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Privacy is Power: Why the fight for privacy matters

352 points by mobitar 10y ago

kyleschiller 10y ago
It's nice to have a private notes app, my bigger concern is about what happens as the entire ecosystem becomes increasingly monopolized. Any platform enhanced by ML powered by proprietary data will create huge barriers to entry for potential competitors. Even if privacy becomes important to consumers, app alternatives with have to at least match the mainstream version in 100 other ways. As much as Google has contributed to ML tooling and research, their data will ensure that services like Duck Duck Go stay obscure. Network effects, economies of scale and the dynamics of VC funding will all exacerbate this as well.
- fosco 10y ago
  ML - Machine Learning [I may be the only one here who did not know what that means, but in case there is another]
- mobitar 10y ago
  You're right in that it's hard to create a new billion dollar privacy company. But there are plenty of opportunities to create "small businesses" focused on privacy. Basecamp sized companies. In fact, that's the advantage small founders have now: is to not be big, but be intentionally small.
  - kyleschiller 10y ago
    Yeah, that's true, I do dream of a future where more people are creating toy apps for their friends and family with no intention of scaling. Udacity has strayed a little bit from this with their focus on ML courses, but SMBs are absolutely preferable in my mind. EDIT: also why I love FOSS.
dandelion_lover 10y ago
I found https://prism-break.org https://prism-break.org a good list of software/services helping our privacy.
- beardog 10y ago
  privacytools.io is great too. (Disclaimer: I contribute to it a bit)
- oconnore 10y ago
  Also: - print a letter on a laser printer, drop it off at any USPS pickup box. No return address. Strong 4th amendment protections - write in a journal with a pen
  - dandelion_lover 10y ago
    >print a letter on a laser printer but be careful, just for a case: https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...
    - ue_ 10y ago
      This jumped to my mind immediately with the laser printer mention!
cryoshon 10y ago
here is a stupid argument for privacy that i just invented based off of the article's mentioning of 1776: if the british colonists had no privacy, the american revolution would never have happened. troublemakers would have been either nipped in the bud, or never even thought that they could successfully challenge the existing power structure. what god-fearing amurican is going to argue against privacy when you frame it as a patriotic issue? sure, there's no logic or graceful rhetoric here, but who needs logic when you have emotional arousal? those of us who have enough brain cells to rub together need to start thinking about how to slam the idiots with arguments they can't get around while maintaining a veneer of nationalism. "you're unamerican if you're against privacy, because we needed privacy to execute the most hallowed event in our civic religion: revolution against the british." that kind of garbage. it's time to discard clean argumentation and jump into the mud-- it's the only way to make people care about an abstract issue that people have been taught to disregard like privacy.
- K0SM0S 10y ago
  You've just come up with a variation on the theme of "First they came..." [1] by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984). > First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— > Because I was not a Socialist. > Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— > Because I was not a Trade Unionist. > Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— > Because I was not a Jew. > Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. The deeper reasons for privacy are historical, political, and ultimately may become a matter of life or death. It wouldn't be surprising, history is full of precedents. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
- Swizec 10y ago
  It's unfortunate that you use such inflammatory language because you are basically correct. Dissent cannot exist in a culture without privacy. Either privacy through obscurity, or privacy through so much being out in the open that finding signal in noise is impossible. Unfortunately modern machine learning tools all but destroy any chance of privacy through noise.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
saycheese 10y ago
Largest issue with privacy is that in my experience generally speaking that the average person does not see privacy as a priority, or worse, questions the need for it.
- mobitar 10y ago
  Today maybe. But early adopters shape tomorrow.
- braveo 10y ago
  No, everyone understand privacy and it's value, they don't understand privacy ONLINE.
  - xapata 10y ago
    Not everyone values privacy the same way. Or perhaps you're saying that if you value privacy differently, then you're not a True Scotsman?
    - saycheese 10y ago
      Already provide one example, but another might be that all parties that might be on an audio recording must agree to be recorded prior to the recording being made.
      - anigbrowl 10y ago
        Yeah but how will you know? Sure you could sue someone who publishes a tape of your conversation, but if they simply use the information against you without exposing the fact of its existence you're fucked anyway.
        794CD01 10y ago
        Even worse, what if, besides just recording your conversation, they go even further and understand and remember what you said? That could potentially be even more harmful!
educar 10y ago
