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Losing the war against surveillance capitalism letting Big Tech frame the debate
- Wolfenstein98k 6y ago"I want the (free) benefits without any of the downsides", this reads to me. Particularly as it gets into condemning "neoliberalism" in response to being reminded that Google Maps is not compulsory.
- BolexNOLA 6y agoI’ve never liked this argument. The Google ecosystem is more or less required these days unless you are a little more tech savvy than the average person, and your job/education doesn’t require it, AND you have the patience to stitch together a bunch of (maybe) trustworthy services. It’s like saying, “if you don’t like your ISP, then find another one.” Then when they’re all doing the same crap going, “well then don’t use the Internet.”
- leetcrew 6y agoI don't really buy this. if your school/employer uses google products, then yeah, you're SOL. but otherwise you can get pretty far using apple products and duckduckgo. I guess if you count sending emails to people with gmail accounts as "using the google ecosystem", it's pretty much unavoidable.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoSo many websites require Google scripts to operate, even if you personally use alternatives whenever possible you are stuck in their ecosystem.
- searchableguy 6y agoWait till you find out about school forcing surveillance tech from the big companies. You don't have a choice whether you are at home or in school. During the lockdown, schools decided to force kids to install spyware and malware on their own devices. Literal hijacking of everything you do on the device and then pushed a COC on what you can and cannot do on that device. In developed countries or rich places, you might afford privacy but free services or traps offered by big companies see widespread use in developing countries. Schooling situation is worse and they are profit seekers who will sacrifice privacy for saving up few $$$. Privacy is not something to be bought, it's a right. To give you one example, google analytics and ads. An average person might be able to block that on desktop by simply installing a plugin but on phone, there is no way to install a plugin for your browser. Solutions like [0] blokada are not well known. Most people don't know how to configure a proxy, change dns and they won't install a different browser. And then there are apps which are way worse than websites. There is a reason why companies push you so hard to use the app. Reddit, Imgur, twitter, instagram, facebook etc. Why app? Also, windows, google captcha, amp, search, youtube etc. You can't escape them. 0] https://blokada.org/index.html https://blokada.org/index.html
- gorhill 6y ago> there is no way to install a plugin for your browser Firefox for Android blocks trackers by default and supports installing extensions.
- searchableguy 6y agoYes, kiwi browser and yandex does too despite being chromium. I just mean the majority of browsers that normal users will have. If someone is using Firefox, they are already changing their defaults and are most likely aware of the privacy issues.
- BolexNOLA 6y ago> if your school/employer uses google products...you’re SOL Yes. That is literally what I said. That applies to millions of people.
- ianleeclark 6y agoGoogle Maps may not be compulsory, but people may not be aware of what they're engaging in by using those services.
- tunap 6y agoNor are they even remotely aware of they are using(& consenting to) Goog api's & analytics baked into their .gov sites.
- titzer 6y agoBut Google Location Services is installed on almost every single Android handset. Do you have any clue what this thing does? It inserts itself as the location service provider for the entire device and it absolutely uploads your "anonymized" location information, along with detailed sensor traces, to Google multiple times per hour. How can you audit or control this data? You can't. How can you audit that software that processes this data? You can't. It's the worst kind of closed source. That's just mobile. Google and its ad partners track you everywhere you go on the internet.
- hedora 6y ago> Maps is not compulsory Great, show me the button on my car that disables its cell modem and location tracking features. Presumably, it is also legal to remove the license plates, since those are being scanned, located and dumped into commercial databases. Many parts of the US don’t even have sidewalks or bike accessible roads (and Uber/Lyft track you), so there’s no reliable privacy-preserving alternative.
- Gibbon1 6y agoOne of my thoughts is in theory credit agencies are heavily regulated. That needs to be extended to any business that aggregates data on people as it's primary business. And regulators should be able to tell them no. As in, no you can't collect that information. And no that individual can't work for you. You need signed authorization to share that data. Each time.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hamilyon2 6y agoI don't really understand how forbidding Facebook and Google selling and buying personal information will prevent any other bad actor collecting and using it. Even naked man example used in this article doesn't make sense in this context. The solution is not legal, but rather technological.
