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Having worked in the creepy business of "location analytics", I'll say that American's should be more worried about corporations tracking them, than governments

by afpx 6y ago

Having worked in the creepy business of "location analytics", I'll say that American's should be more worried about corporations tracking them, than governments.

colejohnson66 6y ago
They’re both bad, but the government has the ability to put you in jail if they want based on anything because they have access to everything.
- mirthflat83 6y ago
  And the government has access to corporate data...
- rootsudo 6y ago
  And corporations can put you in corporate "jail", lock you out of online services, or just disable or delete your identity being judge, jury and executioner... With Government, there is some semblance of due process.
  - countzachula 6y ago
    IF ONLY they would delete my online identity ;-). That aside, I can't tell if you're supporting or rebutting the OP's comment.
  - syshum 6y ago
    While I agree both are bad, the government is far far worse than corporations disabling your accounts There are ways to migate the risk from corporations, and diservify that risk across several corporations There is not anyway to mitigate the risk from government, and the idea of "due process" is really a myth created by TV Shows With the number of criminal offenses if an agent of the government desires you to be in jail you go to jail. I guarantee you have done something, at some point that they can manipulate a jury into convicting you over We are a criminalized society, especially the US, the "land of the free" where we put more people in jail than anywhere in the world (officially anyway)
    - rootsudo 6y ago
      At the same time, you can also mitigate risk from government, not everyone is being investigated, arrested, or jailed. Due process is not a "myth" from a tv show, it is a right from the constitution, if you are an American: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt5_4_2/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt5_4_2/ I do agree with your later two points though, that there is an misalignment of goals for criminal justice, but, it isn't that bad because it is an outlined process, and it does not happen overnight, behind closed doors or behind a company friendly terms of service. At least you know how the meat is made, somewhat and there is transparency. There is none, per se outside financial obligation for corporations.
      - syshum 6y ago
        whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case the idea the the constitution is proof of Due Process is delusional in the face of 1000's of data points proving the contrary The constitution is more religion than it is law, as like the priests of other religions, the priests of the law (lawyers and judges) twist and pervert the plain text of the constitution to mean anything they desire even a clear and exact opposite position of the very text they hold to be scared >>but, it isn't that bad because it is an outlined process, and it does not happen overnight, behind closed doors or behind a company friendly terms of service. At least you know how the meat is made, somewhat and there is transparency. This is also false, there are all kinds of actual laws, or defacto laws, or regulations that are behind paywalls or simply ruled "national security laws", we have secret courts (FISA and others), there are all kinds of Sealed judgments that impact other things. Then there is the entire scheme of parallel construction the NSA/FBI invented to get around that pesky Constitution This idea of "government transparency" is foolish
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    The US government's concept of due process involves a pay to play scheme, but the results are a magnitude more awful than Google banning you, and the prices at play are a magnitude beyond what most businesses have the guts to ask for.
- afpx 6y ago
  This data is being used in all sorts of ways to 'rate' and 'sort' people, from credit worthiness to ... well, let your imagination wander. As far as I'm aware, the US government hasn't started rating people. Also, US is one of the good governments. Pretty much every government with the legal, financial and technical means is using this data (and the metadata). What are they doing with it?
boomboomsubban 6y ago
This article is about corporations tracking them, and then the government buying it from them. Though I'd prefer the corporations weren't collecting and selling this data, te government buying this data to sidestep the need for a warrant is objectionable.
- geofft 6y ago
  Why is it objectionable? Does the government need a warrant to e.g. read comments on Hacker News? The purpose of a warrant is to override the usual protections of privacy and against government intrusion. If the information in question is not private in the first place, there is no intrusion. To be clear, I strongly agree with the conclusion that the end result is distasteful and we should make some sort of change in our society to avoid it. But I don't think the right step is to say that certain information which is publicly available is somehow not available to the government - it doesn't seem like either a sound argument or an enforceable restriction in practice. I think, if the information is too private to reveal to the government, it is certainly too private to be in the hands of an unaccountable unelected unauditable corporation in the first place.
  - hobs 6y ago
    It's a complete end run around regulation designed to keep government data gathering in check - just because its legal doesnt mean its the wrong incentive for our government to help corporations spy on us all and keep those corporate hegemonies which work best with surveillance states in power.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    While I think this data should just be considered private, the reasons that a business would have for purchasing it worry me less than the reasons the government would buy it. Yes, both entities could abuse the data, but corporations also have the usual scummy profit based use as well. The data collection companies say that they only sell to vetted clients. I agree that trying to make selling to the government illegal would be a poor move, but they should consider voluntarily barring government organizations in an attempt to prevent this becoming a bigger issue and laws being made to stop it
countzachula 6y ago
This is a scary post. Both are of extreme concern --- but it's especially worse when the government itself has the power to coerce AND force you to do something by written law.
