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What you're describing is a difference in degree, not kind. Here we clearly disagree. I think the ubiquitous surveillance that happens today very much is a qua

What you're describing is a difference in degree, not kind. Here we clearly disagree. I think the ubiquitous surveillance that happens today very much is a qualitative difference. A single data point of the kind that is captured might not be very interesting, and a single person leaving their home and seen by another person passing in the street would be forgotten in moments. But the huge databases that are built today, combining many types of personal data from many sources to build a picture of everyone's personal lives at an unprecedented level of detail, is something that has never happened before. This is historically incorrect: the US government is known to have used its vast resources on expansive surveillance, even before the age of information. The FBI was known to listen in on telephone lines, and was known to have run a sophisticated operation of deploying surveillance vehicles all over the US. If your argument is that surveillance was once more expensive, the counterargument is that state actors have always been the entities most capable of bearing this expense. Sure, but the expense meant that is was targeted. People expect the state to make some attempt to monitor criminals or those reasonably believed to be planning a serious crime. That's totally different from private multinational entities building up vast databases profiling billions of people. PCI-DSS is absolutely not violated "all the time", that's a really bold and baseless claim. Yes, you're right that from time to time, it can be violated, but quarterly unannounced audits are the norm. Not for small businesses, they're not. I don't know of a single small business that has ever been audited under PCI-DSS. And these are the ones that will keep your CVC code in the unencrypted spreadsheet on the unprotected laptop they use to track their customers' phone orders. I'm not sure that I agree. If I have someone's credit card in my hand, then right now I can walk into any shop in the area and buy up to £45 of goods without a question being asked. If I go online, even with just the details embossed on the card, I could buy way more from countless stores. With just a little more widely available personal information about the cardholder, I could buy even more still. This is...factually incorrect. What "many other payments" are you talking about? Outside of cash, card payments (either physical or card-not-present) constitute the vast majority of payments for the billions of people on the planet. Do you realise that there are entire first world countries where credit cards are hardly used? That outside the US, direct payment/debit schemes are widespread? Take a look at one of the big multi-method payment services. They offer hundreds of different options for accepting payments from different places around the world. Then your beef isn't with the "Tech Giants", all of whom are American companies, under US jurisdiction. So because Google is in the US, I shouldn't be concerned that everyone holding an Android phone within sight or earshot of me is potentially sending data about me to Google, that everyone I ever send an email to might be sharing the contents of the message with Google, and so on? Sorry, but I simply don't agree. Just because these huge multinationals may be based outside of easy legal reach for me, that doesn't mean they don't pose a danger to me or almost 70 million of my fellow citizens here, or the same for any other country.

bhupy 6y ago
> Not for small businesses, they're not. I don't know of a single small business that has ever been audited under PCI-DSS. And these are the ones that will keep your CVC code in the unencrypted spreadsheet on the unprotected laptop they use to track their customers' phone orders. I help run a small financial services business. We absolutely cannot touch card data (eg PAN) without being PCI DSS compliant. Very Good Security (VGS) exists precisely because of this, there is a market need for PCI-as-a-service. You can in theory ask someone to give you PAN-in-the-clear, but you wouldn't be able to grow a business large enough that one would be "unable to live without" you, per the writer of this article. If you are that kind of a service, you will absolutely face the consequences of not being PCI-DSS, and you have every incentive to just use a service like Stripe or Braintree to process your payments, where it's impossible to get that information in plaintext unless you're PCI-DSS compliant anyway. > And these are the ones that will keep your CVC code in the unencrypted spreadsheet on the unprotected laptop they use to track their customers' phone orders. The set of small businesses in the US that don't use Stripe, Square, Braintree, etc to run their payments is so minuscule as to be insignificant. These businesses absolutely do not have the ability to see your CVC code, it's all tokenized. > Do you realise that there are entire first world countries where credit cards are hardly used? That outside the US, direct payment/debit schemes are widespread? Take a look at one of the big multi-method payment services. They offer hundreds of different options for accepting payments from different places around the world. Yes? I'm not sure what your argument is here. Debit cards fall under PCI-DSS compliance. We're talking about payment cards, not just credit cards. > If I have someone's credit card in my hand, then right now I can walk into any shop in the area and buy up to £45 of goods without a question being asked. If I go online, even with just the details embossed on the card, I could buy way more from countless stores. With just a little more widely available personal information about the cardholder, I could buy even more still. First of all, this is false on its face because you would have to know their PIN. Second of all, the threat model of physical theft of a credit card is extremely narrow. And even there, it's easy to remotely disable a payment card once you know you've lost it. EMV is the industry standard because the actual threat model: replay attacks was identified and neutralized. > So because Google is in the US, I shouldn't be concerned that everyone holding an Android phone within sight or earshot of me is potentially sending data about me to Google, that everyone I ever send an email to might be sharing the contents of the message with Google, and so on? Sorry, but I simply don't agree. Just because these huge multinationals may be based outside of easy legal reach for me, that doesn't mean they don't pose a danger to me or almost 70 million of my fellow citizens here, or the same for any other country. It requires tinfoil-hat levels of paranoia to think that merely being within earshot of an Android phone renders you susceptible to surveillance. Unless Google has information on you, personally, it's extremely difficult to correlate background audio noise to you personally, and that would only be possible if you actually went and used Google's services. The only system that has been able to apply this level of indirect surveillance is the Chinese government, but that's because they have your information (by force), unlike Google which you can simply avoid using. And if you're this paranoid about indirect exposure to Google, you can send PGP encrypted e-mails, even to people that use G-mail. You have the tools!