- throwaway2048 6y agoWhile people can and do act illegally, its more difficult to base some of the largest companies on earth on a root of completely illegal activity. Facebook and Google have completely unrivalable empires of data that hundreds of thousands of employees work every day to perfect and extract conclusions from, scale matters here, and its a lot harder to scale up a completely illegal enterprise.
- hedora 6y agoAll of the technological solutions have failed (it is easier destroy privacy than protect it), so the only remaining solutions are legal. Eliminating the legitimate market for personal information would help a lot. Sure, there’d still be black hats spying on people, but that’s very different than having most of the biggest companies on earth doing it openly.
- 0xy 6y agoWhen Mark Zuckerberg calls for stronger regulations around privacy, what he's doing is calling for the government to solidify his monopoly status. By exerting very high compliance costs on younger more agile competitors, he ensures that only Facebook and a select group of deep-pocketed competitors can compete. And that ensures his dominance for even longer. When a billionaire openly calls for regulation, you should be extremely suspicious. Regulatory capture is often the intent and goal.
- josinalvo 6y agoThe easy answer? Make some regulations depend on scale. We already do for much of legislation.
- scarmig 6y agoThat just means a bunch of fly-by-night startups that have even less controls around data protection than Facebook and Google would proliferate.
- clairity 6y agoi'd suggest making punishments scale with size (and as a result, enforcement), rather than regulations contingent on scale. it's conceptually and regulatorially easier, and more fair.
- throwaway2048 6y agoWhile that may be true, that does not mean that the answer is no/weaker regulations.
- searchableguy 6y agoThe answer is scalable punishment. Punish companies based on the number of users they end up violating privacy of instead of a big constant fine. If facebook violates privacy of 2 billion users, they should get punished separately for each of them.
- sergeykish 6y ago
- sddfd 6y agoThe article mentions the key problems: - once private information is leaked, it can never be undone - being treated differently by some party because that party had knowledge of private information about you is difficult to prove The ultimate solution is to legally require that important services cannot depend on private information. An example would be: define a set of properties health insurance cost is allowed to depend on, and then have health insurance providers publish their formula for the premium (that can only depend on that set of properties).
- asjw 6y ago> : define a set of properties health insurance cost is allowed to depend on, and then have health insurance providers publish their formula for the premium (that can only depend on that set of properties). That's exactly how it works in Italy Parameters used to establish premiums must be approved and you can't make them in a way that target a small group or a single person
- zeroonetwothree 6y agoThis is likely to increase insurance costs on average. So it’s a tradeoff. It also has a big issue of adverse selection. Say everyone with some known “private bad health markers” signs up for insurance but the insurance can’t take into account. That’s not going to be great. So we need to be careful to allow enough to be taken into account.
- gdsdfe 6y agoHonestly I think the main problem with the privacy debate is that most people have no imagination on how their data can be used against them and the response you often get, even from people with years of experience building software, is the now classic response : "I have nothing to hide".
- Retric 6y agoYea, it’s not just about privacy. Many companies will charge you more money or refuse service if they find out specific information about you.
- throwaway2048 6y agoThe entire concept that paying money will make companies not sell your data even harder is magical thinking. What better signal does an advertiser want than somebody that spends money, especially on something relatively frivolous?
- Retric 6y agoWho said anything about paying more? This could all be changed with legislation at effectively zero cost to consumers. That seems like the only real option as I can’t directly stop my electric company etc from selling my information.
- emiliobumachar 6y agoGood point, the need for a legislative solution is a lot more clear cut in the case of government-sanctioned monopolies such as electricity.
- scarmig 6y agoTo be honest, my guess is that the consumers who would pay extra money for privacy, although likely in high income brackets, are also likely to be the consumers who are the biggest pain in the ass to support (if we're not talking enterprise).
- thosewhoteach 6y agoIt is actually quite easy to make Big Tech implode from within. Declare a moratorium on issuing green cards to all big tech employees for the next 25 years. Sweeten the deal further: expedited green card processing for employees who come forward as whistleblowers.