jart 6y ago
Or worried about anyone else too really. Platforms have had so much fun profiting off data that they chose to democratize the tools which enable random people with zero scruples to violate privacy at scale. The person who's actually spying on you might turn out to be some hobo who wrote an app you downloaded with overly broad permissions. It could be some open source browser extension author who got burnt out and turned to evil. I was just reading a lawsuit a few hours ago where some guys paid lenovo to preinstall a layered service provider on their laptops that decrypts https and proxies it through some service, but this particular time it generated a lot of outrage and attention because it injected ads on the page and broke nodejs. Somehow, that is called a startup. I think most people get the sense that things like this are happening to them all the time. That their personal space is being violated without their consent. Except on a technical level, it's harder to understand than magic. The only people offering answers unfortunately are the ones who try and galvanize that anger towards big company x or government y, who are also totally culpable too, but for failing to act and defend us from all these micro-tyrants.
- javajosh 6y ago
  "Micro tyrants" - love it. It goes well with my own term, "petty injustice". I do object to "it's harder to understand than magic". I think that's a failure in communication, in pedagogy, and perhaps most broadly, the poor priorities of our major information systems, which include homes, schools, churches, the boy scouts, and all mass media. The profit motive should itself be deeply suspect with respect to any information service. I don't believe it is difficult to understand the nature of your phone and how it works. You hint at it with your term - it's about size. Your phone is essentially a vast machine (truly vast, like a city block) that has been shrunk down. Your screen is a camera into that tiny city, so its like a microscope. As we move around, we can mark particularly interesting or useful views, so that we can come back to them (and even arrange them side-by-side). We find that we not only have the ability to see, but also to emit into the image, changing it, adding to it. (It might get tricky once you recognize that movement itself must constitute an emission if we are to be consistent, and this would be the invitation to look at the text of the code, which ideally be written with this intuition in mind.) But yes, let us put an end to all the micro-tyrants and the petty injustices they subject us to!
emteycz 6y ago
No, a corporation doesn't have armed secret services without accountability.
- kevas 6y ago
  Really...? Boeing? Raytheon? Goldman Sachs? Wells Fargo? Pharma companies?
  - emteycz 6y ago
    Yeah, which one of them has their CIA and FBI with many and many documented kills? Next thing you'll tell me corporations are basically comparable to the Communist party of China?
    - aaron-santos 6y ago
      You asked and got delivered examples. This is shifting the goalposts.
      - emteycz 6y ago
        I asked for corporations that have armed secret services that aren't accountable, while comparing a corporation VS a state. These corporations don't have anything like I asked for, or I am massively overlooking something - please send a direct link to an example of a documented kill or something else comparable to what CIA or FBI does.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        TeMPOraL 6y ago
        You're overlooking military contractors. Also: does it have to be "armed secret services"? What about other ways of killing people? I vaguely remember some corporations being involved in funding militias to secure mining sites of tantalum[0]. But to use a more recent and easier-sourced example: how about driving people to suicide? There was quite a big fuss recently over France Télécom/Orange doing that in the process of privatizing public telecoms and turning lives of undesirable but unfireable employees into hell, which ended in multiple suicides[1]. -- [0] - There's something on it, including names of some of the companies involved, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan#Ethics_of_mining_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_Congo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan#Ethics_of_mining_in_the... [1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50865211 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50865211
swiley 6y ago
They should be worried about anyone tracking them. But it won't matter what most Americans think if there are just two choices and both are designed so that only a few can modify the OS. There's also the pinephone of course, but "Most Americans" object to the pinephone so severely that they'll offer to buy you an iphone if you switch to one.
- timbit42 6y ago
  So then I could sell the iPhone and buy more PinePhones?
- kitotik 6y ago
  Pinephone doesn’t solve the carrier problem.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    Purism does: https://puri.sm/products/librem-awesim/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-awesim/.
    - megous 6y ago
      You do one self-identifying thing (from the PoV of the mobile network operator) on your phone over network and your IMEI is forever tainted with your identity from then on. (Say someone or some corp sends you a two-factor SMS that includes some identifying data) Purism doesn't have this solved either. And from the PoV of governement surveillance, lol. Just forget using a PSTN.
      - fsflover 6y ago
        It's impossible to solve all problem at once. You solve them one by one. Also security is not a boolean (secure or not secure): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-in-depth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-in-depth.
        6y ago
meowster 6y ago
Is there an easy way to see what data these companies have on us? Is there an easy-to-use service where I can pay $10 to get the data for a phone number? Unless it becomes easy for the average person to realize without jumping through hoops, I fear there is little hope for change.
GhostVII 6y ago
