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> And yet. Like every I/O attendee I received a free Google Home device as part of the I/O experience. (I attended as an engineer, not as press.) But I don’t wa

> And yet. Like every I/O attendee I received a free Google Home device as part of the I/O experience. (I attended as an engineer, not as press.) But I don’t want one; I’ll be giving mine away. Sorry, Google. It’s not that I mistrust you. It’s just that I don’t want to have to trust any profit-driven megacorporation quite that much. Not Apple, not Amazon, and not even you. It is very interesting to me why certain microphones and cameras are fine, while others are not. Almost everybody carries one of both in their pockets or in their purse. However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. Building a mic into a speaker is not okay for this guy, but consumer satisfaction is quite high for these devices. I guess to have mics and cams in your car is fine as well. If it's about babies or security (door bells) it is also fine. Augmented stuff on your phone seems a necessary predecessor before Google glass can come out for people like this. It's some kind of anti-sensor attitude that seems to erode over time. I don't think it's about privacy, it seems to be about control. Where's the button on that thing!?

Mathnerd314 9y ago
I think it's more of a general Luddite / anti-tech paradigm. Historically, strange things were dangerous and/or poisonous. Tech people probably recognize these devices from science fiction books / movies / stories, so they don't get scared, but the rest of the world has no context to place them in and hence treats them like unexploded ordnance.
- Loic 9y ago
  By framing this as "luddite/anti-tech" you do not address the fundamental question: Do you really want your life to have such high dependency on a single corporation? I am in no ways anti-tech, but the history has shown that putting your life in the hands of a single corporation is not a sane decision.
  - Mathnerd314 9y ago
    Referring to "the history" is just wrong, there are always conflicting perspectives and facts. See http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in-defense-of-the-company-town.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173396; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173396; there have been plenty of (presumably sane) people who depended on a single corporation. It's not clear whether they're better off for it, and there is a slippery-slope argument, but monopolies and lock-in are not intrinsically evil.
    - cyphar 9y ago
      > It's not clear whether they're better off for it, and there is a slippery-slope argument, but monopolies and lock-in are not intrinsically evil. They are only not intrinsically evil if you make the assumption that they will never harm you (act in a way you didn't bargain for) or disappear. A company which does either has given you no way out of a service you now depend on and are fucked if it doesn't work for you anymore. Given the churn on technology companies, acquisitions and a general lack of ethics, I would not put a lot of trust in claiming that companies are going to uphold either of those requirements. Thus, I would argue that effectively all companies will do evil inevitably and thus are intrinsically evil. Not to mention that companies are psychopaths by structure. They definitely don't care about you (hell, they don't care about their employees on the whole).
      - Mathnerd314 9y ago
        > fucked if it doesn't work for you anymore. There are plenty of responses: sue them under antitrust statutes, break in and steal their tech, go the politics route and seize it via eminent domain, etc. It's true though, a lot of those are impractical. But in the end you're pretty much back where you started before you began a relationship with the company; fucked is a relative term, when you should be thinking on an absolute scale of reference. > all companies will do evil inevitably and thus are intrinsically evil I guess it depends on your philosophy of evil. Sure, corporations are like hungry tigers, in that if you're in the same room as them without protection you're likely to get killed and eaten eventually. But does that make tigers (or corporations) evil? Consensus seems to be "no" or "mu": https://www.quora.com/Are-tigers-lions-and-hyenas-evil-creatures-since-they-can-eat-humans https://www.quora.com/Are-tigers-lions-and-hyenas-evil-creat... (mu being defined as in http://webpages.charter.net/sn9/literature/mu.html http://webpages.charter.net/sn9/literature/mu.html)
  - wordupmaking 9y ago
    Exactly because I like tech I don't like how the persons it's shaped by and the reasons they shape it for. (particular things I dislike are symptoms of that). Consider the thoughts of Konrad Zuse or Joseph Weizenbaum with just about anyone who ever worked at Microsoft, Apple, Google or Facebook in any sort of leading role. Technology can empower, it can give people room, and it can "capture the imagination" and "change the way we think about trivial thing X or Y". Or take the constant "we want to help people do X"... I'm really tired of the sleaze, the pretend-awedness and how we accepted filler language and filler personalities, more than I have a problem with the size of success of any single corporation per se. Maybe these things go hand in hand, maybe mass societies can't be human societies, but I'm not convinced, IMHO we're not even really trying so far, we just pretend being kind of dorks is "the future" and "modern".
  - Chathamization 9y ago
    And a secretive organization at that. That's one of the big issues, the same as with the NSA - not just privacy, but the privacy differential. When an organization is able to learn everything about you, but you are able to learn little about them.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      This is huge. I can't even count how many times I've argued about privacy with Googlers and run into "trust me, we take this very seriously, but I can't say anything about it". We're asked to share everything with them, but these tech companies are incredibly, incredibly secretive, all under the guise of protecting their interests from competition. People in support of these companies running people's lives are all in favor of transparency and sharing on the Internet... until it gets turned around on them. For all it's other faults, The Circle movie captured this perfectly with one line from Tom Hanks: "We are so f###ed." Maybe I wouldn't be so bothered by Google knowing where I am every five minutes if I could track Larry Page and Eric Schmidt in near realtime too.
      - fixermark 9y ago