bhupy 6y ago

> Not for small businesses, they're not. I don't know of a single small business that has ever been audited under PCI-DSS. And these are the ones that will keep your CVC code in the unencrypted spreadsheet on the unprotected laptop they use to track their customers' phone orders. I help run a small financial services business. We absolutely cannot touch card data (eg PAN) without being PCI DSS compliant. Very Good Security (VGS) exists precisely because of this, there is a market need for PCI-as-a-service. You can in theory ask someone to give you PAN-in-the-clear, but you wouldn't be able to grow a business large enough that one would be "unable to live without" you, per the writer of this article. If you are that kind of a service, you will absolutely face the consequences of not being PCI-DSS, and you have every incentive to just use a service like Stripe or Braintree to process your payments, where it's impossible to get that information in plaintext unless you're PCI-DSS compliant anyway. > And these are the ones that will keep your CVC code in the unencrypted spreadsheet on the unprotected laptop they use to track their customers' phone orders. The set of small businesses in the US that don't use Stripe, Square, Braintree, etc to run their payments is so minuscule as to be insignificant. These businesses absolutely do not have the ability to see your CVC code, it's all tokenized. > Do you realise that there are entire first world countries where credit cards are hardly used? That outside the US, direct payment/debit schemes are widespread? Take a look at one of the big multi-method payment services. They offer hundreds of different options for accepting payments from different places around the world. Yes? I'm not sure what your argument is here. Debit cards fall under PCI-DSS compliance. We're talking about payment cards, not just credit cards. > If I have someone's credit card in my hand, then right now I can walk into any shop in the area and buy up to £45 of goods without a question being asked. If I go online, even with just the details embossed on the card, I could buy way more from countless stores. With just a little more widely available personal information about the cardholder, I could buy even more still. First of all, this is false on its face because you would have to know their PIN. Second of all, the threat model of physical theft of a credit card is extremely narrow. And even there, it's easy to remotely disable a payment card once you know you've lost it. EMV is the industry standard because the actual threat model: replay attacks was identified and neutralized. > So because Google is in the US, I shouldn't be concerned that everyone holding an Android phone within sight or earshot of me is potentially sending data about me to Google, that everyone I ever send an email to might be sharing the contents of the message with Google, and so on? Sorry, but I simply don't agree. Just because these huge multinationals may be based outside of easy legal reach for me, that doesn't mean they don't pose a danger to me or almost 70 million of my fellow citizens here, or the same for any other country. It requires tinfoil-hat levels of paranoia to think that merely being within earshot of an Android phone renders you susceptible to surveillance. Unless Google has information on you, personally, it's extremely difficult to correlate background audio noise to you personally, and that would only be possible if you actually went and used Google's services. The only system that has been able to apply this level of indirect surveillance is the Chinese government, but that's because they have your information (by force), unlike Google which you can simply avoid using. And if you're this paranoid about indirect exposure to Google, you can send PGP encrypted e-mails, even to people that use G-mail. You have the tools!