- bilbo0s 6y agoIt's much easier than that even, make a law that no one can use personal information for commercial reasons any longer. All that tracking based web economy nonsense collapses overnight and you don't need to wait 25 years.
- TomMarius 6y agoOr Google and Facebook turn off their sites with an explanatory message, starting worldwide riots and revolutions.
- throwaway2048 6y agoIf you really think anyone is going to start riots and revolutions because Facebook and google cant stalk them online, I think you have a skewed perspective.
- TomMarius 6y agoI said Facebook and Google would turn off their websites - they have zero obligation to keep it running - not that people would like them to breach their privacy and start rioting for that. I think you don't realize how many people absolutely depend on social media, how many companies are built on income allowed by advertising, etc. Even music events are organized through Facebook around me! And still, all Facebook and Google needs to do is remind the politicians who gets their advertising done.
- afterburner 6y ago> zero obligation Except to those pesky shareholders. Which includes employees. Peoples' wealth is tied up in those stocks. But regardless... maybe try email or something. The internet existed before Google and Facebook. Plenty of competitors would rise to the top in the extremely unlikely event Google and Facebook shut down.
- mark_l_watson 6y agoI have offered to loan my copy of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff to friends and family, and no one has taken me up on it. The most I have been able to do is to get a few of them to use Firefox containers. I consider this a major problem that needs to be fixed, like the division in US society between left and right, income inequality, and corporate control of both political parties. Shoshana Zuboff does a brilliant job of documenting the bad effects of collecting all digital information in our lives and the use of that data in ways that are against our interests. I use Google and Facebook, but only to buy things from them, like Oculus Quest, Play books, music, and movies. I don’t mind paying for services, and I don’t mind them using data on what I have directly purchased from them. I will fight all other forms of data collection.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoI also recommend Dragnet Nation. https://www.amazon.com/Dragnet-Nation-Security-Relentless-Surveillance/dp/B01LTHXKEU https://www.amazon.com/Dragnet-Nation-Security-Relentless-Su... I read Chaos Monkeys around the same time. It's not a deep dive on privacy but it gives you a great sense of FB's priorities, culture, and so on. https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure-ebook/dp/B019MMUAAQ https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure...
- zeroonetwothree 6y agoChaos Monkeys is a highly skewed take from someone that barely worked at FB. Its primary objective is not to inform with facts.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoTrue. None the less, the section about tracking people across devices is factual.
- megaman821 6y agoI don't think I understand your reasoning. Your friends and family enjoy free Google search, Google Maps, Facebook, etc and are ambivalent to privacy concerns. You, personally, don't mind paying for services or avoiding them entirely. I assume by fixed, you mean the government should pass a law that reflects your position on the matter, even though by your own account it is the minority position.
- wolco 6y agoThe war hasn't started yet. We are 10 years away from tor being mainstream at that point the war begins.
- spodek 6y agoWhy name the problem "surveillance capitalism" instead of just surveillance? Do fewer problems happen when a government does it? Does it matter if the government is more capitalist, socialist, etc?
- ianleeclark 6y agoSurveillance is a camera on the wall; surveillance capitalism is a privately owned camera on the wall selling information of every passerby.
- KineticLensman 6y ago> selling information of every passerby Or products based on that information, e.g. a list of people who appear relevant to an ad campaign.
- thesteamboat 6y agoIt's not that fewer problems happen, it's that different problems happen. The 'classic' problem of government surveillance is that the governments are able (and too often willing) to resort to force. A distinct problem of surveillance capitalism is that someone in the business of selling surveillance is incentivized to invent new markets to sell their product to and new reasons for their customers to buy. Furthermore, if they're successful, that gives everyone else an incentive to copy them. Inside a dystopian totalitarian government, a ministry of surveillance might push to increase its own influence, but it would never tolerate competitors.