        If you don't trust Google to broker your data, you can definitely build your own system to do it. You are then merely faced with two challenges: 1) You'll be recapitulating years of work by dedicated, paid teams to do the sort of data-brokering Google will give you for free. 2) If you want your work to be useful (because as we know, the real value of shared data is in the sharing), you'll need to convince your friends (and friends-of-friends) that your data-sharing solution---your "tracks you every five minutes, but you can see where everyone else being tracked is"---is safer and more trustworthy than Google's. But nothing's stopping you from trying to solve (1) and (2).
        ocdtrekkie 9y ago
        As you just pointed out, the latter thing is, in fact, exactly what prevents you from simply building your own system: The network effect. It's why it's very unlikely anything but large governments like the US and the EU are capable of restraining Google's behavior. (Smaller governments are not able to, as Google would simply refuse to operate in those localities until the government caved to public pressure to stop "banning Google".) I'd also caution you from describing Google's services as "free". The cost is huge, it's just not a cost you pay in dollars.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    I think the topics of privacy and tech monopoly should be separated out a bit more in discussions. Different people object to different issues.
- supremesaboteur 9y ago
  There are many problems with Google's dominance. 1. The Filter Bubble. The idea that you can be shut in your own bubble, not being exposed to new ideas or ideas that contradict your own, is pretty bad 2. The idea that a for profit company becoming the arbiter of truth ( with noble intentions of fighting 'fake news' etc ) is also pretty bad. It can be used for political or economic gain 3. The company has a largely hostage users that they can abuse through predatory pricing etc The opposition is not towards technology, but towards one company controlling most, if not all, of modern technology
  - Mathnerd314 9y ago
    > filter bubble That just means you've got to proactively seek out new ideas you're uncomfortable with, and be mindful that not everything can be found on Google. It's not a reason to use a crappy search like Yahoo or Bing (which only indexes 1/10 of the pages Google does: http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/ http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/). > a for profit company becoming the arbiter of truth Wikipedia is more of an arbiter of truth than Google; so far Google has limited itself to indexing information rather than summarizing or categorizing it. > predatory pricing etc Free is predatory? I guess they should be paying users to search, like Bing? http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-paid-search-bing-rewards-program/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-paid-search-bing-rewards-pr...
    - shakna 9y ago
      > so far Google has limited itself to indexing information rather than summarizing or categorizing it Apart from Google's Instant Answers. Which have, in the past, captured misleading or flat-out wrong information. > predatory pricing etc See Firebase's recent price hike. [0] Not all Google products are free, Google is not just a search engine. Some start off reasonable, you get invested, and then they suddenly become ridiculously more expensive. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
        (I work for google, but nothing to do with firebase) How exactly is what I think is best summarized as "we had a bug in our pricing system that was undercharging a miniscule number of users by an order of magnitude, and when we fixed the bug, they were informed of the price increase and we even gave them ways to mitigate, but their app architecture was terrible which made it difficult or impossible, and then after they raised a stink about it we reduced the cost/credited them enough to be mutually agreeable" as predatory?
- pawadu 9y ago
  Yes, but there are two problems with this particular company: 1. they have grown this mentality where they gather any data they can get their hands on - apologize only when/if caught red handed. (remember google street car password gathering?). 2. the more you use their services the more dependent you become. but google have shown zero care for individual consumers. (who do you call if gmail craps out on you?)
  - Mathnerd314 9y ago
    > data gathering It's not really any worse an invasion of privacy than Snowden or Wikileaks. At least Google apologizes instead of going on about how information should be free. > more dependent Google actively reduces dependence, e.g. by their data takeout option. Obviously there's always going to be some switching cost but it's not like Google is a prison. > Who do you call if gmail craps out Well, if you have a SLA, you just call them on their 99.9% uptime guarantee: https://www.cnet.com/news/can-you-trust-your-business-to-googles-cloud/ https://www.cnet.com/news/can-you-trust-your-business-to-goo... I guess if you're a consumer you don't get the same level of support, but it uses the same infrastructure so any problems will show up on the dashboard: https://www.google.com/appsstatus https://www.google.com/appsstatus The reparations in all cases are limited to service credits, so you'd just be getting more free use of an already free service.
    - zyx321 9y ago
      >It's not really any worse an invasion of privacy than Snowden or Wikileaks So informing people that their government is spying on them is the same as spying on them yourself?
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    >(who do you call if gmail craps out on you?) When was the last time gmail crapped out on you?
    - scholia 9y ago
      The most likely scenario is people getting locked out of Gmail https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=locked+out+of+Gmail https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=locked+out+of+Gmail
pacala 9y ago
Always on cameras, always on mics, that's a new low even for Google. Technically they are not yet uploading everything into the cloud, but who in his right mind is trusting Google on privacy anymore? From Google Maps the other day "New! share your location with your friends for an hour". Oh, by the way, give Google Maps permission to always track your location, forever. Wtf. Camera and microphone on the mobile phone activate when I press the button to activate them. Furthermore, the photos and sound are ostensibly owned by me. Pics go to icloud, voice goes to the people I talk to. Not to a corporation that built a global web specifically designed to suck up every bit of personal information that they can possibly suck. "To provide me a better service", haha. Mics and cams are OK in cars, because the car is not connected to the Internet. The data stays in the car. Baby monitors are OK, because they are not connected to the Internet. The data stays in the house. Notice a pattern there?
