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This seems like such a losing battle. Payments on public transit could become anonymous, but the video feeds would still be recorded, and facial recognition cou
by nwah1 9y ago
This seems like such a losing battle. Payments on public transit could become anonymous, but the video feeds would still be recorded, and facial recognition could be easily performed.
The cat is out of the bag. Information technology makes this data accumulation inevitable. Likely even for those who walk around with a face covering all day, pay only cash, and don't use smartphones. By doing those things you actually make yourself more noticeable, in a lot of ways, and are still trackable.
There are some cryptoanarchist ways to achieve practical privacy, to all but the most dedicated governments. Yet, those technologies have severe downsides for both individuals and society at large.
There's no obvious way out of this conundrum. The concept of the Participatory Panopticon is one proposed solution, and is less top-down, but not necessarily any less capricious than centralized authority.
The best safeguards are to create strong institutions, informed citizens, stable economies, and all the usual boring social reform stuff that tech geeks hate and think is mushy, unchangeable, hard to study, and likely irrelevant.
- dcow 9y agoIt's also interesting to look at Stallman's tone: he's defeated. "What can be done about privacy Mr Stallman?" "Society needs to care more." It's the same tone JPB had when asked about how the EFF can have an impact on younger generations who take the internet for granted. "They need to care more. And education." They're not wrong, of course. And your comment is very similar: the problem isn't the technology, it's the impetus of society that needs to change.
- ABCLAW 9y agoI mean, they're kinda wrong. You can care plenty about these issues but not see an actual way to have impact such that your concerns are addressed. If society isn't caring, then either society doesn't see why there's a concern, or society recognizes that atomically it does not have agency to address the issue, and the people who do have that agency are the ones that don't give a shit.
- gameswithgo 9y agoThey mean that the majority of society needs to care more collectively. If that were to happen then there would be impact.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoSaying "society needs to care more" is the last stop before the final destination of "this can't be done". Getting great many people to coordinate on something that's beneficial to them long-term, but carries an (even insignificant) short-term cost is one of the hardest (if not the hardest) things to do, out of all the things humans ever tried.
- ABCLAW 9y agoI don't think calling out 'society needs to care more' as bullshit means we collectively throw up our hands and walk away. It means we recognize that 'getting many people to coordinate on something' just plain isn't going to happen as the primary mode of addressing these issues and instead work on solutions that do work. For a subset, sure, maybe a good PR push gets people sufficiently inflamed about a particular topic, but does that mean that key problems that aren't 'viral' enough aren't deserving of a proper solution? If "society needs to care more" is the answer, then that's the implication. But that's obviously wrong.
- dj-wonk 9y agoI interpret "society needs to care more" as a challenge: what can we do to make society care more? Put another way, I view this as a collective action problem.
- CWuestefeld 9y agoThe classic solution to collective action problems is to have the government take care of it. But here, the government is probably the biggest offender. You'll pry their databases and TSA inspections from their cold, dead hands.
- deleted 9y ago
- SeanMacConMara 9y agoHe doesn't sound defeated to me. He's repeating the same message he has for a long time now. The only practical realistic solution is at the political level. I don't recall him ever implying the tech alone was a complete solution. Votes, not Code.
- robotresearcher 9y ago> Payments on public transit could become anonymous, but the video feeds would still be recorded, and facial recognition could be easily performed. In the article Stallman explicitly proposes deleting such video recordings after a timeout, and forbidding facial reco without prior cause.
- nwah1 9y agoHis first argument was that accumulation itself needs to be prevented. If security requires accumulation proceed, then the answer is that his vision of preventing accumulation is not really possible. How many times have we heard of large institutions suffering data breaches or failing to delete data that they are supposed to delete? Once it is accumulated, all bets are off.
- robotresearcher 9y agoOnce again, The Fine Article has you covered. Stallman says when such logs are necessary, they should never be network accessible. Go get the disk out of the physically secured machine if you need the data for $SERIOUSREASON.
- athenot 9y agoMaybe the answer is to turn the dial to 11 on information sharing and require data transparency from managers/leaders/public servants who operate data accumulation outfits. Track users' location data? Then your location must be public record & realtime. Etc. At the end of the day, this is about information asymmetry. If the general public loses privacy, then so should those who benefit from that information, in order to level the playing field.
- stinkytaco 9y ago> At the end of the day, this is about information asymmetry. If the general public loses privacy, then so should those who benefit from that information, in order to level the playing field. This could be said for literally any transaction, ever. The bank knows how much money you have, but you don't know how much money the teller has. You don't know which books your librarian has out or what the bartender drinks. They are also citizens with their own right to privacy. I'm all for transparency and oversight, but information asymmetry will always exist. Some industries have regulatory structures around that asymmetry to prevent abuse, HIPAA for example, and others have not.
- SeanMacConMara 9y agomaybe replace "managers/leaders/public servants" with "shareholders/party donors" to really ruffle feathers also , why settle for a level playing field ? why not high privacy for citizens and high transparency for gov/large orgs ?
- d21d3q 9y agoHow about wearing huge Sombrero so that your face is invisible for cameras mounted above your head?
- amptorn 9y agoThen they just track the person with the huge Sombrero!
- balabaster 9y agoWhat if we all wear huge Sombreros? Or walk around in grey suits and bowler hats with apples in front of our faces
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- noobly 9y ago>the video feeds would still be recorded, and facial recognition could be easily performed. As another pointed out, the article covers this topic, explicitly. >The best safeguards are to create strong institutions I would replace 'strong' with 'transparent and honest'. Further, calling it a losing battle is a bit defeatist. >Yet, those technologies have severe downsides for both individuals and society at large. Out of curiosity, what are some of these downsides?
- mgleason_3 9y agoZuckerberg- is that you? Seriously, WTF!?! Not one part of that comment is true. The cat’s not out of the bag. Nothing “permanent” has happened. A law could be passed tomorrow requiring that all of our personal data be erased. You might not like it and it would put you out of business. And that part where you say “best safeguards are to create strong institutions...”. That sounds strangely like “the 4 dog defense” article that’s currently on HN. You just skipped the other arguments 1. We don’t have your data 2. If we had your data it’s it would have taken work to collect it. 3. If it took work to collect it it’s ours since you should have protected it. 4. If you didn’t protect it, the only answer is to form strong instituitions to protect the information formerly about you, but which now belongs to us.
- zzzeek 9y ago> A law could be passed tomorrow requiring that all of our personal data be erased. Such a law would be politically viable in only the most enlightened of governments and societies. Which goes back to the parent's point of "strong institutions, informed citizens, stable economies, and all the usual boring social reform stuff".