Those who are privacy conscious must first take the step towards self-hosting. They are many interesting approaches that are trying to make self-hosting practical. They make it trivial to run your own mail server, keep your contacts/calendar/files/notes. Why trust yet another mail/cloud company (yahoo, anyone?)? There are promising existing projects out there (like cloudron.io, sandstorm.io, yunohost). Go try them out today. The projects are open source and have issue trackers where you can contribute even if you are not a developer. Such solutions will empower the average person in the future.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Are you sure about this? 20 years ago I was running a then-novel Linux machine with my own email etc. etc. but eventually I stopped because on the whole it wasn't worth all the effort. I know perfectly well, from experience, that I could vastly increase my privacy (or reduce the huge volume of information that I choose or passively accept liability for sharing, eg by having a FB account and not logging out of it every time I go to another tab etc. etc.). But how much of my time do I want to spend on opsec? I don't want to be in a defensive posture for the rest of my life, hiding from bad actors and constantly worrying about some overlooked chink in my digital armor. Frankly, if the future is endless low-grade cyberwarfare I'd rather be on the offensive and steal other people's data for my own advantage than be endlessly upgrading my door locks.
  - educar 10y ago
    Well, have you checked out the platforms I linked? This is the whole point of the self-hosting platforms. They don't want you to put in the effort any more than buying a phone. You install apps and leave the security to the platform. At this point, this is really about how good the platform gets in insulating the user. If you feel like an early adopter, go try those platforms.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      I will and I appreciate the effort and care you took to explain them. I guess I'm just jaded because I've been through so many cycles of 'this will automate your security needs' followed by 'every system can be gamed' a couple of years later - much as Phil Zimmerman commented The natural flow of technology tends to move in the direction of making surveillance easier, and the ability of computers to track us doubles every eighteen months. Nowadays I worry less about my privacy on the assumption that it's probably hopelessly compromised anyway, and more about being able to hold an unpopular position or opinion without official interference. For example I think it's far more important that gay people enjoy full civil rights, be able to marry etc. than they had better privacy tools that would allow them to remain in the closet indefinitely.
godmodus 10y ago
Sort of ironic to see bitcoins being hacked away due to lax security with the phone system, too. Ud think after mitnick, it wouldnt be possible, but our leadera today are actively choosing to ignore history's lessons, and we enable them. Privacy and Security are the battlefields of today, and the wars of tomorrow. It'll hurt Badly when that impending 1984 world rains down on us, very soon. That said, we'll win, eventually. :o)
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  I'm not so optimistic. I don't believe people will ever get their liberties back when they are finally all taken away. :( Our naive and apathetic population will find out eventually.
  - godmodus 10y ago
    Society is a sleeping giant. Aslong as food and shelter are there, people will stay dormant. But eventually, one of these two things will be taken away. Maybe food. Maybe the security of shelter... Look at North Korea, defectors left and right, despite the horrors. Though ill admit to the difficulty of localities. Horrors can be committed, and sustained, upon a minority, while the majority sleeps, we enable north Korea, but only because it's a local, distant horror. Bur when the majority is fucked.. The hackers, the rebels, the adamant few WILL fuel the fires of revolution. But ill admit again to the sophistication of our current system and it's cruelty. It will delay improvement. It's a cat/mouse scenario. We're the cat, and we're sound asleep for now. Trump and the falling apart of the EU will shake the house though. Or maybe they wont, but stench of war is in the air.amd the higher ups, no matter how sophisticated, are only human. It's important not to give in to desperation and paranoia. Education (math, science, history, art) will help keep the population capable and give them the tools to transform society when the day comes where we must act.
turc1656 10y ago
"Missed any? Shoot me a message on Twitter: @bitario" I don't have a Twitter account, but if the author happens to be reading this (or if anyone wants to shoot a message to him), I use Threema for secure messaging. I love it. But I admit to not having used the others so I can't comment on how it ranks against the competition. https://threema.ch/en https://threema.ch/en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.threema.app&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.threema.app...
- passivepinetree 10y ago
  What's the advantage of this over, say, Signal?
  - lorenz_li 10y ago
    You can chose your identifier (not linked to a phone number). On the other side they are closed source.
  - bigbugbag 10y ago
    Is signal previous name textsecure ? Those who dropped SMS support of their secure texting application so now it requires a data plan to be remotely useful. That's about when Openwhisper / Signal lost me, I'm not gonna trust them with anything anymore. Also worth mentioning that all communication go through a single point of failure central server, it requires a phone number to register and is not available outside the worst privacy offender device: smartphones.
opaque_salmon 10y ago