- pawadu 9y ago
  > Technically they are not yet uploading everything into the cloud Don't they upload every "Hey, Google!" command to their cloud? I assume they would upload some background sound to train their algorithms against background noise.
  - jankey 9y ago
    Sure, you can review and delete everything here: https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?restrict=vaa&utm_source=help https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?restrict=vaa&utm_so... (I work for Google)
    - pacala 9y ago
      Right. opt-out vs opt-in. http://danariely.com/2008/05/05/3-main-lessons-of-psychology http://danariely.com/2008/05/05/3-main-lessons-of-psychology PS. Kindly explain why Google Maps really wants to stalk my location even when not using it actively. It's been forced down Android users a few years ago via a "Yes/Not now" dark pattern, it's coming on iPhone under the guise of "share location with your friends". PS2. Kindly explain why anyone would ever trust Google to not expand their data acquisition behavior once the sensors are in place. For example, GPS, but always on mics and cameras in the future.
a_imho 9y ago
The value proposition is just poor. Not that people love the idea they can be monitored, tracked and recorded anywhere, they just tolerate that, because it is pretty hard to have phone conversation without a mic. Putting an always on telescreen into your home that offers nothing really is a whole different game.
- JoshMnem 9y ago
  Consumers tolerate it partially because they don't understand technology. They would not tolerate it if they really knew how it worked and had knowledge on how to fix the problem.
  - wordupmaking 9y ago
    And then there's people who do understand but have friends who don't. As everybody should. I can self-host my email all I want, if I communicate with anyone in a corporate silo, the silo records it.
    - JoshMnem 9y ago
      Yes, and there are many dark patterns that companies use to get your data from your contacts, even if you don't use those companies' products.
  - fixermark 9y ago
    I think you over-estimate the public's sensitivity to the risk model. I know plenty of people (myself included) who know how it works and cheerfully embrace it, because the benefits outweigh the risks.
    - JoshMnem 9y ago
      I know many technical people who understand the technology side of things, but they don't fully understand the political and societal implications. That may not be true in your case, and you may have some new arguments that I haven't heard, but I've never found a convincing argument for being careless about privacy, and I've been following and debating the issue fairly closely for about 15 years. It's a very complex and difficult problem. The answer isn't "we absolutely must have 100% privacy" or "they already have all of my data so it doesn't matter." But arguments along the lines of, "I don't mind if they have my data if it helps me find products that I like", tend to arise from "consumer" mentality rather than "architect" mentality. So I would revise my above comment to say, "Consumers tolerate it partially because they don't understand [the full implications]."
jlg23 9y ago
> It is very interesting to me why certain microphones and cameras are fine, while others are not. If you film yourself during sex that's one thing. If I film you during sex without your explicit consent that's a completely different thing. > However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. Building a mic into a speaker is not okay. Building is not the problem, usage is. People don't complain about the new features but about the people who use them without consideration for others' privacy. > I guess to have mics and cams in your car is fine as well. No? Absolutely not. Neither is sending any data about my car to any other party (like manufacturer or insurance). > I don't think it's about privacy, it seems to be about control. Where's the button on that thing!? You are right if with "that thing" you refer to the user who is violating my privacy. Controlling my own devices is easy: The button is my wallet which simply does not open for devices that spy on me.
- MrQuincle 9y ago
  The deeper question then is the following: Why is it so hard to have people care about privacy enough? If there would be such a strong gradient towards privacy-favoring products and services, why does society so slowly adapt? + It might be that the risks are not yet understood. As argued here: http://laoutaris.info/index.php/2016/09/11/oh-but-people-dont-care-about-privacy/ http://laoutaris.info/index.php/2016/09/11/oh-but-people-don... + It is politically a much stronger move to act upon feelings of fear than on more abstract risk calculations. Advocated here: https://openmedia.org/en/why-it-so-hard-convince-people-care-about-privacy https://openmedia.org/en/why-it-so-hard-convince-people-care... + From our bubble we might think privacy is valuable, but this might just not be shared broadly. Rich people admire privacy: http://www.businessinsider.de/wealthy-people-care-about-privacy-the-most-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.de/wealthy-people-care-about-priv... + People might not want privacy, but something slightly related: they do not want surprises. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/12/people-dont-tru.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/12/people-dont-.... I don't know how many business models are based on privacy, but my assumption is that it's much more likely to succeed with your startup on betting that people will share what you didn't think they would share, then to build a security minded niche product or service.
  - 9y ago
techdragon 9y ago
I'm least offended by the door bell type devices. They are on the outside and offer no more information than someone could gain by snooping at my house from the street. The benefits of being able to pretend to be present at home when the doorbell is answered is significantly better security of my personal goods against casual burglary. The downside is someone could remotely harvest a profile and recordings of who enters and leaves my house, which can be viewed from the street and offers me no tangible loss of personal privacy over what someone who wanted to watch me could already do.
- j_s 9y ago
  Most outdoor security cameras would fall under this classification as well.
afarrell 9y ago
> However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. If someone is holding a phone up and taking a photo of you to post online, you can object. If someone is wearing glasses with the little red indicator light turned off, you can't.
- mondoshawan 9y ago
  Interestingly enough, if you're wearing a pair of glasses without microphones and a camera but with a display, people still ask the question, "are you recording me?"