- KineticLensman 6y agoThe term was mainly introduced by Shoshana Zuboff in her book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" [0]. She was describing the way in which organisations harvest personal data to fabricate prediction products than can be traded. She isn't saying "if you aren't paying for a product then you are the product". She is saying that our clicks are the raw material from which Surveillance Capitalists create a product they can sell. E.g. Facebook use our interactions and meta data to build a rich social graph, and when an advertiser wants a list of people who meet certain criteria, Facebook can then provide them with a list. This is different to the reasons that governments typically conduct surveillance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capita...
- markshepard 6y agoMany privacy regulations Only benefit the big five tech companies (Linkedin charges $10 for one inmail). Any new regulation should exclusively address the big players first before pushing more regulation to startups and small biz. They are already struggling. If you dont do that we all endup with 4/5 companies. I would say oligopolies are bigger problem than privacy currently. We need more diversity in tech systems. YoY the diversity is going down if you take the important IT systems people use into account.
- sergeykish 6y agoWe have diversity https://tosdr.org/ https://tosdr.org/ (search "fingerprinting") Without regulations there is no advantage.
- markshepard 6y agoI mean to say - if you take market share into account we have less diversity in important systems people use.
- sergeykish 6y agoAnd I mean to say - we have diversity in applications that does not transfer in market share. We can use DDG but Google Search is not required to change. I understand your concern and don't know how to fix it. Click to consent does not distinguish terms. Would it help if there was a requirement to display rating like "PG-13" or Energy Star?
- spaced-out 6y ago>Many privacy regulations Only benefit the big five tech companies (Linkedin charges $10 for one inmail) I don't understand this part, are you implying LinkedIn's InMail price is due to regulation?
- markshepard 6y agoYes. Think of zoominfo’s new ipo. They are big and can work around the regulations (ex: CAN SPAM) of selling user information. Also according to CCPA, if you process 50,000 user records in a year (just 150 accounts per day) you will come under the purview. But big companies like facebook (https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/facebook-refuses-to-change-web-tracking-practices-believes-that-ccpa-does-not-apply-to-them/ https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/facebook-refuses...) will work around them.
- scarface74 6y agoI assume people think the answer to private corporations “framing the debate” is for government to pass laws. The same government that is trying to enforce backdoors to encryption and is already using facial recognition to harass people who “fit the description”.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoThat gov is also buying the data. Snowden swept under the rug. The so-called Patriot Act up for renewal. The gov is going to take the position that best preserves its own interests. This is the pattern some of us keep seeing; the rest simply can't be bothered.
- zeroonetwothree 6y agoExactly. The worst privacy transgressions historically have always come from governments. Corporations aren’t the ones we should be afraid of. You want the people that brought you the Patriot Act in charge of privacy?
- mindslight 6y agoYour argument carries an assumption that all possible government action is hopelessly broken. I'm generally libertarian myself, but this viewpoint is ultimately a coping mechanism for a societal death spiral. Why bother working for results, when the results are always bad? But even accepting the assumption that the government has become a malevolent attacker, then there is still an argument for goading it into hampering data collection - every bit of data collected by private companies is also available to the government to abuse and oppress us! Government power and corporate power are not in opposition, but rather two sides of the same coin of disempowering individuals.
- scarface74 6y agoIt’s not just broken - it’s discriminatory.
- clairity 6y agoto repeat my mantra, it's not either-or, it's all of the above. corporations, governments, and institutions of all kinds are especially designed to consolidate power. but society is better when power is dispersed widely, so that it's difficult (ideally impossible) to infringe individual liberties and civil rights without recourse. we the polity need to continually pit institutions against each other to maintain our freedoms. there's no "done, now let's move on" in that.
- alistproducer2 6y agoLetting the enemy set the terms of and frame the debate so we're starting on the low ground seems to be par for the course for folks on the left end of the spectrum. Pick your issue: climate change, policing, war on terror, lgbt rights, socialized medicine, on and on. You start to wonder if "our side" is throwing the game.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoAgreed, mostly. Throw the game? I'm not sure they even know where the game is, and what's being played. Too often they're at the wrong venue suited up to play checkers. That's no way to win a chess match. To your point, so often this happens that there's only two possibilities: - incompetence / negligence - it's intentional Either way, we lose.