It would be nice to see the issue of privacy, especially in regards to data privacy, evolve beyond a black and white matter. Privacy is important it allows for a bubble of safety and security in our lives. On the other hand, there is real value and utility through data, but often at the expense of privacy. I think that the trade-off between the utility of data and privacy can be explored in such a way that everyone benefits. Ensuring a balance of power in regards to privacy between individuals, government, and private entities is a worthwhile, but difficult, venture. Data is a good medium for this discussion because of its increasing value in an age where we're collecting more than we can use. Government and society can benefit from data driven policies and public datasets (ala data.gov). Individuals can regain control and benefit from a collective use of data. Corporations already hold and make profits on massive monopolies of user data, but often liability involved with private data preempts sharing. I think these kinds of conversations will need to be tackled and absorbed by the wider audience before it can have a real impact. In any case, it will be interesting to see what direction privacy as an issue goes toward. Personally, I will be continuing to be more aware of the issue and use products that have privacy in mind.
abandonliberty 10y ago
The simplest argument for privacy: if the powerful value it, so should you.
- themacguffinman 10y ago
  The slightly more complicated truth: people with power have different problems and threats.
  - absconder 10y ago
    True. But then, keeping within the frames of parent's argument, if you want power (you do), you want privacy.
newsat13 10y ago
Why is "very few people care" an argument _against_ privacy solutions? There are so many niche markets in this world. Not everything needs to be a billion dollar business.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Its the inverse of network effect. A few years ago I bought a GPG card and used it to encrypt long term backup media. I created a key, did the whole PGP thing, etc. It was cool and all, but it's value from a communications perspective is zero. I have about 2,000 contacts that I keep track of... and exactly two had public keys. The value of that network is near zero, because I really don't transmit anything via e,ail that has a high value justifying the considerable hassle. At work, we have the ability to use Microsoft rights management to optionally encrypt email or attachments. It is easy as pie -- literally press a button. In some cases Outlook will nudge you to do so! With nearly 400M messages, less that 20k were protected, and most of those were for a pilot using policy based encryption.
jayajay 10y ago
People aren't paranoid enough. Being paranoid carries so much negative stigma, it feels that we are selecting against it. Try to a remember the last time you revealed your paranoia and weren't a complete buzzkill. But hey, you can fear what you know. You can even fear what you know you don't know. But you can't fear what you don't know you don't know!
sirrele 10y ago
Really enjoyed this post, seriously, thank you.
jwatte 10y ago
It's not that privacy isn't locally good if it could be had, it's that or can't be had, and letting only some people (more powerful) have privacy is actively bad. Just like we have to prepare for the post labor society, we have to prepare for the post privacy society. It's not about what we'd like to be true, it's about what's actually true.
aminok 10y ago
Wonderful article. Private knowledge is the most valuable economic resource that individuals have, and I believe this will become increasingly true as more narrow human functions become economically automated. To the extent that a small number of corporations and governments have access to it, while they maintain control over their own secrets, power will concentrate into the hands of a small percentage of the population. Privacy is hard though. Individual market incentives do not lead to enough privacy-protecting technology being produced.
barbs 10y ago
Does anyone know what the title image comes from and/or why it's relevant? I really like it!
- s_p_lee 10y ago
  It's the cover art to an edition of The Martian Chronicles. See: http://www.michaelwhelan.com/galleries/descent/ http://www.michaelwhelan.com/galleries/descent/
known 10y ago
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy --Ayn Rand
ujttpu 10y ago
Whenever I ask questions about people's attitude towards privacy they also end up with, I have nothing to hide, and all counter examples are vague and not directly applicable. I'm working on turning the privacy talk around, to frame it around the loss of freedom, Freedom from criminals, Freedom of relationship, Freedom of self expression, Freedom from profiling. We can then explore which freedoms are relevant to the individual and which are not. Freedom from criminals: Computer systems are not secure. The more we share online the bigger the danger when the data is leaked. A very real concern that is often overlooked is that governments and companies are incapable of keeping our data secure. By collecting addresses, medical data, bank information we are all exposing ourselves to risks of having our identity, money and medical information stolen or to be held for ransom. Freedom of relationship: Private conversations can be made public, your opinions and interests can be made public without your intention. For example facebook changing their privacy settings suddenly makes your private links shared, or private matters suddenly appear where you don't intend them to be. Like product adverts showing up at work, sharing our private purchases with colleagues. Freedom of self expression: We loose control of when content goes public. Suddenly our ideas and works can be shared