Mathnerd314 9y ago

I think it's more of a general Luddite / anti-tech paradigm. Historically, strange things were dangerous and/or poisonous. Tech people probably recognize these devices from science fiction books / movies / stories, so they don't get scared, but the rest of the world has no context to place them in and hence treats them like unexploded ordnance.

Loic 9y ago
By framing this as "luddite/anti-tech" you do not address the fundamental question: Do you really want your life to have such high dependency on a single corporation? I am in no ways anti-tech, but the history has shown that putting your life in the hands of a single corporation is not a sane decision.
- Mathnerd314 9y ago
  Referring to "the history" is just wrong, there are always conflicting perspectives and facts. See http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in-defense-of-the-company-town.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173396; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173396; there have been plenty of (presumably sane) people who depended on a single corporation. It's not clear whether they're better off for it, and there is a slippery-slope argument, but monopolies and lock-in are not intrinsically evil.
  - cyphar 9y ago
    > It's not clear whether they're better off for it, and there is a slippery-slope argument, but monopolies and lock-in are not intrinsically evil. They are only not intrinsically evil if you make the assumption that they will never harm you (act in a way you didn't bargain for) or disappear. A company which does either has given you no way out of a service you now depend on and are fucked if it doesn't work for you anymore. Given the churn on technology companies, acquisitions and a general lack of ethics, I would not put a lot of trust in claiming that companies are going to uphold either of those requirements. Thus, I would argue that effectively all companies will do evil inevitably and thus are intrinsically evil. Not to mention that companies are psychopaths by structure. They definitely don't care about you (hell, they don't care about their employees on the whole).
    - Mathnerd314 9y ago
      > fucked if it doesn't work for you anymore. There are plenty of responses: sue them under antitrust statutes, break in and steal their tech, go the politics route and seize it via eminent domain, etc. It's true though, a lot of those are impractical. But in the end you're pretty much back where you started before you began a relationship with the company; fucked is a relative term, when you should be thinking on an absolute scale of reference. > all companies will do evil inevitably and thus are intrinsically evil I guess it depends on your philosophy of evil. Sure, corporations are like hungry tigers, in that if you're in the same room as them without protection you're likely to get killed and eaten eventually. But does that make tigers (or corporations) evil? Consensus seems to be "no" or "mu": https://www.quora.com/Are-tigers-lions-and-hyenas-evil-creatures-since-they-can-eat-humans https://www.quora.com/Are-tigers-lions-and-hyenas-evil-creat... (mu being defined as in http://webpages.charter.net/sn9/literature/mu.html http://webpages.charter.net/sn9/literature/mu.html)
- wordupmaking 9y ago
  Exactly because I like tech I don't like how the persons it's shaped by and the reasons they shape it for. (particular things I dislike are symptoms of that). Consider the thoughts of Konrad Zuse or Joseph Weizenbaum with just about anyone who ever worked at Microsoft, Apple, Google or Facebook in any sort of leading role. Technology can empower, it can give people room, and it can "capture the imagination" and "change the way we think about trivial thing X or Y". Or take the constant "we want to help people do X"... I'm really tired of the sleaze, the pretend-awedness and how we accepted filler language and filler personalities, more than I have a problem with the size of success of any single corporation per se. Maybe these things go hand in hand, maybe mass societies can't be human societies, but I'm not convinced, IMHO we're not even really trying so far, we just pretend being kind of dorks is "the future" and "modern".
- Chathamization 9y ago
  And a secretive organization at that. That's one of the big issues, the same as with the NSA - not just privacy, but the privacy differential. When an organization is able to learn everything about you, but you are able to learn little about them.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    This is huge. I can't even count how many times I've argued about privacy with Googlers and run into "trust me, we take this very seriously, but I can't say anything about it". We're asked to share everything with them, but these tech companies are incredibly, incredibly secretive, all under the guise of protecting their interests from competition. People in support of these companies running people's lives are all in favor of transparency and sharing on the Internet... until it gets turned around on them. For all it's other faults, The Circle movie captured this perfectly with one line from Tom Hanks: "We are so f###ed." Maybe I wouldn't be so bothered by Google knowing where I am every five minutes if I could track Larry Page and Eric Schmidt in near realtime too.
    - fixermark 9y ago
      If you don't trust Google to broker your data, you can definitely build your own system to do it. You are then merely faced with two challenges: 1) You'll be recapitulating years of work by dedicated, paid teams to do the sort of data-brokering Google will give you for free. 2) If you want your work to be useful (because as we know, the real value of shared data is in the sharing), you'll need to convince your friends (and friends-of-friends) that your data-sharing solution---your "tracks you every five minutes, but you can see where everyone else being tracked is"---is safer and more trustworthy than Google's. But nothing's stopping you from trying to solve (1) and (2).
      - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
        As you just pointed out, the latter thing is, in fact, exactly what prevents you from simply building your own system: The network effect. It's why it's very unlikely anything but large governments like the US and the EU are capable of restraining Google's behavior. (Smaller governments are not able to, as Google would simply refuse to operate in those localities until the government caved to public pressure to stop "banning Google".) I'd also caution you from describing Google's services as "free". The cost is huge, it's just not a cost you pay in dollars.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I think the topics of privacy and tech monopoly should be separated out a bit more in discussions. Different people object to different issues.
supremesaboteur 9y ago
There are many problems with Google's dominance. 1. The Filter Bubble. The idea that you can be shut in your own bubble, not being exposed to new ideas or ideas that contradict your own, is pretty bad 2. The idea that a for profit company becoming the arbiter of truth ( with noble intentions of fighting 'fake news' etc ) is also pretty bad. It can be used for political or economic gain 3. The company has a largely hostage users that they can abuse through predatory pricing etc The opposition is not towards technology, but towards one company controlling most, if not all, of modern technology
- Mathnerd314 9y ago
  > filter bubble That just means you've got to proactively seek out new ideas you're uncomfortable with, and be mindful that not everything can be found on Google. It's not a reason to use a crappy search like Yahoo or Bing (which only indexes 1/10 of the pages Google does: http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/ http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/). > a for profit company becoming the arbiter of truth Wikipedia is more of an arbiter of truth than Google; so far Google has limited itself to indexing information rather than summarizing or categorizing it. > predatory pricing etc Free is predatory? I guess they should be paying users to search, like Bing? http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-paid-search-bing-rewards-program/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-paid-search-bing-rewards-pr...
  - shakna 9y ago
    > so far Google has limited itself to indexing information rather than summarizing or categorizing it Apart from Google's Instant Answers. Which have, in the past, captured misleading or flat-out wrong information. > predatory pricing etc See Firebase's recent price hike. [0] Not all Google products are free, Google is not just a search engine. Some start off reasonable, you get invested, and then they suddenly become ridiculously more expensive. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      (I work for google, but nothing to do with firebase) How exactly is what I think is best summarized as "we had a bug in our pricing system that was undercharging a miniscule number of users by an order of magnitude, and when we fixed the bug, they were informed of the price increase and we even gave them ways to mitigate, but their app architecture was terrible which made it difficult or impossible, and then after they raised a stink about it we reduced the cost/credited them enough to be mutually agreeable" as predatory?
pawadu 9y ago
Yes, but there are two problems with this particular company: 1. they have grown this mentality where they gather any data they can get their hands on - apologize only when/if caught red handed. (remember google street car password gathering?). 2. the more you use their services the more dependent you become. but google have shown zero care for individual consumers. (who do you call if gmail craps out on you?)
- Mathnerd314 9y ago
  > data gathering It's not really any worse an invasion of privacy than Snowden or Wikileaks. At least Google apologizes instead of going on about how information should be free. > more dependent Google actively reduces dependence, e.g. by their data takeout option. Obviously there's always going to be some switching cost but it's not like Google is a prison. > Who do you call if gmail craps out Well, if you have a SLA, you just call them on their 99.9% uptime guarantee: https://www.cnet.com/news/can-you-trust-your-business-to-googles-cloud/ https://www.cnet.com/news/can-you-trust-your-business-to-goo... I guess if you're a consumer you don't get the same level of support, but it uses the same infrastructure so any problems will show up on the dashboard: https://www.google.com/appsstatus https://www.google.com/appsstatus The reparations in all cases are limited to service credits, so you'd just be getting more free use of an already free service.
  - zyx321 9y ago
    >It's not really any worse an invasion of privacy than Snowden or Wikileaks So informing people that their government is spying on them is the same as spying on them yourself?
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  >(who do you call if gmail craps out on you?) When was the last time gmail crapped out on you?
  - scholia 9y ago
    The most likely scenario is people getting locked out of Gmail https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=locked+out+of+Gmail https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=locked+out+of+Gmail

