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Widespread government owned CCTV cameras have been widely recognized as a privacy threat, and you only need to look at countries outside the US to see how they

Widespread government owned CCTV cameras have been widely recognized as a privacy threat, and you only need to look at countries outside the US to see how they are being used for license plate AND face tracking. Speed cameras in the US aren't just radar, they photograph you, and even mail you a photo of yourself when you're caught speeding. This has lead to famous cases, like when a guy was caught speeding, and his home was mailed a speeding ticket of him in the car with his mistress, which his wife opened the mail. Seems to me you're now hand waving away the long recognized danger of government surveillance, as in, actual danger, wherein government sanctions you based on surveillance, as opposed to theoretical dangers of someone showing you a Nike ad. So while you're worrying about GDPR, this is happening: https://www.politico.eu/article/berlin-big-brother-state-surveillance-facial-recognition-technology/ https://www.politico.eu/article/berlin-big-brother-state-sur...

ocdtrekkie 7y ago
Next year I can vote to remove the misogynist in charge of the United States, and hopefully replace him with someone better. (And even if I fail, he's gone in just another four years.) However, even Google's shareholders can't remove the misogynists in charge of Google due to the share class structure. The government has problems but trends towards the people's benefit in the long run. Corporate greed trends towards enriching the lives of sick and disturbing rich men like Larry and Sergey. Corporations are a far worse and far less regulated threat than government, with far less checks and balances in place to protect us. Throwing out the government bogeyman hasn't worked on me before and isn't going to work on me now.
- cromwellian 7y ago
  >The government has problems but trends towards the people's benefit in the long run. Corporate greed trends towards enriching the lives of sick and disturbing rich men like Larry and Sergey. >Corporations are a far worse and far less regulated threat than government, with far less checks and balances in place to protect us. Tell that to the victims of US foreign policy. 1+ million Iraqis dead, ethnic cleansing civil war, and the unleashing of a theocratic cult recently is just the tip of the iceberg. Do I really need to add up all the dead in South America, in South East Asia, and around the world from your "mostly benign, government has problems but trends towards benefit" scenario? Maybe YOUR benefit, but you've been privileged to export misery and suffering to other people around the world. I tell you what, go visit the war museum in Hanoi, and gaze at the deformed children who are still affected today by Agent Orange, or those still being blow up by land mines and other unexploded ordinance. This is the sad navel gazing of the privileged and comfortable, hyperbolizing theoretical threats and getting triggered over minutiae, and hand waving away the utter misery and very real dangers that have been shown over and over this century. This is not to assert "whataboutism" and claim that privacy isn't important, it is. But trying to argue that ad targeting is the greater threat than US (government), when our foreign policy's stacks of bodies piled miles high strikes me as naive.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    > Maybe YOUR benefit, but you've been privileged to export misery and suffering to other people around the world. This is exactly what I would say about someone cozily working at Google in Silicon Valley. I literally deal with the costs imposed on seniors and less technically literate users by Google's ad nightmare on a daily basis. And before you get high and mighty about how bad the government is compared to Google, remember that Google is built upon and protected by that very same government, and that Google's NetPAC is actively contributing chunks of many Googler paychecks (perhaps even yours?) to fund the very worst members of that government: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1164945275066056704 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1164945275066056704
    - cromwellian 7y ago
      And I and many others protest that, like we protested ALEC. I have friends at Microsoft who have lodged similar protests. I'm working on privacy preserving technology, that's my contribution. I'm trying to make things better. Hand waving away US government's vastly more destructive tendencies, and the demonstrated abuses of government surveillance doesn't strike me as helpful. On the long laundry list of bad things Trump is guilty of, misogyny sits below the current proxy war in Yemen which started under Obama but has been boosted by Trump and Kushner. It's now up to almost 100k dead, 45k wounded, and an incredible 84,000 children dead from starvation. But hey, we have checks and balances on this right, thanks to FOIA? Can we get Trump's tax returns yet?
    - dang 7y ago
      We've had many discussions with you before about overdoing your anti-Google passions on this site. It's clearly leading you to break the site guidelines, as in this comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888525, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888324. Once again it has become a distraction and is turning this thread into a flamewar. I've rate-limited your account again and we will ban you again if you keep using HN as a platform like this. I know your views are sincere, but the way you pursue them has obviously left intellectual curiosity behind a long time ago. Worse, inundating HN threads with whatever agenda you're prosecuting has a destructive effect on the discussions. This is not cool, and has happened more than once before (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17216664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17216664). This is not a site for platforms, agendas, megaphones, campaigns, or harangues. It's for thoughtful conversation about curious things: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Since the mechanics of the internet will now lead others to accuse me of pro-Google bias, I'll add that we've repeatedly banned accounts for pro-Google agenda-ness just the same way. Our concern is not Google or any other $Bigcorp, it's protecting HN.