without our consent or credit even without our knowledge. An art sharing site suddenly uses our work in private folders for advertisements because they now have access to them. When uploading on line we lose control of our data and if they are taken there is little recourse. Freedom from profiling: Decisions are made about you without your direct input affecting the news you see, the products you are advertised, and the prices you are offered. Governments have started placing us on lists along with real criminals based on where we have been, who we have met, and what we have seen. We have no control of the profile that is made on us and we have no access to it. We, those worried about privacy, can see the overlaps between the loss of freedoms, but by presenting them in these forms it makes for conversations that continue beyond I have nothing to hide. Depending on who I am talking to I can question into which freedom they are comfortable losing and which they are not. Personally living in a 1st world country with an stable and amicable democratic government my greatest concerns are freedom from criminals and freedom of self expression.
- tornadoboy55 10y ago
  Just use Snowdens quote: saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't need free speech because you have nothing to say. To be honest, I actually ran a very private setup (Copperhead OS, Protonmail, MacBook with all non-draconian privacy settings turned on) for about 2 years, but in the end I realized I was gaining (almost) nothing compared to just Google's services, and losing a whole lot in terms of ease-of-use and integration. All in all its the same thing with privacy as it is with security: you can create all the good systems in the world, but if its a hassle, you'll run into privacy/security fatigue soon and the whole system becomes moot because you'll be the weakest link and start bypassing your own systems.
dcposch 10y ago
Best part of the article: explaining how privacy is a public good. TLDR: privacy isn't just about "keeping secrets" or having "something to hide". Privacy for a whole population is power. Once a population has lost its right to privacy, once people's conversations and movements are monitored, they're rendered powerless. It becomes easy to strip away their other rights. -- Worst part of the article: the recommendations at the end. The author lists a kitchen sink full of privacy tools including Telegram, which the entire infosec community agrees is terrible. Do not use Telegram. Use Tor, use Signal.
- newscracker 10y ago
  > Worst part of the article: the recommendations at the end. > The author lists a kitchen sink full of privacy tools including Telegram, which the entire infosec community agrees is terrible. Do not use Telegram. > Use Tor, use Signal. Usability, or lack of annoyances, will always trump security and privacy. Tor is way too slow for most purposes. In my experience, I don't believe it can be a generic mass solution (people in most places around the world already have slow connections - sharing that with others would be the last thing they'd want to do, even though more people running Tor means it gets better, on average, for everyone). Signal is way too deficient on features and usability compared to Telegram. I want to get out of Telegram and use Signal, but it's at least a few years behind Telegram in various ways (speed, features, lack of good desktop options, relying only on phone number with no usernames or other ways to add/establish contacts, and more). By the time Signal catches up, I believe Telegram would be far ahead again. For messaging and privacy, what would be better to have is a decentralized system that has good usability, multi-device support and can become popular.
  - j_s 10y ago
    If you're prioritizing features and usability, WhatsApp is considered more favorably than Telegram.
    - 1propionyl 10y ago
      WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. They almost certainly do not have privacy as a central focus beyond its utility as a marketing bullet. It's just more embrace, extend, extinguish. Facebook is doubling down on Messenger. They don't want to support multiple messengers. As soon as they can find a way to convert those pesky privacy-conscious Europeans to Messenger, WhatsApp is dead.
Insanity 10y ago
I have in recent months become increasingly aware of this, and have taken steps towards being more private online but I am not completely there yet. Though I do run Linux, stay shy of social media and use Signal for messages, I still lacked a better email provider. (And I am still looking into which VPN to get) This article was the push that I needed to also finally ditch my old (hotmail) account and switch to protonmail. When you have a lot of communication going on with an email account I feel like the change is not that easy, but it'll be worth it.
- newscracker 10y ago
  Last year I looked at various services for email and finally switched to posteo.de. It's cheaper than Fastmail and Protonmail listed in this article, promises privacy and the company has a lot of good ideals and actions that I like. I needed IMAP and didn't want to be locked in to one provider if I ever wanted to move out (Protonmail's IMAP is just now in beta, more than two years after the request was made by people, and all users are tied to Protonmail because there is no export of all mails or non-Protonmail-app mechanisms to retrieve mail). The lack of custom domain support in posteo (for privacy reasons - what it calls "data economy") was a concern for me on portability, but it's a compromise I decided to make.
fosco 10y ago
I really like this stance, I think this argument needs a little more sharpening so that it generates action from people who not in our bubble outside of the tech scene.