pacala 9y ago

Always on cameras, always on mics, that's a new low even for Google. Technically they are not yet uploading everything into the cloud, but who in his right mind is trusting Google on privacy anymore? From Google Maps the other day "New! share your location with your friends for an hour". Oh, by the way, give Google Maps permission to always track your location, forever. Wtf. Camera and microphone on the mobile phone activate when I press the button to activate them. Furthermore, the photos and sound are ostensibly owned by me. Pics go to icloud, voice goes to the people I talk to. Not to a corporation that built a global web specifically designed to suck up every bit of personal information that they can possibly suck. "To provide me a better service", haha. Mics and cams are OK in cars, because the car is not connected to the Internet. The data stays in the car. Baby monitors are OK, because they are not connected to the Internet. The data stays in the house. Notice a pattern there?

pawadu 9y ago
> Technically they are not yet uploading everything into the cloud Don't they upload every "Hey, Google!" command to their cloud? I assume they would upload some background sound to train their algorithms against background noise.
- jankey 9y ago
  Sure, you can review and delete everything here: https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?restrict=vaa&utm_source=help https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?restrict=vaa&utm_so... (I work for Google)
  - pacala 9y ago
    Right. opt-out vs opt-in. http://danariely.com/2008/05/05/3-main-lessons-of-psychology http://danariely.com/2008/05/05/3-main-lessons-of-psychology PS. Kindly explain why Google Maps really wants to stalk my location even when not using it actively. It's been forced down Android users a few years ago via a "Yes/Not now" dark pattern, it's coming on iPhone under the guise of "share location with your friends". PS2. Kindly explain why anyone would ever trust Google to not expand their data acquisition behavior once the sensors are in place. For example, GPS, but always on mics and cameras in the future.

a_imho 9y ago

The value proposition is just poor. Not that people love the idea they can be monitored, tracked and recorded anywhere, they just tolerate that, because it is pretty hard to have phone conversation without a mic. Putting an always on telescreen into your home that offers nothing really is a whole different game.

