7 ms·

I'm far less worried about commercial companies doing this than I am worried about governments doing this. Usually when it comes to privacy I can begrudgingly

I'm far less worried about commercial companies doing this than I am worried about governments doing this. Usually when it comes to privacy I can begrudgingly accept that governments will violate it to some degree. This is a field, however, where I think governments must be outright banned from. We must not allow a situation to appear where the TSA or the police will run a quick "brain check" on somebody. It must be avoided. This would be a one way ticket to disaster.

devoply 7y ago
I will bet my left nut that if such a technology exists TSA may use it based on their discretion on any person entering the US including citizens and most citizens will be okay with it and the Supreme Court will hem and haw about it for years before giving some weak half ass decision against it that won't be enforced at all.
bboygravity 7y ago
> I'm far less worried about commercial companies doing this than I am worried about governments doing this. I don't understand this statement. I hope after Snowden we all know that data at a commercial company = data at government? What's the difference? I don't see any practical barriers to various government agencies having access to all data at all companies. With and without company knowledge, mostly secretly, with and without company and customer consent, legally and illegally. This goes for the US, all US allies and all US enemies. The intentions of commercial companies when it comes to data protection from government are pretty irrelevant. If you (as a people) want to ban your government from access to anything specific, you must first have control over your government. Which is inherently impossible in a system that is anything other than a direct democracy. Just my very unpopular opinion. There is no nation in the world that comes close to a people having control over a government, except arguably Switzerland. But even there I have my doubts...
- atemerev 7y ago
  I live in Switzerland. Direct democracy works perfectly well. I don't understand why it is not the default mode and no other country uses it -- to me, it is the obvious way of running things.
  - bboygravity 7y ago
    I don't live in Switzerland and I completely agree and it blows my mind as well. The standard, surprisingly popular, rhetoric I hear against direct democracy in other European countries is really very unconvincing to me: people are too stupid to vote, people can't know enough about specific subjects to vote well, people aren't interested in politics (duh, why would you in a system where you can't influence politics), people can be influenced too easily through propaganda and other nonsense arguments which would all apply to a representative democracy as well. People don't like change I guess and they (want to) love their country the way it is. On top of that I get a feeling that people somehow look up to politicians subconsciously as somehow being above them or at least being above their neighbors. They seem to equate leadership and sales skills to being able to take hard decisions and being incorruptible / divine. It's like the "king effect" (just made this up): everybody hates the king's decisions, but at the same time the king is the hero and pride of the nation and who could possibly want any other king?
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      People only have so much attention to give to operating their democracy. Which is why in most instances, the more local you get, the less efficiently government operates. Participation in local elections tends to be a complete joke, and as such those local government bodies tend to only represent a very narrow set of interests. In any case, this form of direct democracy wouldn’t solve the problems the parent is talking about. To achieve that, you’d need to vote on every decisions made by every public official ever.
      - atemerev 7y ago
        This is how it works here. We have local, cantonal and federal laws; the laws to vote on are presented in packages once every two months (so every time, people vote on both local and federal laws). Our participation is not a joke. Every Swiss citizen can propose a law to be voted on one of the next referendums, provided that they will collect the appropriate minimum number of signatures in its support.
- lopmotr 7y ago
  If the population is worried at all, they'll probably want to stop private companies using it anyway. Governments usually gets exemptions from privacy laws, so in a way that's more worrying - government access is less likely to be stopped than private access. Also, people won't have the choice when they're compelled to be scanned on arrest vs logging in to some optional private business.