352 points by mobitar 10y ago

It's nice to have a private notes app, my bigger concern is about what happens as the entire ecosystem becomes increasingly monopolized. Any platform enhanced by ML powered by proprietary data will create huge barriers to entry for potential competitors. Even if privacy becomes important to consumers, app alternatives with have to at least match the mainstream version in 100 other ways. As much as Google has contributed to ML tooling and research, their data will ensure that services like Duck Duck Go stay obscure. Network effects, economies of scale and the dynamics of VC funding will all exacerbate this as well.

fosco 10y ago
ML - Machine Learning [I may be the only one here who did not know what that means, but in case there is another]
mobitar 10y ago
You're right in that it's hard to create a new billion dollar privacy company. But there are plenty of opportunities to create "small businesses" focused on privacy. Basecamp sized companies. In fact, that's the advantage small founders have now: is to not be big, but be intentionally small.
- kyleschiller 10y ago
  Yeah, that's true, I do dream of a future where more people are creating toy apps for their friends and family with no intention of scaling. Udacity has strayed a little bit from this with their focus on ML courses, but SMBs are absolutely preferable in my mind. EDIT: also why I love FOSS.

dandelion_lover 10y ago

I found https://prism-break.org https://prism-break.org a good list of software/services helping our privacy.

beardog 10y ago
privacytools.io is great too. (Disclaimer: I contribute to it a bit)
oconnore 10y ago
Also: - print a letter on a laser printer, drop it off at any USPS pickup box. No return address. Strong 4th amendment protections - write in a journal with a pen
- dandelion_lover 10y ago
  >print a letter on a laser printer but be careful, just for a case: https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...
  - ue_ 10y ago
    This jumped to my mind immediately with the laser printer mention!

cryoshon 10y ago

here is a stupid argument for privacy that i just invented based off of the article's mentioning of 1776: if the british colonists had no privacy, the american revolution would never have happened. troublemakers would have been either nipped in the bud, or never even thought that they could successfully challenge the existing power structure. what god-fearing amurican is going to argue against privacy when you frame it as a patriotic issue? sure, there's no logic or graceful rhetoric here, but who needs logic when you have emotional arousal? those of us who have enough brain cells to rub together need to start thinking about how to slam the idiots with arguments they can't get around while maintaining a veneer of nationalism. "you're unamerican if you're against privacy, because we needed privacy to execute the most hallowed event in our civic religion: revolution against the british." that kind of garbage. it's time to discard clean argumentation and jump into the mud-- it's the only way to make people care about an abstract issue that people have been taught to disregard like privacy.

K0SM0S 10y ago
You've just come up with a variation on the theme of "First they came..." [1] by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984). > First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— > Because I was not a Socialist. > Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— > Because I was not a Trade Unionist. > Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— > Because I was not a Jew. > Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. The deeper reasons for privacy are historical, political, and ultimately may become a matter of life or death. It wouldn't be surprising, history is full of precedents. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
Swizec 10y ago
It's unfortunate that you use such inflammatory language because you are basically correct. Dissent cannot exist in a culture without privacy. Either privacy through obscurity, or privacy through so much being out in the open that finding signal in noise is impossible. Unfortunately modern machine learning tools all but destroy any chance of privacy through noise.
AnimalMuppet 10y ago

saycheese 10y ago

Largest issue with privacy is that in my experience generally speaking that the average person does not see privacy as a priority, or worse, questions the need for it.

mobitar 10y ago
Today maybe. But early adopters shape tomorrow.
braveo 10y ago
No, everyone understand privacy and it's value, they don't understand privacy ONLINE.
- xapata 10y ago
  Not everyone values privacy the same way. Or perhaps you're saying that if you value privacy differently, then you're not a True Scotsman?
  - saycheese 10y ago
    Already provide one example, but another might be that all parties that might be on an audio recording must agree to be recorded prior to the recording being made.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      Yeah but how will you know? Sure you could sue someone who publishes a tape of your conversation, but if they simply use the information against you without exposing the fact of its existence you're fucked anyway.
      - 794CD01 10y ago
        Even worse, what if, besides just recording your conversation, they go even further and understand and remember what you said? That could potentially be even more harmful!