Personally I don't care about corperations tracking me because I can generally stop the tracking by avoiding their software and websites. For me Google tracking me is a reasonable trade-off for free youtube and email, I can always install a clean copy of Firefox and LineageOS if I want. I don't generally do things online (or in person) that I'm worried about Google tracking. I am worried about the government tracking me, because they have the ability to legally required me to be tracked, giving me no way of avoiding it if I ever have a need to do something privately. And the consequences of the government tracking me all the time are much higher, since they can put me in prison, or put me on some watchlist.
- lukifer 6y ago
  > Personally I don't care about corperations tracking me because I can generally stop the tracking While I generally agree with your perspective here, it's worth noting [a] even if one eschews all services of tech giants, one is still tracked in practice through one's social network, such as through photo recognition or sending an email to gmail.com; and [b] the number of people who actually jump through the hoops required to live free of FAANG effectively rounds to zero. The extreme imbalance of power between corp and netizen may not be as stark as between fed and citizen (the monopoly on force involves deleting accounts and predictive analytics rather than decades in a cage), but it should be concerning all the same.
anm89 6y ago
It's not a one or the other kind of thing. We should be worried about both.
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  Either one is inevitable. The wealth of data that can be collected about a person through their phone is too valuable. Pick your poison. Massive government surveillance or massive corporate surveillance. Or both, as is currently the case. This won't change. That ship has sailed and isn't docking ever again.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > Either one is inevitable. The wealth of data that can be collected about a person through their phone is too valuable. The wealth and power attainable through child labour or slavery or unethical medical experimentation is also quite vast. Your argument is, essentially, the state is powerless to restrict markets. That we exist in a laissez faire world, where anything economically possible will be done. I’ll give it this: I haven’t seen this pitch before. Would love to see you and a free market advocate debate.
    - HenryKissinger 6y ago
      Child labour and slavery remain commonplace in many poor countries. In industrialized countries, a high level of labour productivity, technology, and automation makes it impractical or too expensive to hire a slave or a child. Put another way, advanced economies are advanced enough that there is little useful work that could be performed by a child or a slave, if child labour or slavery were still legal. Data collection, on the other hand, can only take place in countries with a high level of Internet penetration and a developed digital infrastructure.
      - AndrewUnmuted 6y ago
        > a high level of labour productivity, technology, and automation makes it impractical or too expensive to hire a slave or a child > advanced economies are advanced enough that there is little useful work that could be performed by a child or a slave I am uncertain about this idea that abhorrent labor practices vanish under the light of an industrialized workforce. There are practical issues to which we could point; China is a rapidly industrializing country, yet remains notorious for continuing to employ slave & child labor. Advancements in the general productivity of China's workforce have not led to a proportional reduction in this kind of labor practice. China had yet another one of its main goods added to the DoL's list of slave/child labor goods just days ago. [0] (Yes, this list suspiciously fails to report on any of the US's goods but that's an issue for another controversial HN reply.) Then there's the issue of advancing economies employing increasingly-"advanced" child labor protections, which corporations are routinely found to violate. [1] As countries improve their labor conditions and solidify regulatory environments within which corporations can work, firms are frequently found to do everything they can to skirt those laws. More generally, I'd point to the fact that "advanced" economies outsource the production of goods to poorer nations that still allow, tolerate, or willfully employ (that last one being exceedingly rare today) child labor. This sort of outsourcing of ethical responsibility is a common trait that can be observed in just about all civilizations at every level of technological and industrial progress. I think this is more an issue of widespread cultural values. Note that the DoL's list [2] has many examples of goods produced by China, but none produced by neighboring Tibet. Turkey is on the list for its production of several foods as well as garments, despite being a modern, industrialized nation. Italy and Greece are similarly industrialized, and in similar parts of the world, yet they are not on the list at all, despite their production of many goods that are typically produced by forced/child labor. Some places make an effort to negate forced/child labor in their markets, others do not. The blanket notion, though, that advanced economies are rid of these problems due to the lack of incentives to engage in them in the first place, to me seems quite incorrect. [0] https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environment-sustainability/us-ramping-up-pressure-on-china-s-use-of-forced-labor-in-distant-water-fishing https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environment-sustainabilit... [1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/chipotle-to-pay-1-4m-fine-to-settle-mass-child-labor-violations https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/chipotle-to-pay-1-4m-fin... [2] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-o...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> I'll say that American's should be more worried about corporations tracking them, than governments This being the top comment is why I stopped working on privacy legislation. Propose limits on governments? What about the corporations! Propose limits on private data collection? Why are we ignoring Snowden! Zero coördination between the left hand and the right. I know this isn’t anyone’s intent. But it’s a seductive argument for complacency that has buried over a dozen bills in New York City, Albany, Sacramento, the House Financial Services and Senate Banking Committees.
greenyouse 6y ago