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    >when they're compelled to be scanned on arrest I choose to plead the 5th. The wording is "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" which obviously covers brain scans. Of course the police will say I have the right to remain silent and they have the right to lock me in a jail cell. And TSA will absolutely do brain scans. I guess the right to remain silent is successfully getting eroded.
  - xg15 7y ago
    > Governments usually gets exemptions from privacy laws, so in a way that's more worrying - government access is less likely to be stopped than private access. Yes, because private companies are regulated. By the state. Meanwhile, private companies have nevertheless managed to make surveillance and ridiculously detailed tracking into a whole industry. > Also, people won't have the choice when they're compelled to be scanned on arrest vs logging in to some optional private business. Except in reality, this stuff has long since stopped being optional. If you buy any reasonably modern car, you'll be tracked by private companies. If you have a bank account, you'll be tracked by private companies. If you write an email... you get the point. How exactly do you opt-out of that?
- nwalker85 7y ago
  I agree that the third party doctrine is a huge problem for privacy. We're making progress on that front: https://www.insideprivacy.com/data-privacy/supreme-courts-carpenter-decision-requires-warrant-for-cell-phone-location-data/ https://www.insideprivacy.com/data-privacy/supreme-courts-ca...
justinmk 7y ago
I agree, but it's inevitable. The state has claimed all conceivable cut-points or transitions: - Transportation. Any time you want to go somewhere by car or plane (and potentially bus/train[1]), the government has decided it has the right to search you. - Interstate commerce. Most economic activity is taxed, and may be searched passively or actively to ensure that the state gets everything it wants. - Communication. TV, radio, telephone, and now the internet are monitored and adjusted by the state. Brain-to-network communication will eventually be commoditized, and the state will transitively invent some justification for monitoring it. Thus you may think thoughts which are shared with the network and for which you will be held liable. The only difference is that today you type the thoughts on a keyboard. I wrote an essay about this in 2011, for university. [1] http://news.antiwar.com/2010/11/25/napolitano-eyes-full-body-scans-for-trains-ships-mass-transit/ http://news.antiwar.com/2010/11/25/napolitano-eyes-full-body...
bostik 7y ago
Now, do you really think it would be something as straightforward and innocent-looking? A much more likely scenario is that brainstreams would be stored in various tech giants' systems (and because analytics is important, ~nothing is discarded). Instead of running a quick check, the police or official would pull your thought history. But no, not directly from the source. Of course not. To maintain a veneer of legitimacy, the actual tech companies will not sell to governments or law enforcement. There will be a forest of brokers, who sell to anyone. And if you thought advertising was invasive or creepy now, with this kind of technology we would be entering a world Philip K. Dick would have found too depressing to write about.
- mattlutze 7y ago
  Current laws would make it even simpler. In the US at least, an agency could simply have subpoenas approved by a judge, and then require the disclosure of whatever brain info any number of companies have for a person. The companies could of course sue to not disclose, but there'd be enough firms that would comply as to make access trivial for whichever agency wanted the info.
  - bostik 7y ago
    Warrants and subpoenas are inconvenient. They are targeted and may take time to be issued. And observing from the outside, US as a nation is still years - likely decades - from being able to stomach general warrants. But you are already well on your way towards something like that: reverse warrants are now a thing. Law enforcement in US has already issued a warrant for recorded information on all persons who were near an event after the fact. The logical conclusion with brain data archives will be to issue warrants for full mental activity history for X years on people who have had thoughts on a given unwelcome subject. But even then, warrants are inconvenient. It'll be much simpler and easier to just buy access to the data in bulk, all the time. That avoids the awkward questions on storage, access and oversight.
mbeex 7y ago
No ban will stop that. Whatever is possible will also be done, that has always been the case. As usual, there will be an arms race and possibly, for example, meditation teachers will open up completely new fields of activity.
_Microft 7y ago