- gentleman11 6y agoCanada banned masks at protests during the Harper years. When I complained, everyone said that “you should have to protest publicly, take a stand,” or, “there is nothing to protest.” It was very frustrating
- hedora 6y agoThe proposed solution — banning the purchase or sale of personal information — doesn’t go nearly far enough. It would just cement the existing monopolies on personal information. Here is a better framework: - Make it illegal to collect or store personal information on anyone you don’t have an active business relationship with. - All personal data collection should require an opt in. The definition of opt in is that it takes at least one more manual step to opt in than opt out, and that the options must be presented with equal prominence. - Selling or purchasing services based on third parties personal information counts as selling or buying the information in the eye of the law. - Buying and selling personal information would be illegal unless the person explicitly authorizes the transfer each time the data is transferred. - Civil penalties for breaking the law would range between 1-10% of global income per transaction, with a cap of 20% of annual gross income per month. (So one mistake doesn’t completely destroy the company, but ignoring the law does). Class action waivers or binding arbitration would be disallowed. (Unless the person whose information was sold could choose the arbitration agency after the fact.) - Authorizing the transfer of information must not be a requirement to receive some other service, etc. - A central registry of all opt ins would be available so individuals could audit their opt ins, and with enough information to assign blame for fraudulent opt-ins (and to protect buyers/sellers when one side of the transaction falsified an opt in). This would also have a single page to people to cancel all of their existing opt ins. That would start to solve the problem.
- legulere 6y agoThe GDPR does many things on your list but it’s sadly hardly enforced.
- bjelkeman-again 6y agoI think it has just had a slow start. I think enforcement will come.
- ohazi 6y agoI hope you're right, but I'm worried you're wrong. It seems like a particularly difficult law to enforce, and the unusually high penalties give these companies an unusually strong motivation to be as aggressively unaccommodating as possible, since every enforcement action is an existential threat. These companies are already big enough that normal legal proceedings against them are difficult... GDPR proceedings are going to be impossible.
- x87678r 6y agoTo me it looks like cameras everywhere has been a good thing. Looking at the current Police Brutality videos coming out has rightfully caused people to want to stop that happening. I feel a lot safer in areas with security cameras. In the building I live in some items have been stolen which cameras helped find the thief, also some crazy lawsuit was shut down because we had a video of the guy falling over deliberately.
- Vinnl 6y agoThe examples you give are of someone getting caught doing something, not from having been prevented doing so. Is the right conclusion then to feel safer?
- jesseb 6y agoDo you also think innocent people being harassed by police because some AI-driven surveillance system says they're a criminal is a good thing?
- matz1 6y agoIts not good thing, but the solution is to improve/fix the AI-driven surveillance system, not eliminate it.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agothat's not the solution, that's how you enforce something that is broken (similar technocratic positions led to DNA testing being no longer questioned in a court). The actual solution is to ban it completely.
- centimeter 6y agoWhatever constraints on personal data we have for tech companies, can we have at least equally restrictive constraints on the government? The nice thing about google is they can’t put me in jail for doing something they don’t like.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agothis might sound cynical but we have lost this war already in the last century[1]. It's a salami tactic which is applied against us slice by slice and the pandemic (and every protest whether in the Paris banlieus, HK or Seattle) is another successful milestone won by the state to integrate any outliers and test new methods. Since fighting back by going to a protest is viewed as radicalism there are increasingly less (legal) options out of this mess. When you go and join a a protest make sure to cover yourself[2], and look out for the cow[3] [1] Jacques Ellul - The Technological Society ("La Technique") https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSociety https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSoci... [2] https://crimethinc.com/2014/08/14/staying-safe-in-the-streets https://crimethinc.com/2014/08/14/staying-safe-in-the-street... [3] https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/explore/still-searching/articles/27016_last_night_during_the_riot_i_ran_into_a_cow https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/explore/still-searching/article...
- novok 6y agoI think the real fight should be limiting the surveillance abilities of governments vs. the surveillance abilities of corps. Already today cell phones are the ultimate surveillance tool that nobody in the media talks about restricting constantly, unlike large tech companies. I think it's because big tech is a competitor that is eating big media's lunch. If google knows what you do, they will sell you more ads. If governments know what you do, they will throw you in prison for many bigoted reasons.