Is there a good way to get around location tracking without losing out on having a phone? Even a feature phone would have location tracking from your cell service provider which I'm sure they would monetize because they can. Are there more privacy based cell providers that people could switch to? I know it's possible to make your own ISP for home internet but can that be done for cell phones too? I primarily use a smartphone because my job makes me use one for VPN. If it was possible I wouldn't mind keeping a useless smartphone with no data plan sitting in a drawer at home and going back to a feature phone (especially one with a slide out keyboard :D).
- joecool1029 6y ago
  >Is there a good way to get around location tracking without losing out on having a phone? I think it should be mentioned that part of the 5G-NR wireless standard includes a protection against IMSI catchers (Stingrays as they are commonly called). Article on it: https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2019/5/fighting-imsi-catchers-5g-cellular-paging-privacy https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2019/5/fighting-imsi-catche...
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  I'm leaning to a burner WiFi leashed connection and a voice-chat application (say, Jitsi), though options are decidedly thin.
jmnicolas 6y ago
A corporation can influence / censor / ban you, a government can do all of that and ... kill you.
at-fates-hands 6y ago
The problem is the number of people who actually care. Look at the number of people who continue to use Facebook despite a long history of sketchy behavior with people's information and shady security practices. Nobody cares. We now have two generations of people who grew up with no privacy and don't care about it. This is a growing trend that people who are in those generations are starting to believe we need MORE suppression of speech. MORE suppression of ideas THEY deem dangerous to the state. The number of people who really believe and promote privacy is shrinking. The amount of people who feel this is normal is outpacing those trying to fight for their privacy. The old analogy of the frog in the boiling water is apt here. So many kids have grown up not expecting privacy so why care now? To them it doesn't matter. To other's its already too late.
- Qwertious 6y ago
  Most people do care, they just don't have any alternatives due to Facebook's network effect.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Both corporate and government surveillance are complements, and are ultimately both manifestations of power and monopoly. One form has an economic locus, one a political locus. Either may be abused, and each feeds on and amplifies the other. Government surveillance has vastly less capacity without commercial services, particularly those tracking: - Strong signalling via payments: commerce, credit and debit payments, ecommerce, Amazon, Visa and Mastercard - Location: mobile devices, tollpaying systems, facial recognition / biosignatures, license plate scanners - Interests: marketing databases, demographics, AI-based content analysis, magazine and newspaper subscrptions, television and video watch history, video rentals (among the very few privacy carve outs thanks to Soliciter Bob), and online reading / views / interactions data. - Social relationships: USPS postal covers, telecoms call records (dating to the 1980s), location data (corrolated with other individuals), email, social media friends and interactions Corporations rely on powers of governments including: - Courts - Law - The buying, selling, renting, borrowing, installation, or removal of legislators, executives, judges, and regulators - Regulatory capture - Law enforcement - Military The line that a government can kill or jail you whilst a corporation cannot is a fable long belied by history. Corporations (or straight-up criminal gangs, where differentiable) can and do act directly, or bend the government where necessary. Adam Smith's notes on commercially operated garrisons, the history of the labour and environmental movements, oil and railroad companies, chemical industrry, and more, provide numerous examples. Surveillance, censorship, propaganda, and manipulation are tools, features, and benefits accruing to the controlling actor of any informaation monopoly, regardless of how that actor is organised or aligned. Not all abuse the power, but as Lord Acton notes, the temptation is strong.
- afpx 6y ago
  I just saw this today, but thanks for the comment. It's very interesting and enlightening.
gentleman11 6y ago
Needing a warrant to buy something at the corner data store is a bit of a weird ask. They should instead ask that the corner data store be shut down
andreilys 6y ago
Corporations don't have a monopoly on violence.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  If you're an average citizen, your life doesn't revolve around serious cases where monopoly on violence comes directly into place. It revolves around trivial cases, for which the government's response is proportional. Meanwhile, corporations - particularly Internet ones - are more than happy to escalate minor things into termination of service. To use a concrete example, there was a case recently in which a streamer asked people to vote for things by posting red and green emojis on the livestream chat. YouTube's algorithms proceeded to ban people who posted too many emojis. A ban on YouTube means a ban on Google account, which means no more GMail and Google Docs in particular. For an average person - particularly average worker in a small company - this immediately turns one's life upside down and is likely to do permanent damage to employability. An equivalent situation with a government would boil down to getting a small fine - nobody is going to terminate your driving license if the police spots you blinking your lights a few times to a friend driving ahead of you.
  - andreilys 6y ago
    Compare that to certain countries where posting a meme will get you thrown into jail, or have the lives of your family threatened. If your whole digital life is invested into a single company, that's on you. There are plenty of ways to hedge that risk. Unfortunately for those without wealth, hedging government risk is near impossible.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Having read what I've read about governments down through history I'd have to disagree. I am not that worried about google turning fascist and then kicking my door in and putting a gun in my mouth because I said something bad about dear leader. I'll take the bursting spam mail folder to that any day of the week.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
Businesses can't imprison me for humiliating them. Neither can foreign governments while I remain on my home soil. This is why my own governments will always pose the greatest possible risk to my liberties.