JoshMnem 9y ago
Consumers tolerate it partially because they don't understand technology. They would not tolerate it if they really knew how it worked and had knowledge on how to fix the problem.
- wordupmaking 9y ago
  And then there's people who do understand but have friends who don't. As everybody should. I can self-host my email all I want, if I communicate with anyone in a corporate silo, the silo records it.
  - JoshMnem 9y ago
    Yes, and there are many dark patterns that companies use to get your data from your contacts, even if you don't use those companies' products.
- fixermark 9y ago
  I think you over-estimate the public's sensitivity to the risk model. I know plenty of people (myself included) who know how it works and cheerfully embrace it, because the benefits outweigh the risks.
  - JoshMnem 9y ago
    I know many technical people who understand the technology side of things, but they don't fully understand the political and societal implications. That may not be true in your case, and you may have some new arguments that I haven't heard, but I've never found a convincing argument for being careless about privacy, and I've been following and debating the issue fairly closely for about 15 years. It's a very complex and difficult problem. The answer isn't "we absolutely must have 100% privacy" or "they already have all of my data so it doesn't matter." But arguments along the lines of, "I don't mind if they have my data if it helps me find products that I like", tend to arise from "consumer" mentality rather than "architect" mentality. So I would revise my above comment to say, "Consumers tolerate it partially because they don't understand [the full implications]."

jlg23 9y ago

> It is very interesting to me why certain microphones and cameras are fine, while others are not. If you film yourself during sex that's one thing. If I film you during sex without your explicit consent that's a completely different thing. > However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. Building a mic into a speaker is not okay. Building is not the problem, usage is. People don't complain about the new features but about the people who use them without consideration for others' privacy. > I guess to have mics and cams in your car is fine as well. No? Absolutely not. Neither is sending any data about my car to any other party (like manufacturer or insurance). > I don't think it's about privacy, it seems to be about control. Where's the button on that thing!? You are right if with "that thing" you refer to the user who is violating my privacy. Controlling my own devices is easy: The button is my wallet which simply does not open for devices that spy on me.

MrQuincle 9y ago
The deeper question then is the following: Why is it so hard to have people care about privacy enough? If there would be such a strong gradient towards privacy-favoring products and services, why does society so slowly adapt? + It might be that the risks are not yet understood. As argued here: http://laoutaris.info/index.php/2016/09/11/oh-but-people-dont-care-about-privacy/ http://laoutaris.info/index.php/2016/09/11/oh-but-people-don... + It is politically a much stronger move to act upon feelings of fear than on more abstract risk calculations. Advocated here: https://openmedia.org/en/why-it-so-hard-convince-people-care-about-privacy https://openmedia.org/en/why-it-so-hard-convince-people-care... + From our bubble we might think privacy is valuable, but this might just not be shared broadly. Rich people admire privacy: http://www.businessinsider.de/wealthy-people-care-about-privacy-the-most-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.de/wealthy-people-care-about-priv... + People might not want privacy, but something slightly related: they do not want surprises. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/12/people-dont-tru.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/12/people-dont-.... I don't know how many business models are based on privacy, but my assumption is that it's much more likely to succeed with your startup on betting that people will share what you didn't think they would share, then to build a security minded niche product or service.
- 9y ago

techdragon 9y ago

I'm least offended by the door bell type devices. They are on the outside and offer no more information than someone could gain by snooping at my house from the street. The benefits of being able to pretend to be present at home when the doorbell is answered is significantly better security of my personal goods against casual burglary. The downside is someone could remotely harvest a profile and recordings of who enters and leaves my house, which can be viewed from the street and offers me no tangible loss of personal privacy over what someone who wanted to watch me could already do.

j_s 9y ago
Most outdoor security cameras would fall under this classification as well.

afarrell 9y ago

> However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. If someone is holding a phone up and taking a photo of you to post online, you can object. If someone is wearing glasses with the little red indicator light turned off, you can't.

mondoshawan 9y ago
Interestingly enough, if you're wearing a pair of glasses without microphones and a camera but with a display, people still ask the question, "are you recording me?"