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I see many people argue that fighting for privacy is a lost cause. That it'd take too much effort to reverse current trends. I think that you and others are to
by SCHiM 9y ago
I see many people argue that fighting for privacy is a lost cause. That it'd take too much effort to reverse current trends.
I think that you and others are too cynical, although I agree that it might become worse before it gets any better. If we look at history we can see that other societies had the will, if not the means, to engage in data mining on the scale that ours does through the internet and massive analysis through machine learning/statistics. The Stasi is an example of an organization that certainly displayed the will to violate privacy as much as possible.
But it also becomes apparent that the privacy violating priorities of those organizations and societies can change, in an almost Hegelian dialectic manner, to protecting privacy. These days counter culture is still going strong in Germany, relative to other parts of Europe. People that belong to a counter culture will resist tools that exert control over them, such as extensive surveillance, by definition. This is in addition to the fact that Germany is more privacy friendly than most of its European neighbours.
Things can and do change over time. Through history a pendulum swings from one extreme to another. We just need to wait until something goes horrendously wrong with the way our privacy is currently being violated before it starts to swing in the other direction.
- Retric 9y agoI think privacy feelings are often misplaced. Using the internet may feel private, but it's like setting up a giant antenna on your roof and using radio to chat with someone else. IMO, the fight should focus on things like secretly turning on the microphone on your internet connected device (cellphone etc) and listing in. That's the kind of situation where we could get useful long term precedent and most people would agree with the intent. Because, if we are not careful that can quietly change and AI will make listing to every conversation anyone has in the county a real possibility.
- DerfNet 9y agoI always found it crazy that they didn't carry over the hardware "recording" LED to cellphone cameras. I'd really like to see that become a thing, and maybe another LED for the microphone, wired into the circuit so that the camera and/or microphone cannot be in use without the LED lighting up. I'd basically like a row of status LEDs like an old Thinkpad for monitoring all systems on my devices.
- XorNot 9y agoConversely surreptious cellphone camera use is also a big defense against police abuse of power. Not sure I'd want to be unable to mask the camera and mic being active either.
- tmnvix 9y agoDiscreet hardware switch?
- bdamm 9y agoYeah, this is what I want for my money if I'm expected to drop $999 on a cell phone.
- arthur_pryor 9y agoi assume the LEDs suggested by the parent are for the protection of the device's owner. for your use case, you might consider tape that's the same color as the material surrounding the light. though, that'd be a huge inconvenience to apply in the heat of the moment, and it'd somewhat defeat the purpose of an easy indicator if you had to peel it back every time you wanted to check the light. though... you might also worry about recording when it's in your pocket, in which case you'd still have to pull it out to look at it. i know that police will often try to interfere with recording despite the legal precedents, but it seems pretty well accepted at this point that recording police activity is completely lawful as long as you're not interfering with said activity. again, i know police have blatantly disregarded that in practice, but it's something. oh, another low tech option for surreptitious recording: finger over the light. still gotta remember to do it, but again, it's something.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoPresumably the status lights would face the user, so unless you're filming the cops with the front-facing camera, they won't be able to see them.
- fencepost 9y agoI'll note that those are soft switches at least as far back as the T510, because installing Windows 10 disabled the microphone mute button.
- knz 9y ago> Because, if we are not careful that can quietly change and AI will make listing to every conversation anyone has in the county a real possibility. Are we sure mass recording isn't already happening? It wasn't that long ago that the idea of bulk metadata collection was thought of as tinfoil hat material by many.
- mattmanser 9y agoThat's pretty trivial to detect by inspecting network traffic. Although perhaps we should make those kind of monitors easier to use and much better UX.
- lovich 9y agohow many people can inspect network traffic on any given device? I don't think that's even a common skill among software developers unless you have a devops/IT focus, much less the entire populace
- HighPlainsDrftr 9y agoIt is pretty common amongst System/Network engineers though. Modify a few switch configurations and setup a sniffer. There are quite a few ways to do it.
- bittercynic 9y agoI expect my android phone exchanges encrypted information with google for updates and other purposes. How would I know if it slipped some other information into one of the encrypted transmissions?
- fnninja 9y agoYou could try something like TaintDroid. Marks data on your phone with a tag that is detected if said data is transmitted off the device without first being encrypted. Disclaimer: haven't personally tried it yet, but that's the general concept.