My european take on this: governments are the only entities that can keep companies in check. A completely free, unregulated market is a bit like anarchy: it might work well if all of the actors were mature and aware of their responsibilities. Unfortunately the ones who wish for that the most are usually the ones least suited for it. They support these ideas not because of a noble goal of perfect freedom but because they are annoyed that there is a more powerful entity that gets in the way of what they want to do with/to others.
- wongarsu 7y ago
  I would go a step further and say the only completely free and unregulated market is anarchy. Take a regular state and strip away all those regulations about consumer protection, environment protection, substance abuse, contract enforcement etc, and stop all this socialist stuff like public healthcare, public unemployment insurance, and public roads, and you are left with is stateless anarchy. If you remove anything less you can always claim there's regulation and no truly free markets.
  - mantas 7y ago
    I'd rather see free market as fair playfield for all players. With clear rules that equally apply to each without special treatment. Wether written or not.
    - wongarsu 7y ago
      You could start with a minimum viable capitalistic state (enforcement of property rights and contacts through police and courts, some sort of government to update laws as necessary, taxes to pay for it all) and from there add basic infrastructure where competition is impractical, like roads, subsurface conduits for laying electricity and data lines, sewage systems, etc; investments that are beneficial to the overall economy but not rewarded by the market like parks, public transportation, and dams; things that ensure a good work force like public education (to supply educated workers) and public healthcare (to keep workers healthy and productive). Optionally you can add laws to improve the free market: consumers can't reliably judge food safety or environmental impact, so make the worst things illegal and improve transparency on the rest (food labeling etc), or impose taxes to mirror true costs to society. All of this is a free market in your definition, and is essentially how European states are run. But it's somehow not what "free market" advocates in the US want today.
sorokod 7y ago
Do not governments have access to the same data given the right paperwork?
emptyparadise 7y ago
If companies invent the tech, the governments will be able to use it no matter what. 90% of all the things China is using are based on Silicon Valley research. Plus, even if you don't let TSA or the police have the scanners, it would still be possible to subpoena companies for your latest thoughts as they happen. /The only/ way to not allow this to be the absolute end of privacy is to have the technology be shaped in an incredibly ethical way that makes such privacy violations fundamentally impossible. Store close to no data. Constantly encrypt whatever data you do store and keep it on the device itself. Constantly cycle keys. Make brain scanners absolutely worthless unless the user consciously authenticates themselves. Requiring all brain scanners to be 100% fully open (full on GPLv3 including the hardware plans) and physical networking kill switches would be a good start. All of this is not even new advice - there are quite a few outspoken people out there against any sort of data collection. But whether you agree with them or not, you must agree that the line in the sand must be drawn somewhere - and it definitely should not allow collecting people's thoughts. Trying to extend the Google and Facebook model of siphoning as much of your data as possible to also include thoughts should literally be a crime against humanity.
koboll 7y ago
In theory, we should already disallow this. The foundational law of the United States prohibits "unreasonable" searches of "persons, houses, papers, and effects". In practice, this has been eroded to the point of practical meaninglessness, such that the FBI director can issue a statement that clearly violates both its spirit and its letter, and few people bat an eye.
- guerrilla 7y ago
  > FBI director can issue or you could just be black.
  - wolco 7y ago
    or young or brown or powerless or near a border or a driver or on federal property
octosphere 7y ago
Well to some degree you might be right, but don't forget the USG is in bed with the private sector and regularly sends out NSLs[0] to companies asking for back doors and full access to customer/user data [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter
entropea 7y ago
A lot of modern privacy violations come from private companies like Facebook, Equifax, Google, etc. Government or Corporation should never have access to anything like this. They _never_ use it for good.