by afpx 6y ago

Having worked in the creepy business of "location analytics", I'll say that American's should be more worried about corporations tracking them, than governments.

colejohnson66 6y ago

They’re both bad, but the government has the ability to put you in jail if they want based on anything because they have access to everything.

mirthflat83 6y ago
And the government has access to corporate data...
rootsudo 6y ago
And corporations can put you in corporate "jail", lock you out of online services, or just disable or delete your identity being judge, jury and executioner... With Government, there is some semblance of due process.
- countzachula 6y ago
  IF ONLY they would delete my online identity ;-). That aside, I can't tell if you're supporting or rebutting the OP's comment.
- syshum 6y ago
  While I agree both are bad, the government is far far worse than corporations disabling your accounts There are ways to migate the risk from corporations, and diservify that risk across several corporations There is not anyway to mitigate the risk from government, and the idea of "due process" is really a myth created by TV Shows With the number of criminal offenses if an agent of the government desires you to be in jail you go to jail. I guarantee you have done something, at some point that they can manipulate a jury into convicting you over We are a criminalized society, especially the US, the "land of the free" where we put more people in jail than anywhere in the world (officially anyway)
  - rootsudo 6y ago
    At the same time, you can also mitigate risk from government, not everyone is being investigated, arrested, or jailed. Due process is not a "myth" from a tv show, it is a right from the constitution, if you are an American: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt5_4_2/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt5_4_2/ I do agree with your later two points though, that there is an misalignment of goals for criminal justice, but, it isn't that bad because it is an outlined process, and it does not happen overnight, behind closed doors or behind a company friendly terms of service. At least you know how the meat is made, somewhat and there is transparency. There is none, per se outside financial obligation for corporations.
    - syshum 6y ago
      whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case the idea the the constitution is proof of Due Process is delusional in the face of 1000's of data points proving the contrary The constitution is more religion than it is law, as like the priests of other religions, the priests of the law (lawyers and judges) twist and pervert the plain text of the constitution to mean anything they desire even a clear and exact opposite position of the very text they hold to be scared >>but, it isn't that bad because it is an outlined process, and it does not happen overnight, behind closed doors or behind a company friendly terms of service. At least you know how the meat is made, somewhat and there is transparency. This is also false, there are all kinds of actual laws, or defacto laws, or regulations that are behind paywalls or simply ruled "national security laws", we have secret courts (FISA and others), there are all kinds of Sealed judgments that impact other things. Then there is the entire scheme of parallel construction the NSA/FBI invented to get around that pesky Constitution This idea of "government transparency" is foolish
- threatofrain 6y ago
  The US government's concept of due process involves a pay to play scheme, but the results are a magnitude more awful than Google banning you, and the prices at play are a magnitude beyond what most businesses have the guts to ask for.
afpx 6y ago
This data is being used in all sorts of ways to 'rate' and 'sort' people, from credit worthiness to ... well, let your imagination wander. As far as I'm aware, the US government hasn't started rating people. Also, US is one of the good governments. Pretty much every government with the legal, financial and technical means is using this data (and the metadata). What are they doing with it?

boomboomsubban 6y ago

This article is about corporations tracking them, and then the government buying it from them. Though I'd prefer the corporations weren't collecting and selling this data, te government buying this data to sidestep the need for a warrant is objectionable.

geofft 6y ago
Why is it objectionable? Does the government need a warrant to e.g. read comments on Hacker News? The purpose of a warrant is to override the usual protections of privacy and against government intrusion. If the information in question is not private in the first place, there is no intrusion. To be clear, I strongly agree with the conclusion that the end result is distasteful and we should make some sort of change in our society to avoid it. But I don't think the right step is to say that certain information which is publicly available is somehow not available to the government - it doesn't seem like either a sound argument or an enforceable restriction in practice. I think, if the information is too private to reveal to the government, it is certainly too private to be in the hands of an unaccountable unelected unauditable corporation in the first place.
- hobs 6y ago
  It's a complete end run around regulation designed to keep government data gathering in check - just because its legal doesnt mean its the wrong incentive for our government to help corporations spy on us all and keep those corporate hegemonies which work best with surveillance states in power.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  While I think this data should just be considered private, the reasons that a business would have for purchasing it worry me less than the reasons the government would buy it. Yes, both entities could abuse the data, but corporations also have the usual scummy profit based use as well. The data collection companies say that they only sell to vetted clients. I agree that trying to make selling to the government illegal would be a poor move, but they should consider voluntarily barring government organizations in an attempt to prevent this becoming a bigger issue and laws being made to stop it

countzachula 6y ago

This is a scary post. Both are of extreme concern --- but it's especially worse when the government itself has the power to coerce AND force you to do something by written law.