educar 10y ago

Those who are privacy conscious must first take the step towards self-hosting. They are many interesting approaches that are trying to make self-hosting practical. They make it trivial to run your own mail server, keep your contacts/calendar/files/notes. Why trust yet another mail/cloud company (yahoo, anyone?)? There are promising existing projects out there (like cloudron.io, sandstorm.io, yunohost). Go try them out today. The projects are open source and have issue trackers where you can contribute even if you are not a developer. Such solutions will empower the average person in the future.

anigbrowl 10y ago
Are you sure about this? 20 years ago I was running a then-novel Linux machine with my own email etc. etc. but eventually I stopped because on the whole it wasn't worth all the effort. I know perfectly well, from experience, that I could vastly increase my privacy (or reduce the huge volume of information that I choose or passively accept liability for sharing, eg by having a FB account and not logging out of it every time I go to another tab etc. etc.). But how much of my time do I want to spend on opsec? I don't want to be in a defensive posture for the rest of my life, hiding from bad actors and constantly worrying about some overlooked chink in my digital armor. Frankly, if the future is endless low-grade cyberwarfare I'd rather be on the offensive and steal other people's data for my own advantage than be endlessly upgrading my door locks.
- educar 10y ago
  Well, have you checked out the platforms I linked? This is the whole point of the self-hosting platforms. They don't want you to put in the effort any more than buying a phone. You install apps and leave the security to the platform. At this point, this is really about how good the platform gets in insulating the user. If you feel like an early adopter, go try those platforms.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    I will and I appreciate the effort and care you took to explain them. I guess I'm just jaded because I've been through so many cycles of 'this will automate your security needs' followed by 'every system can be gamed' a couple of years later - much as Phil Zimmerman commented The natural flow of technology tends to move in the direction of making surveillance easier, and the ability of computers to track us doubles every eighteen months. Nowadays I worry less about my privacy on the assumption that it's probably hopelessly compromised anyway, and more about being able to hold an unpopular position or opinion without official interference. For example I think it's far more important that gay people enjoy full civil rights, be able to marry etc. than they had better privacy tools that would allow them to remain in the closet indefinitely.

godmodus 10y ago

Sort of ironic to see bitcoins being hacked away due to lax security with the phone system, too. Ud think after mitnick, it wouldnt be possible, but our leadera today are actively choosing to ignore history's lessons, and we enable them. Privacy and Security are the battlefields of today, and the wars of tomorrow. It'll hurt Badly when that impending 1984 world rains down on us, very soon. That said, we'll win, eventually. :o)

brokenmachine 10y ago
I'm not so optimistic. I don't believe people will ever get their liberties back when they are finally all taken away. :( Our naive and apathetic population will find out eventually.
- godmodus 10y ago
  Society is a sleeping giant. Aslong as food and shelter are there, people will stay dormant. But eventually, one of these two things will be taken away. Maybe food. Maybe the security of shelter... Look at North Korea, defectors left and right, despite the horrors. Though ill admit to the difficulty of localities. Horrors can be committed, and sustained, upon a minority, while the majority sleeps, we enable north Korea, but only because it's a local, distant horror. Bur when the majority is fucked.. The hackers, the rebels, the adamant few WILL fuel the fires of revolution. But ill admit again to the sophistication of our current system and it's cruelty. It will delay improvement. It's a cat/mouse scenario. We're the cat, and we're sound asleep for now. Trump and the falling apart of the EU will shake the house though. Or maybe they wont, but stench of war is in the air.amd the higher ups, no matter how sophisticated, are only human. It's important not to give in to desperation and paranoia. Education (math, science, history, art) will help keep the population capable and give them the tools to transform society when the day comes where we must act.

turc1656 10y ago

"Missed any? Shoot me a message on Twitter: @bitario" I don't have a Twitter account, but if the author happens to be reading this (or if anyone wants to shoot a message to him), I use Threema for secure messaging. I love it. But I admit to not having used the others so I can't comment on how it ranks against the competition. https://threema.ch/en https://threema.ch/en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.threema.app&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.threema.app...

passivepinetree 10y ago
What's the advantage of this over, say, Signal?
- lorenz_li 10y ago
  You can chose your identifier (not linked to a phone number). On the other side they are closed source.
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  Is signal previous name textsecure ? Those who dropped SMS support of their secure texting application so now it requires a data plan to be remotely useful. That's about when Openwhisper / Signal lost me, I'm not gonna trust them with anything anymore. Also worth mentioning that all communication go through a single point of failure central server, it requires a phone number to register and is not available outside the worst privacy offender device: smartphones.

