and none of them said the government was doing this already. 2. The data that is out there is _very_ messy. If you have a unique name and you use it as your twitter handle, sure, this is already happening. It's called Klout. But most companies just use it to figure out what image to put on their coupons. 3. I've never heard of employers asking for someones "trustwrothiness score". We as a society get pretty pissy about this type of thing. We've banned IQ tests, and needlessly asking for credit reports / scores. If a metric like this came out in wide use we'd ban it. 4. License agreements are generally unenforcible. You don't get the right to someones car just because you put it in a license agreement. If you could do that there would be lots of scams trying to get old grandpa to install a new photo app to see his grandkids. 5. What is going on in China is overblown in the media. It's not a episode of Black Mirror. The people that are most impacted by it are politically loud young adults online, but the vast, vast majority of Chinese don't worry about it. There are much more important human rights concerns in China that need addressing like freedom of the press. 6. We're not in a nightmare phase, we're in the same phase we've always been in. The telegraph cables were tapped by every major government, the radios listened to, the phones tapped, we even put recording equipment into televisions we sold overseas, our major hotels have always been tapped (or easily tapped given a court order if a foreign national was in town). This has been happening for over a hundred years. I agree we should know about it (thank you Snowden) and in some cases I don't like it, but the solution isn't to wish it away, it's to use encryption and not say or do stupid things around computers.
- mrSugar 10y ago
  What about just not saying or doing stupid things at all?
- paulmd 10y ago
  > 3. We've banned ... needlessly asking for credit reports / scores. No, it's perfectly legal for employers to run a credit report on you and make a hiring decision on that basis. You're outright incorrect here. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryhannon/2013/03/16/has-your-credit-report-cost-you-a-job/#21383887102d http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryhannon/2013/03/16/has-your-... > 4. License agreements are generally unenforcible. Good luck proving that in court. Especially when you just also agreed to mandatory binding arbitration instead of a court hearing. It's not even a situation of you not being able to mount a defense against a billion-dollar corporation, you will literally never have the chance to have a lawyer in the room with you in any sort of hearing.

krona 10y ago

In the EU you can instruct a company to divulge everything it knows about you. Facebook will give it to you on a DVD (or at least they used to). As an instrument of control and coercion, however, there is a massive difference between a government collecting data and not telling you, and a government collecting the data and telling you they use it to calculate your worth to society. The latter seems utterly tyrannical.

kartan 10y ago
I prefer to know. If intelligence agencies are collecting data of citizens without their knowledge, how can they protest it? What was noteworthy about Edward Snowden leak was the confirmation of the data collection. He made public something that everybody knew.
wu-ikkyu 10y ago
How can you know what the "massive" difference is between the two cases since in the former case you are left in the dark as to what the information is being used for? Both cases utilize the tools of tyranny, and Facebook has shown they are more than willing to comply with whatever the host nations government wishes, lest they lose profits for their shareholders.

DanielBMarkham 10y ago

Agreed. There's a technical word for the kind of world we technical folks are helping to build. It's called a "dystopia" And while it's fun to either wave our arms around and say "But everybody's doing it!" or talking about wild dreams of a better tomorrow, the crap we've created is right here, right now. As a technical person, if you're looking for somebody to blame, there's the mirror. When I was in the armed forces and you needed something desperately that you did not have, somebody would always say "Well, you'd better grow one" We technical folks do not have the moral underpinning we need to help there be a brighter tomorrow. We're lacking the social and political theory and the historical grounding to understand what kinds of things might help and what kinds of things might hurt. Instead we just imagine how what we're making might help mankind along. News flash: imagining isn't cutting it any more. We may not have the tools we need to responsibly create the tech we're creating, but we'd better grow some.

vertex-four 10y ago
An "apolitical" approach to tech is very much supporting the worst of what people would like to do with said tech, as well as the best. I think people should think a lot more about the bad side of what the tech they're creating enables, and decide whether they're actually comfortable with that, and whether there's a way to achieve their goals which enables less harm.
the8472 10y ago
> There's a technical word for the kind of world we technical folks are helping to build. It's called a "dystopia" Consider e-cash. People would love to implement it, but banking regulation makes it difficult to actually do business through anonymous transactions. Similarly many privacy-conscious ISP operators want to throw away logs as soon as possible, but regulation forces them to retain data. Sure, the likes of facebook and google do thrive on gobbling up more data. But others who want to improve privacy are actually actively hampered by politics. This creates an asymmetric landscape.
- wodencafe 10y ago
  It always comes down to big companies and big gov't.

3pt14159 10y ago

1. Secrets that are widely known don't stay secret for long. Snowden leaked a lot of documents and none of them said the government was doing this already. 2. The data that is out there is _very_ messy. If you have a unique name and you use it as your twitter handle, sure, this is already happening. It's called Klout. But most companies just use it to figure out what image to put on their coupons. 3. I've never heard of employers asking for someones "trustwrothiness score". We as a society get pretty pissy about this type of thing. We've banned IQ tests, and needlessly asking for credit reports / scores. If a metric like this came out in wide use we'd ban it. 4. License agreements are generally unenforcible. You don't get the right to someones car just because you put it in a license agreement. If you could do that there would be lots of scams trying to get old grandpa to install a new photo app to see his grandkids. 5. What is going on in China is overblown in the media. It's not a episode of Black Mirror. The people that are most impacted by it are politically loud young adults online, but the vast, vast majority of Chinese don't worry about it. There are much more important human rights concerns in China that need addressing like freedom of the press. 6. We're not in a nightmare phase, we're in the same phase we've always been in. The telegraph cables were tapped by every major government, the radios listened to, the phones tapped, we even put recording equipment into televisions we sold overseas, our major hotels have always been tapped (or easily tapped given a court order if a foreign national was in town). This has been happening for over a hundred years. I agree we should know about it (thank you Snowden) and in some cases I don't like it, but the solution isn't to wish it away, it's to use encryption and not say or do stupid things around computers.

mrSugar 10y ago
What about just not saying or doing stupid things at all?
paulmd 10y ago
> 3. We've banned ... needlessly asking for credit reports / scores. No, it's perfectly legal for employers to run a credit report on you and make a hiring decision on that basis. You're outright incorrect here. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryhannon/2013/03/16/has-your-credit-report-cost-you-a-job/#21383887102d http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryhannon/2013/03/16/has-your-... > 4. License agreements are generally unenforcible. Good luck proving that in court. Especially when you just also agreed to mandatory binding arbitration instead of a court hearing. It's not even a situation of you not being able to mount a defense against a billion-dollar corporation, you will literally never have the chance to have a lawyer in the room with you in any sort of hearing.