jart 6y ago

Or worried about anyone else too really. Platforms have had so much fun profiting off data that they chose to democratize the tools which enable random people with zero scruples to violate privacy at scale. The person who's actually spying on you might turn out to be some hobo who wrote an app you downloaded with overly broad permissions. It could be some open source browser extension author who got burnt out and turned to evil. I was just reading a lawsuit a few hours ago where some guys paid lenovo to preinstall a layered service provider on their laptops that decrypts https and proxies it through some service, but this particular time it generated a lot of outrage and attention because it injected ads on the page and broke nodejs. Somehow, that is called a startup. I think most people get the sense that things like this are happening to them all the time. That their personal space is being violated without their consent. Except on a technical level, it's harder to understand than magic. The only people offering answers unfortunately are the ones who try and galvanize that anger towards big company x or government y, who are also totally culpable too, but for failing to act and defend us from all these micro-tyrants.

javajosh 6y ago
"Micro tyrants" - love it. It goes well with my own term, "petty injustice". I do object to "it's harder to understand than magic". I think that's a failure in communication, in pedagogy, and perhaps most broadly, the poor priorities of our major information systems, which include homes, schools, churches, the boy scouts, and all mass media. The profit motive should itself be deeply suspect with respect to any information service. I don't believe it is difficult to understand the nature of your phone and how it works. You hint at it with your term - it's about size. Your phone is essentially a vast machine (truly vast, like a city block) that has been shrunk down. Your screen is a camera into that tiny city, so its like a microscope. As we move around, we can mark particularly interesting or useful views, so that we can come back to them (and even arrange them side-by-side). We find that we not only have the ability to see, but also to emit into the image, changing it, adding to it. (It might get tricky once you recognize that movement itself must constitute an emission if we are to be consistent, and this would be the invitation to look at the text of the code, which ideally be written with this intuition in mind.) But yes, let us put an end to all the micro-tyrants and the petty injustices they subject us to!

emteycz 6y ago

No, a corporation doesn't have armed secret services without accountability.

kevas 6y ago
Really...? Boeing? Raytheon? Goldman Sachs? Wells Fargo? Pharma companies?
- emteycz 6y ago
  Yeah, which one of them has their CIA and FBI with many and many documented kills? Next thing you'll tell me corporations are basically comparable to the Communist party of China?
  - aaron-santos 6y ago
    You asked and got delivered examples. This is shifting the goalposts.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      I asked for corporations that have armed secret services that aren't accountable, while comparing a corporation VS a state. These corporations don't have anything like I asked for, or I am massively overlooking something - please send a direct link to an example of a documented kill or something else comparable to what CIA or FBI does.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        You're overlooking military contractors. Also: does it have to be "armed secret services"? What about other ways of killing people? I vaguely remember some corporations being involved in funding militias to secure mining sites of tantalum[0]. But to use a more recent and easier-sourced example: how about driving people to suicide? There was quite a big fuss recently over France Télécom/Orange doing that in the process of privatizing public telecoms and turning lives of undesirable but unfireable employees into hell, which ended in multiple suicides[1]. -- [0] - There's something on it, including names of some of the companies involved, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan#Ethics_of_mining_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_Congo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan#Ethics_of_mining_in_the... [1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50865211 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50865211

swiley 6y ago

They should be worried about anyone tracking them. But it won't matter what most Americans think if there are just two choices and both are designed so that only a few can modify the OS. There's also the pinephone of course, but "Most Americans" object to the pinephone so severely that they'll offer to buy you an iphone if you switch to one.

timbit42 6y ago
So then I could sell the iPhone and buy more PinePhones?
kitotik 6y ago
Pinephone doesn’t solve the carrier problem.
- fsflover 6y ago
  Purism does: https://puri.sm/products/librem-awesim/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-awesim/.
  - megous 6y ago
    You do one self-identifying thing (from the PoV of the mobile network operator) on your phone over network and your IMEI is forever tainted with your identity from then on. (Say someone or some corp sends you a two-factor SMS that includes some identifying data) Purism doesn't have this solved either. And from the PoV of governement surveillance, lol. Just forget using a PSTN.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      It's impossible to solve all problem at once. You solve them one by one. Also security is not a boolean (secure or not secure): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-in-depth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-in-depth.
      - 6y ago

meowster 6y ago

Is there an easy way to see what data these companies have on us? Is there an easy-to-use service where I can pay $10 to get the data for a phone number? Unless it becomes easy for the average person to realize without jumping through hoops, I fear there is little hope for change.