opaque_salmon 10y ago

It would be nice to see the issue of privacy, especially in regards to data privacy, evolve beyond a black and white matter. Privacy is important it allows for a bubble of safety and security in our lives. On the other hand, there is real value and utility through data, but often at the expense of privacy. I think that the trade-off between the utility of data and privacy can be explored in such a way that everyone benefits. Ensuring a balance of power in regards to privacy between individuals, government, and private entities is a worthwhile, but difficult, venture. Data is a good medium for this discussion because of its increasing value in an age where we're collecting more than we can use. Government and society can benefit from data driven policies and public datasets (ala data.gov). Individuals can regain control and benefit from a collective use of data. Corporations already hold and make profits on massive monopolies of user data, but often liability involved with private data preempts sharing. I think these kinds of conversations will need to be tackled and absorbed by the wider audience before it can have a real impact. In any case, it will be interesting to see what direction privacy as an issue goes toward. Personally, I will be continuing to be more aware of the issue and use products that have privacy in mind.

abandonliberty 10y ago

The simplest argument for privacy: if the powerful value it, so should you.

themacguffinman 10y ago
The slightly more complicated truth: people with power have different problems and threats.
- absconder 10y ago
  True. But then, keeping within the frames of parent's argument, if you want power (you do), you want privacy.

newsat13 10y ago

Why is "very few people care" an argument _against_ privacy solutions? There are so many niche markets in this world. Not everything needs to be a billion dollar business.

Spooky23 10y ago
Its the inverse of network effect. A few years ago I bought a GPG card and used it to encrypt long term backup media. I created a key, did the whole PGP thing, etc. It was cool and all, but it's value from a communications perspective is zero. I have about 2,000 contacts that I keep track of... and exactly two had public keys. The value of that network is near zero, because I really don't transmit anything via e,ail that has a high value justifying the considerable hassle. At work, we have the ability to use Microsoft rights management to optionally encrypt email or attachments. It is easy as pie -- literally press a button. In some cases Outlook will nudge you to do so! With nearly 400M messages, less that 20k were protected, and most of those were for a pilot using policy based encryption.

jayajay 10y ago

People aren't paranoid enough. Being paranoid carries so much negative stigma, it feels that we are selecting against it. Try to a remember the last time you revealed your paranoia and weren't a complete buzzkill. But hey, you can fear what you know. You can even fear what you know you don't know. But you can't fear what you don't know you don't know!

sirrele 10y ago

Really enjoyed this post, seriously, thank you.

jwatte 10y ago

It's not that privacy isn't locally good if it could be had, it's that or can't be had, and letting only some people (more powerful) have privacy is actively bad. Just like we have to prepare for the post labor society, we have to prepare for the post privacy society. It's not about what we'd like to be true, it's about what's actually true.

aminok 10y ago

Wonderful article. Private knowledge is the most valuable economic resource that individuals have, and I believe this will become increasingly true as more narrow human functions become economically automated. To the extent that a small number of corporations and governments have access to it, while they maintain control over their own secrets, power will concentrate into the hands of a small percentage of the population. Privacy is hard though. Individual market incentives do not lead to enough privacy-protecting technology being produced.

barbs 10y ago

Does anyone know what the title image comes from and/or why it's relevant? I really like it!

s_p_lee 10y ago
It's the cover art to an edition of The Martian Chronicles. See: http://www.michaelwhelan.com/galleries/descent/ http://www.michaelwhelan.com/galleries/descent/

known 10y ago

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy --Ayn Rand

ujttpu 10y ago

Whenever I ask questions about people's attitude towards privacy they also end up with, I have nothing to hide, and all counter examples are vague and not directly applicable. I'm working on turning the privacy talk around, to frame it around the loss of freedom, Freedom from criminals, Freedom of relationship, Freedom of self expression, Freedom from profiling. We can then explore which freedoms are relevant to the individual and which are not. Freedom from criminals: Computer systems are not secure. The more we share online the bigger the danger when the data is leaked. A very real concern that is often overlooked is that governments and companies are incapable of keeping our data secure. By collecting addresses, medical data, bank information we are all exposing ourselves to risks of having our identity, money and medical information stolen or to be held for ransom. Freedom of relationship: Private conversations can be made public, your opinions and interests can be made public without your intention. For example facebook changing their privacy settings suddenly makes your private links shared, or private matters suddenly appear where you don't intend them to be. Like product adverts showing up at work, sharing our private purchases with colleagues. Freedom of self expression: We loose control of when content goes public. Suddenly our ideas and works can be shared without our consent or credit even without our knowledge. An art sharing site suddenly uses our work in private folders for advertisements because they now have access to them. When uploading on line we lose control of our data and if they are taken there is little recourse. Freedom from profiling: Decisions are made about you without your direct input affecting the news you see, the products you are advertised, and the prices you are offered. Governments have started placing us on lists along with real criminals based on where we have been, who we have met, and what we have seen. We have no control of the profile that is made on us and we have no access to it. We, those worried about privacy, can see the overlaps between the loss of freedoms, but by presenting them in these forms it makes for conversations that continue beyond I have nothing to hide. Depending on who I am talking to I can question into which freedom they are comfortable losing and which they are not. Personally living in a 1st world country with an stable and amicable democratic government my greatest concerns are freedom from criminals and freedom of self expression.