devoply 7y ago

I will bet my left nut that if such a technology exists TSA may use it based on their discretion on any person entering the US including citizens and most citizens will be okay with it and the Supreme Court will hem and haw about it for years before giving some weak half ass decision against it that won't be enforced at all.

bboygravity 7y ago

> I'm far less worried about commercial companies doing this than I am worried about governments doing this. I don't understand this statement. I hope after Snowden we all know that data at a commercial company = data at government? What's the difference? I don't see any practical barriers to various government agencies having access to all data at all companies. With and without company knowledge, mostly secretly, with and without company and customer consent, legally and illegally. This goes for the US, all US allies and all US enemies. The intentions of commercial companies when it comes to data protection from government are pretty irrelevant. If you (as a people) want to ban your government from access to anything specific, you must first have control over your government. Which is inherently impossible in a system that is anything other than a direct democracy. Just my very unpopular opinion. There is no nation in the world that comes close to a people having control over a government, except arguably Switzerland. But even there I have my doubts...

atemerev 7y ago
I live in Switzerland. Direct democracy works perfectly well. I don't understand why it is not the default mode and no other country uses it -- to me, it is the obvious way of running things.
- bboygravity 7y ago
  I don't live in Switzerland and I completely agree and it blows my mind as well. The standard, surprisingly popular, rhetoric I hear against direct democracy in other European countries is really very unconvincing to me: people are too stupid to vote, people can't know enough about specific subjects to vote well, people aren't interested in politics (duh, why would you in a system where you can't influence politics), people can be influenced too easily through propaganda and other nonsense arguments which would all apply to a representative democracy as well. People don't like change I guess and they (want to) love their country the way it is. On top of that I get a feeling that people somehow look up to politicians subconsciously as somehow being above them or at least being above their neighbors. They seem to equate leadership and sales skills to being able to take hard decisions and being incorruptible / divine. It's like the "king effect" (just made this up): everybody hates the king's decisions, but at the same time the king is the hero and pride of the nation and who could possibly want any other king?
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    People only have so much attention to give to operating their democracy. Which is why in most instances, the more local you get, the less efficiently government operates. Participation in local elections tends to be a complete joke, and as such those local government bodies tend to only represent a very narrow set of interests. In any case, this form of direct democracy wouldn’t solve the problems the parent is talking about. To achieve that, you’d need to vote on every decisions made by every public official ever.
    - atemerev 7y ago
      This is how it works here. We have local, cantonal and federal laws; the laws to vote on are presented in packages once every two months (so every time, people vote on both local and federal laws). Our participation is not a joke. Every Swiss citizen can propose a law to be voted on one of the next referendums, provided that they will collect the appropriate minimum number of signatures in its support.
lopmotr 7y ago
If the population is worried at all, they'll probably want to stop private companies using it anyway. Governments usually gets exemptions from privacy laws, so in a way that's more worrying - government access is less likely to be stopped than private access. Also, people won't have the choice when they're compelled to be scanned on arrest vs logging in to some optional private business.
- wongarsu 7y ago
  >when they're compelled to be scanned on arrest I choose to plead the 5th. The wording is "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" which obviously covers brain scans. Of course the police will say I have the right to remain silent and they have the right to lock me in a jail cell. And TSA will absolutely do brain scans. I guess the right to remain silent is successfully getting eroded.
- xg15 7y ago
  > Governments usually gets exemptions from privacy laws, so in a way that's more worrying - government access is less likely to be stopped than private access. Yes, because private companies are regulated. By the state. Meanwhile, private companies have nevertheless managed to make surveillance and ridiculously detailed tracking into a whole industry. > Also, people won't have the choice when they're compelled to be scanned on arrest vs logging in to some optional private business. Except in reality, this stuff has long since stopped being optional. If you buy any reasonably modern car, you'll be tracked by private companies. If you have a bank account, you'll be tracked by private companies. If you write an email... you get the point. How exactly do you opt-out of that?
nwalker85 7y ago
I agree that the third party doctrine is a huge problem for privacy. We're making progress on that front: https://www.insideprivacy.com/data-privacy/supreme-courts-carpenter-decision-requires-warrant-for-cell-phone-location-data/ https://www.insideprivacy.com/data-privacy/supreme-courts-ca...

justinmk 7y ago

I agree, but it's inevitable. The state has claimed all conceivable cut-points or transitions: - Transportation. Any time you want to go somewhere by car or plane (and potentially bus/train[1]), the government has decided it has the right to search you. - Interstate commerce. Most economic activity is taxed, and may be searched passively or actively to ensure that the state gets everything it wants. - Communication. TV, radio, telephone, and now the internet are monitored and adjusted by the state. Brain-to-network communication will eventually be commoditized, and the state will transitively invent some justification for monitoring it. Thus you may think thoughts which are shared with the network and for which you will be held liable. The only difference is that today you type the thoughts on a keyboard. I wrote an essay about this in 2011, for university. [1] http://news.antiwar.com/2010/11/25/napolitano-eyes-full-body-scans-for-trains-ships-mass-transit/ http://news.antiwar.com/2010/11/25/napolitano-eyes-full-body...

bostik 7y ago

Now, do you really think it would be something as straightforward and innocent-looking? A much more likely scenario is that brainstreams would be stored in various tech giants' systems (and because analytics is important, ~nothing is discarded). Instead of running a quick check, the police or official would pull your thought history. But no, not directly from the source. Of course not. To maintain a veneer of legitimacy, the actual tech companies will not sell to governments or law enforcement. There will be a forest of brokers, who sell to anyone. And if you thought advertising was invasive or creepy now, with this kind of technology we would be entering a world Philip K. Dick would have found too depressing to write about.

mattlutze 7y ago
Current laws would make it even simpler. In the US at least, an agency could simply have subpoenas approved by a judge, and then require the disclosure of whatever brain info any number of companies have for a person. The companies could of course sue to not disclose, but there'd be enough firms that would comply as to make access trivial for whichever agency wanted the info.
- bostik 7y ago
  Warrants and subpoenas are inconvenient. They are targeted and may take time to be issued. And observing from the outside, US as a nation is still years - likely decades - from being able to stomach general warrants. But you are already well on your way towards something like that: reverse warrants are now a thing. Law enforcement in US has already issued a warrant for recorded information on all persons who were near an event after the fact. The logical conclusion with brain data archives will be to issue warrants for full mental activity history for X years on people who have had thoughts on a given unwelcome subject. But even then, warrants are inconvenient. It'll be much simpler and easier to just buy access to the data in bulk, all the time. That avoids the awkward questions on storage, access and oversight.