GhostVII 6y ago

Personally I don't care about corperations tracking me because I can generally stop the tracking by avoiding their software and websites. For me Google tracking me is a reasonable trade-off for free youtube and email, I can always install a clean copy of Firefox and LineageOS if I want. I don't generally do things online (or in person) that I'm worried about Google tracking. I am worried about the government tracking me, because they have the ability to legally required me to be tracked, giving me no way of avoiding it if I ever have a need to do something privately. And the consequences of the government tracking me all the time are much higher, since they can put me in prison, or put me on some watchlist.

lukifer 6y ago
> Personally I don't care about corperations tracking me because I can generally stop the tracking While I generally agree with your perspective here, it's worth noting [a] even if one eschews all services of tech giants, one is still tracked in practice through one's social network, such as through photo recognition or sending an email to gmail.com; and [b] the number of people who actually jump through the hoops required to live free of FAANG effectively rounds to zero. The extreme imbalance of power between corp and netizen may not be as stark as between fed and citizen (the monopoly on force involves deleting accounts and predictive analytics rather than decades in a cage), but it should be concerning all the same.

anm89 6y ago

It's not a one or the other kind of thing. We should be worried about both.

HenryKissinger 6y ago
Either one is inevitable. The wealth of data that can be collected about a person through their phone is too valuable. Pick your poison. Massive government surveillance or massive corporate surveillance. Or both, as is currently the case. This won't change. That ship has sailed and isn't docking ever again.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > Either one is inevitable. The wealth of data that can be collected about a person through their phone is too valuable. The wealth and power attainable through child labour or slavery or unethical medical experimentation is also quite vast. Your argument is, essentially, the state is powerless to restrict markets. That we exist in a laissez faire world, where anything economically possible will be done. I’ll give it this: I haven’t seen this pitch before. Would love to see you and a free market advocate debate.
  - HenryKissinger 6y ago
    Child labour and slavery remain commonplace in many poor countries. In industrialized countries, a high level of labour productivity, technology, and automation makes it impractical or too expensive to hire a slave or a child. Put another way, advanced economies are advanced enough that there is little useful work that could be performed by a child or a slave, if child labour or slavery were still legal. Data collection, on the other hand, can only take place in countries with a high level of Internet penetration and a developed digital infrastructure.
    - AndrewUnmuted 6y ago
      > a high level of labour productivity, technology, and automation makes it impractical or too expensive to hire a slave or a child > advanced economies are advanced enough that there is little useful work that could be performed by a child or a slave I am uncertain about this idea that abhorrent labor practices vanish under the light of an industrialized workforce. There are practical issues to which we could point; China is a rapidly industrializing country, yet remains notorious for continuing to employ slave & child labor. Advancements in the general productivity of China's workforce have not led to a proportional reduction in this kind of labor practice. China had yet another one of its main goods added to the DoL's list of slave/child labor goods just days ago. [0] (Yes, this list suspiciously fails to report on any of the US's goods but that's an issue for another controversial HN reply.) Then there's the issue of advancing economies employing increasingly-"advanced" child labor protections, which corporations are routinely found to violate. [1] As countries improve their labor conditions and solidify regulatory environments within which corporations can work, firms are frequently found to do everything they can to skirt those laws. More generally, I'd point to the fact that "advanced" economies outsource the production of goods to poorer nations that still allow, tolerate, or willfully employ (that last one being exceedingly rare today) child labor. This sort of outsourcing of ethical responsibility is a common trait that can be observed in just about all civilizations at every level of technological and industrial progress. I think this is more an issue of widespread cultural values. Note that the DoL's list [2] has many examples of goods produced by China, but none produced by neighboring Tibet. Turkey is on the list for its production of several foods as well as garments, despite being a modern, industrialized nation. Italy and Greece are similarly industrialized, and in similar parts of the world, yet they are not on the list at all, despite their production of many goods that are typically produced by forced/child labor. Some places make an effort to negate forced/child labor in their markets, others do not. The blanket notion, though, that advanced economies are rid of these problems due to the lack of incentives to engage in them in the first place, to me seems quite incorrect. [0] https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environment-sustainability/us-ramping-up-pressure-on-china-s-use-of-forced-labor-in-distant-water-fishing https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environment-sustainabilit... [1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/chipotle-to-pay-1-4m-fine-to-settle-mass-child-labor-violations https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/chipotle-to-pay-1-4m-fin... [2] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-o...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> I'll say that American's should be more worried about corporations tracking them, than governments This being the top comment is why I stopped working on privacy legislation. Propose limits on governments? What about the corporations! Propose limits on private data collection? Why are we ignoring Snowden! Zero coördination between the left hand and the right. I know this isn’t anyone’s intent. But it’s a seductive argument for complacency that has buried over a dozen bills in New York City, Albany, Sacramento, the House Financial Services and Senate Banking Committees.