tornadoboy55 10y ago
Just use Snowdens quote: saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't need free speech because you have nothing to say. To be honest, I actually ran a very private setup (Copperhead OS, Protonmail, MacBook with all non-draconian privacy settings turned on) for about 2 years, but in the end I realized I was gaining (almost) nothing compared to just Google's services, and losing a whole lot in terms of ease-of-use and integration. All in all its the same thing with privacy as it is with security: you can create all the good systems in the world, but if its a hassle, you'll run into privacy/security fatigue soon and the whole system becomes moot because you'll be the weakest link and start bypassing your own systems.

dcposch 10y ago

Best part of the article: explaining how privacy is a public good. TLDR: privacy isn't just about "keeping secrets" or having "something to hide". Privacy for a whole population is power. Once a population has lost its right to privacy, once people's conversations and movements are monitored, they're rendered powerless. It becomes easy to strip away their other rights. -- Worst part of the article: the recommendations at the end. The author lists a kitchen sink full of privacy tools including Telegram, which the entire infosec community agrees is terrible. Do not use Telegram. Use Tor, use Signal.

newscracker 10y ago
> Worst part of the article: the recommendations at the end. > The author lists a kitchen sink full of privacy tools including Telegram, which the entire infosec community agrees is terrible. Do not use Telegram. > Use Tor, use Signal. Usability, or lack of annoyances, will always trump security and privacy. Tor is way too slow for most purposes. In my experience, I don't believe it can be a generic mass solution (people in most places around the world already have slow connections - sharing that with others would be the last thing they'd want to do, even though more people running Tor means it gets better, on average, for everyone). Signal is way too deficient on features and usability compared to Telegram. I want to get out of Telegram and use Signal, but it's at least a few years behind Telegram in various ways (speed, features, lack of good desktop options, relying only on phone number with no usernames or other ways to add/establish contacts, and more). By the time Signal catches up, I believe Telegram would be far ahead again. For messaging and privacy, what would be better to have is a decentralized system that has good usability, multi-device support and can become popular.
- j_s 10y ago
  If you're prioritizing features and usability, WhatsApp is considered more favorably than Telegram.
  - 1propionyl 10y ago
    WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. They almost certainly do not have privacy as a central focus beyond its utility as a marketing bullet. It's just more embrace, extend, extinguish. Facebook is doubling down on Messenger. They don't want to support multiple messengers. As soon as they can find a way to convert those pesky privacy-conscious Europeans to Messenger, WhatsApp is dead.

Insanity 10y ago

I have in recent months become increasingly aware of this, and have taken steps towards being more private online but I am not completely there yet. Though I do run Linux, stay shy of social media and use Signal for messages, I still lacked a better email provider. (And I am still looking into which VPN to get) This article was the push that I needed to also finally ditch my old (hotmail) account and switch to protonmail. When you have a lot of communication going on with an email account I feel like the change is not that easy, but it'll be worth it.

newscracker 10y ago
Last year I looked at various services for email and finally switched to posteo.de. It's cheaper than Fastmail and Protonmail listed in this article, promises privacy and the company has a lot of good ideals and actions that I like. I needed IMAP and didn't want to be locked in to one provider if I ever wanted to move out (Protonmail's IMAP is just now in beta, more than two years after the request was made by people, and all users are tied to Protonmail because there is no export of all mails or non-Protonmail-app mechanisms to retrieve mail). The lack of custom domain support in posteo (for privacy reasons - what it calls "data economy") was a concern for me on portability, but it's a compromise I decided to make.

fosco 10y ago

I really like this stance, I think this argument needs a little more sharpening so that it generates action from people who not in our bubble outside of the tech scene.