mbeex 7y ago

No ban will stop that. Whatever is possible will also be done, that has always been the case. As usual, there will be an arms race and possibly, for example, meditation teachers will open up completely new fields of activity.

_Microft 7y ago

My european take on this: governments are the only entities that can keep companies in check. A completely free, unregulated market is a bit like anarchy: it might work well if all of the actors were mature and aware of their responsibilities. Unfortunately the ones who wish for that the most are usually the ones least suited for it. They support these ideas not because of a noble goal of perfect freedom but because they are annoyed that there is a more powerful entity that gets in the way of what they want to do with/to others.

wongarsu 7y ago
I would go a step further and say the only completely free and unregulated market is anarchy. Take a regular state and strip away all those regulations about consumer protection, environment protection, substance abuse, contract enforcement etc, and stop all this socialist stuff like public healthcare, public unemployment insurance, and public roads, and you are left with is stateless anarchy. If you remove anything less you can always claim there's regulation and no truly free markets.
- mantas 7y ago
  I'd rather see free market as fair playfield for all players. With clear rules that equally apply to each without special treatment. Wether written or not.
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    You could start with a minimum viable capitalistic state (enforcement of property rights and contacts through police and courts, some sort of government to update laws as necessary, taxes to pay for it all) and from there add basic infrastructure where competition is impractical, like roads, subsurface conduits for laying electricity and data lines, sewage systems, etc; investments that are beneficial to the overall economy but not rewarded by the market like parks, public transportation, and dams; things that ensure a good work force like public education (to supply educated workers) and public healthcare (to keep workers healthy and productive). Optionally you can add laws to improve the free market: consumers can't reliably judge food safety or environmental impact, so make the worst things illegal and improve transparency on the rest (food labeling etc), or impose taxes to mirror true costs to society. All of this is a free market in your definition, and is essentially how European states are run. But it's somehow not what "free market" advocates in the US want today.

sorokod 7y ago

Do not governments have access to the same data given the right paperwork?

emptyparadise 7y ago

If companies invent the tech, the governments will be able to use it no matter what. 90% of all the things China is using are based on Silicon Valley research. Plus, even if you don't let TSA or the police have the scanners, it would still be possible to subpoena companies for your latest thoughts as they happen. /The only/ way to not allow this to be the absolute end of privacy is to have the technology be shaped in an incredibly ethical way that makes such privacy violations fundamentally impossible. Store close to no data. Constantly encrypt whatever data you do store and keep it on the device itself. Constantly cycle keys. Make brain scanners absolutely worthless unless the user consciously authenticates themselves. Requiring all brain scanners to be 100% fully open (full on GPLv3 including the hardware plans) and physical networking kill switches would be a good start. All of this is not even new advice - there are quite a few outspoken people out there against any sort of data collection. But whether you agree with them or not, you must agree that the line in the sand must be drawn somewhere - and it definitely should not allow collecting people's thoughts. Trying to extend the Google and Facebook model of siphoning as much of your data as possible to also include thoughts should literally be a crime against humanity.

koboll 7y ago

In theory, we should already disallow this. The foundational law of the United States prohibits "unreasonable" searches of "persons, houses, papers, and effects". In practice, this has been eroded to the point of practical meaninglessness, such that the FBI director can issue a statement that clearly violates both its spirit and its letter, and few people bat an eye.

guerrilla 7y ago
> FBI director can issue or you could just be black.
- wolco 7y ago
  or young or brown or powerless or near a border or a driver or on federal property

octosphere 7y ago

Well to some degree you might be right, but don't forget the USG is in bed with the private sector and regularly sends out NSLs[0] to companies asking for back doors and full access to customer/user data [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

entropea 7y ago

A lot of modern privacy violations come from private companies like Facebook, Equifax, Google, etc. Government or Corporation should never have access to anything like this. They _never_ use it for good.