3 ms·
Should there be citizenship requirements for access to customer data at that scale? Background checks? Security clearances?[1] When you have so much private dat
by anonunivgrad 6y ago
Should there be citizenship requirements for access to customer data at that scale? Background checks? Security clearances?[1] When you have so much private data and the ability to put words into people’s mouths, aren’t you a national security asset at that point? Today it’s some bitcoin scammers, tomorrow it’s Russian or Chinese intelligence. If I was in charge of Russian or Chinese intelligence, I’d make sure that my citizens working inside these companies are using that data to my advantage, or are at least positioned to should an opportunity arise.
There is already tons of evidence of Chinese nationals coming to the US to work at these companies with the express purpose of stealing trade secrets and sending them back to China. Why would the Chinese government stop there? How about your personal emails, your Twitter DMs, etc.?
Citizenship is loyalty. That is what it means legally and what it has meant in practice. Especially if your family is still in your country of citizenship.
Yes, this would mean the international segmenting of the internet, at least in terms of which websites you plug your personal data into vs. “just browse”. This strikes us nerds as awful. But perhaps anything else was just a naive fantasy. The last decade should have shattered our innocence. What happens online matters for great power politics, and great power politics matters a lot for ordinary people.
[1] The current security clearance process is at least partly a jobs programs for people with boring, unadventurous youths. I’m not advocating for that, just the principle of a security clearance.
- scohesc 6y agoYou know, I used to think that locking down certain websites to citizens of the country the website resides in was a bad thing. Now with the advent of all these apparent "bots", "state actors", etc. etc. I'm starting to think it might not be a bad idea. There's a bunch of "what-ifs" however like "what if the government starts removing content it doesn't like", "should you be able to be banned from the platform?", etc.
- anonunivgrad 6y agoAt least within the US, I think sufficiently large platforms should not be allowed to censor on the basis of viewpoint. But that is exactly the kind of political question that nation states, not international forces, should be answering.
- suizi 6y agoThe biggest problem is we've allowed them to become so big they're capable of doing that. The rise of censor culture hasn't helped and is heaped on by advertisers and the media.
- wasmitnetzen 6y agoThat's a very US-centric view. Twitter has a lot of non-US users as well. In fact, a Dutch right-wing politician was apparently targeted in this attack.[1] How would such a requirement help in this case? [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-cyber-netherlands-idUSKCN24O1MO https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-cyber-netherlands...
- anonunivgrad 6y agoMaybe the Dutch should do the same thing. Or throw their lot in with a country or group of countries they trust (EU, EU+x, NATO, etc.). The geopolitics of this would be complicated. But that has been life for small polities for thousands of years.
- wasmitnetzen 6y agoSo I, a European citizen, wouldn't be allowed to see the Instagram posts of my American friends anymore? That doesn't seem practical.
- anonunivgrad 6y agoYou can federate services in ways that allow entities in different countries to control their own user data, while still allowing interactions between users in different countries. Your private messages with other EU users might be stored only in Europe, with only Europeans able to access it. To the extent you message with people in another country, those controlling the federated service in that other country would have only the needed access. I don’t think this is groundbreaking technologically.
- suizi 6y agoWhat if you're an activist and your government _is_ the enemy?