- carapace 6y agoI don't like it but I think the cat is out of the bag, there's no effective way to roll back the machine. From that POV the issue is control and communication, who has access to the firehose?
- almost_usual 6y agoThis is simply a problem that cannot be addressed by law because law can be broken. Strong encryption can be broken but it is much harder to break than law or policy. Want privacy? Assume everything you post online is public unless it is encrypted. If you don’t want that information public don’t post it or use said service.
- PeterisP 6y agoIt's kind of hypocritical that salon.com closes this article if click 'I decline' when they ask to surveil me.
- sargun 6y agoI don't understand how this meme of "Corporations sell your data" came about. Google has perhaps the world's largest trove of information about people, but do you see it ever leave their iron grip? No. Same with Facebook. In fact, with Google, you can pay them money (GSuite) to get enhanced privacy, and a legal relationship which ensures your data is protected. Add laws that prevent your information from getting leaked / hacked. If these companies have an organization-ending law when data gets leaked, they'll finally have proper incentives to secure your data adequately. Until then all of these laws seem like a waste of time. On the other hand, in order to prevent intentional transfer, I believe that if we ban the transfer of raw information (not aggregated) between organizations this point is somewhat moot -- of course, we would have to have something like antitrust law enforced and prevent Google from acquiring an insurance company or such. I trust Google with my data, as a large leak would likely hurt their reputation significantly, and result in them losing their edge (For a little while at least). I do not trust the US Federal Government to secure my data, or use it in a good way. Treat the US Federal Government like any of these organizations -- if the FBI wants to get your logs, they should be held to the same legal framework as Google "selling" data to any other corporation.
- dan-robertson 6y agoI think this is a fair point. ish. It is true that google/fb don’t sell your data so much as the ad-tracking derived from it. Though they do buy your data from other sources which incentives other firms to collect and sell your data. While you may (rightfully) trust Google’s security practices, I wonder if you would trust the practices of all the other parties who collect or buy your data. I think it’s also worth looking at the framing of debates on privacy: large firms like google want it to mean that your data is kept as a secret between you and google and you can control who (else) may access it; the other side of the debate want it to mean that you need not live in a world that seems to know so much about things you have done but not made publicly available. I think I disagree with you somewhat about the distinction between google collecting data and some state like the USA collecting data. The civil service must follow strict rules about such data collection (which private companies need and indeed do not follow), and it is full of scrupulous public servants who want to act responsibly and morally, and who have laws to protect their abilities to do so. The argument that state data collection is worse because of the potential use it would have in enabling tyranny is reasonable. But I think one must concede that firms such as google are able to inflict a lot of tyranny upon people (indeed they currently do this though only to few people and it seems mostly for arbitrary or overlooked reasons).
- dan-robertson 6y agoMany people are proposing alternative solutions to this problem in this thread so here is my attempt: I see the driving force of the data collection as the desire to make more money selling ads which is done by constantly trying to come up with new kinds of ads to sell and with trying to sell ads as better targeted (or offering better metrics on whether they worked or not) and therefore worth more money. I propose 1. a way to make increased targeting less valuable and 2. a way to make this data collection offer something slightly closer to the privacy people had before the internet: 1. An entropy based tax on selling advertisements. The tax should be proportional to minus the logarithm of the proportion of the ad-seller’s audience whom the ad is expected to reach. (Plus some requirement of auditing these numbers or updating them if they turn out to be wrong). This would mean that eg newspapers would not have a high tax because their ads go out to all their readers (but if they sold ad-slots which were region-specific then the tax would be higher), but some firm uploading a (small) list of emails they collected to google or fb would have to pay a higher tax as google/fb have a lot of users not on that list. 2. Behavioural data may not be used or sold when it is more than 30 days old. It may be used (in a non-ad-targeting) capacity after this time when it is part of the official records of the company that has it (so eg your bank can keep your transaction history and let you query it). Same goes for inferences or other derivatives from that behavioural data. This would hopefully add some forgetfulness back into the system.