ocdtrekkie 7y ago

Next year I can vote to remove the misogynist in charge of the United States, and hopefully replace him with someone better. (And even if I fail, he's gone in just another four years.) However, even Google's shareholders can't remove the misogynists in charge of Google due to the share class structure. The government has problems but trends towards the people's benefit in the long run. Corporate greed trends towards enriching the lives of sick and disturbing rich men like Larry and Sergey. Corporations are a far worse and far less regulated threat than government, with far less checks and balances in place to protect us. Throwing out the government bogeyman hasn't worked on me before and isn't going to work on me now.

cromwellian 7y ago
>The government has problems but trends towards the people's benefit in the long run. Corporate greed trends towards enriching the lives of sick and disturbing rich men like Larry and Sergey. >Corporations are a far worse and far less regulated threat than government, with far less checks and balances in place to protect us. Tell that to the victims of US foreign policy. 1+ million Iraqis dead, ethnic cleansing civil war, and the unleashing of a theocratic cult recently is just the tip of the iceberg. Do I really need to add up all the dead in South America, in South East Asia, and around the world from your "mostly benign, government has problems but trends towards benefit" scenario? Maybe YOUR benefit, but you've been privileged to export misery and suffering to other people around the world. I tell you what, go visit the war museum in Hanoi, and gaze at the deformed children who are still affected today by Agent Orange, or those still being blow up by land mines and other unexploded ordinance. This is the sad navel gazing of the privileged and comfortable, hyperbolizing theoretical threats and getting triggered over minutiae, and hand waving away the utter misery and very real dangers that have been shown over and over this century. This is not to assert "whataboutism" and claim that privacy isn't important, it is. But trying to argue that ad targeting is the greater threat than US (government), when our foreign policy's stacks of bodies piled miles high strikes me as naive.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  > Maybe YOUR benefit, but you've been privileged to export misery and suffering to other people around the world. This is exactly what I would say about someone cozily working at Google in Silicon Valley. I literally deal with the costs imposed on seniors and less technically literate users by Google's ad nightmare on a daily basis. And before you get high and mighty about how bad the government is compared to Google, remember that Google is built upon and protected by that very same government, and that Google's NetPAC is actively contributing chunks of many Googler paychecks (perhaps even yours?) to fund the very worst members of that government: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1164945275066056704 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1164945275066056704
  - cromwellian 7y ago
    And I and many others protest that, like we protested ALEC. I have friends at Microsoft who have lodged similar protests. I'm working on privacy preserving technology, that's my contribution. I'm trying to make things better. Hand waving away US government's vastly more destructive tendencies, and the demonstrated abuses of government surveillance doesn't strike me as helpful. On the long laundry list of bad things Trump is guilty of, misogyny sits below the current proxy war in Yemen which started under Obama but has been boosted by Trump and Kushner. It's now up to almost 100k dead, 45k wounded, and an incredible 84,000 children dead from starvation. But hey, we have checks and balances on this right, thanks to FOIA? Can we get Trump's tax returns yet?
  - dang 7y ago
    We've had many discussions with you before about overdoing your anti-Google passions on this site. It's clearly leading you to break the site guidelines, as in this comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888525, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888324. Once again it has become a distraction and is turning this thread into a flamewar. I've rate-limited your account again and we will ban you again if you keep using HN as a platform like this. I know your views are sincere, but the way you pursue them has obviously left intellectual curiosity behind a long time ago. Worse, inundating HN threads with whatever agenda you're prosecuting has a destructive effect on the discussions. This is not cool, and has happened more than once before (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17216664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17216664). This is not a site for platforms, agendas, megaphones, campaigns, or harangues. It's for thoughtful conversation about curious things: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Since the mechanics of the internet will now lead others to accuse me of pro-Google bias, I'll add that we've repeatedly banned accounts for pro-Google agenda-ness just the same way. Our concern is not Google or any other $Bigcorp, it's protecting HN.