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I disagree. We are sleeping. It's not that ordinary people don't care; it's a cost benefit problem --- the time/bullshit-costs of moving data from entrenched c

I disagree. We are sleeping. It's not that ordinary people don't care; it's a cost benefit problem --- the time/bullshit-costs of moving data from entrenched cloud providers is large. The joy of hacking is that everywhere we go, we beat a path. We build good clients for bad APIs, we figure out the weird munge and consistency problems involved in data transfer, and we automate the process of managing servers. These levels of responsibility and abstraction are modern software, and the more we go there (personally and professionally), the easier it becomes for viable consumer-grade alternatives to appear. We also set-trends more than we realize. Almost every major newspaper has a tech section, and much of that is fascination with our culture, and reflection on privacy issues. This is on us.

ThePhysicist 10y ago
The privacy problem at its core is a political one, and it needs a political solution. I think the belief that software will fix the world, which is quite common among developers, is quite problematic because it often fuels behaviour that is not always very helpful. The truth is, the overwhelming number of societal problems get solved politically, and technology is often just the means to turn political decisions into reality. This might change in the future, but so far it is true. The data protection directive is a good example: With the political engagement of Jan Philipp Albrecht (and many others), he did more to protect peoples privacy than any hacker or software developer I could name. So if you really wanna do something about this, don't think about how you can solve the problem using technology, but for a change think about how you can help us achieve a political solution first.
- MrQuincle 10y ago
  So, what laws should we propose from the IT community? + Ownership about your own data. + The right to be forgotten. + The right to use your own data in your way. + The transparency of being able to monitor who is when looking into your data.
  - ThePhysicist 10y ago
    Yes those are very good points, and they are actually contained in the EU data protection directive: * You have the right to know exactly what a company knows about you, for which purposes it uses that information, and how it processes it. * You have the right to revoke a company's permission to process/store your personal data, and a right to have your data erased (there are some exceptions though) * You have the right to obtain a digital copy of all your personal data (including data that was generated through your behavior, e.g. by clicking on "Like" on Facebook) in a common machine-readable format, and also to have that data transferred to another company if you wish so (this should make it easier to change providers) * You have the right to know (actually you even need to be told beforehand) for which purposes your data will be used and by whom it will be used. If you should be subjected to a fully-automated decision making process (e.g. your credit score gets calculated algorithmically) you have the right to know which kind of algorithms are used in the process and how their internal logic is structured.
- confounded 10y ago
  > The privacy problem at its core is a political one, and it needs a political solution. I'm with you --- my views are pretty much in agreement this, and with Schneier in Data and Goliath. However, while legislation and regulation are the only things that will prevent us from full-blown monopolistic dystopia, there are meaningful ways in which technologists can make privacy preserving behaviors easier to adopt on a wide scale. The most obvious example of this is Signal. It wasn't brought about because the government said it had to be built (though they did end up funding it), and not only has it significantly advanced the privacy of instant messaging for millions of people, and moved the Overton window on expectations of encryption, it provided a new open standard (and FOSS reference implementation) for other messaging services to adopt.

ThePhysicist 10y ago

The privacy problem at its core is a political one, and it needs a political solution. I think the belief that software will fix the world, which is quite common among developers, is quite problematic because it often fuels behaviour that is not always very helpful. The truth is, the overwhelming number of societal problems get solved politically, and technology is often just the means to turn political decisions into reality. This might change in the future, but so far it is true. The data protection directive is a good example: With the political engagement of Jan Philipp Albrecht (and many others), he did more to protect peoples privacy than any hacker or software developer I could name. So if you really wanna do something about this, don't think about how you can solve the problem using technology, but for a change think about how you can help us achieve a political solution first.

MrQuincle 10y ago
So, what laws should we propose from the IT community? + Ownership about your own data. + The right to be forgotten. + The right to use your own data in your way. + The transparency of being able to monitor who is when looking into your data.
- ThePhysicist 10y ago
  Yes those are very good points, and they are actually contained in the EU data protection directive: * You have the right to know exactly what a company knows about you, for which purposes it uses that information, and how it processes it. * You have the right to revoke a company's permission to process/store your personal data, and a right to have your data erased (there are some exceptions though) * You have the right to obtain a digital copy of all your personal data (including data that was generated through your behavior, e.g. by clicking on "Like" on Facebook) in a common machine-readable format, and also to have that data transferred to another company if you wish so (this should make it easier to change providers) * You have the right to know (actually you even need to be told beforehand) for which purposes your data will be used and by whom it will be used. If you should be subjected to a fully-automated decision making process (e.g. your credit score gets calculated algorithmically) you have the right to know which kind of algorithms are used in the process and how their internal logic is structured.
confounded 10y ago
> The privacy problem at its core is a political one, and it needs a political solution. I'm with you --- my views are pretty much in agreement this, and with Schneier in Data and Goliath. However, while legislation and regulation are the only things that will prevent us from full-blown monopolistic dystopia, there are meaningful ways in which technologists can make privacy preserving behaviors easier to adopt on a wide scale. The most obvious example of this is Signal. It wasn't brought about because the government said it had to be built (though they did end up funding it), and not only has it significantly advanced the privacy of instant messaging for millions of people, and moved the Overton window on expectations of encryption, it provided a new open standard (and FOSS reference implementation) for other messaging services to adopt.