greenyouse 6y ago

Is there a good way to get around location tracking without losing out on having a phone? Even a feature phone would have location tracking from your cell service provider which I'm sure they would monetize because they can. Are there more privacy based cell providers that people could switch to? I know it's possible to make your own ISP for home internet but can that be done for cell phones too? I primarily use a smartphone because my job makes me use one for VPN. If it was possible I wouldn't mind keeping a useless smartphone with no data plan sitting in a drawer at home and going back to a feature phone (especially one with a slide out keyboard :D).

joecool1029 6y ago
>Is there a good way to get around location tracking without losing out on having a phone? I think it should be mentioned that part of the 5G-NR wireless standard includes a protection against IMSI catchers (Stingrays as they are commonly called). Article on it: https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2019/5/fighting-imsi-catchers-5g-cellular-paging-privacy https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2019/5/fighting-imsi-catche...
dredmorbius 6y ago
I'm leaning to a burner WiFi leashed connection and a voice-chat application (say, Jitsi), though options are decidedly thin.

jmnicolas 6y ago

A corporation can influence / censor / ban you, a government can do all of that and ... kill you.

at-fates-hands 6y ago

The problem is the number of people who actually care. Look at the number of people who continue to use Facebook despite a long history of sketchy behavior with people's information and shady security practices. Nobody cares. We now have two generations of people who grew up with no privacy and don't care about it. This is a growing trend that people who are in those generations are starting to believe we need MORE suppression of speech. MORE suppression of ideas THEY deem dangerous to the state. The number of people who really believe and promote privacy is shrinking. The amount of people who feel this is normal is outpacing those trying to fight for their privacy. The old analogy of the frog in the boiling water is apt here. So many kids have grown up not expecting privacy so why care now? To them it doesn't matter. To other's its already too late.

Qwertious 6y ago
Most people do care, they just don't have any alternatives due to Facebook's network effect.

dredmorbius 6y ago

Both corporate and government surveillance are complements, and are ultimately both manifestations of power and monopoly. One form has an economic locus, one a political locus. Either may be abused, and each feeds on and amplifies the other. Government surveillance has vastly less capacity without commercial services, particularly those tracking: - Strong signalling via payments: commerce, credit and debit payments, ecommerce, Amazon, Visa and Mastercard - Location: mobile devices, tollpaying systems, facial recognition / biosignatures, license plate scanners - Interests: marketing databases, demographics, AI-based content analysis, magazine and newspaper subscrptions, television and video watch history, video rentals (among the very few privacy carve outs thanks to Soliciter Bob), and online reading / views / interactions data. - Social relationships: USPS postal covers, telecoms call records (dating to the 1980s), location data (corrolated with other individuals), email, social media friends and interactions Corporations rely on powers of governments including: - Courts - Law - The buying, selling, renting, borrowing, installation, or removal of legislators, executives, judges, and regulators - Regulatory capture - Law enforcement - Military The line that a government can kill or jail you whilst a corporation cannot is a fable long belied by history. Corporations (or straight-up criminal gangs, where differentiable) can and do act directly, or bend the government where necessary. Adam Smith's notes on commercially operated garrisons, the history of the labour and environmental movements, oil and railroad companies, chemical industrry, and more, provide numerous examples. Surveillance, censorship, propaganda, and manipulation are tools, features, and benefits accruing to the controlling actor of any informaation monopoly, regardless of how that actor is organised or aligned. Not all abuse the power, but as Lord Acton notes, the temptation is strong.

afpx 6y ago
I just saw this today, but thanks for the comment. It's very interesting and enlightening.

gentleman11 6y ago

Needing a warrant to buy something at the corner data store is a bit of a weird ask. They should instead ask that the corner data store be shut down

andreilys 6y ago

Corporations don't have a monopoly on violence.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
If you're an average citizen, your life doesn't revolve around serious cases where monopoly on violence comes directly into place. It revolves around trivial cases, for which the government's response is proportional. Meanwhile, corporations - particularly Internet ones - are more than happy to escalate minor things into termination of service. To use a concrete example, there was a case recently in which a streamer asked people to vote for things by posting red and green emojis on the livestream chat. YouTube's algorithms proceeded to ban people who posted too many emojis. A ban on YouTube means a ban on Google account, which means no more GMail and Google Docs in particular. For an average person - particularly average worker in a small company - this immediately turns one's life upside down and is likely to do permanent damage to employability. An equivalent situation with a government would boil down to getting a small fine - nobody is going to terminate your driving license if the police spots you blinking your lights a few times to a friend driving ahead of you.
- andreilys 6y ago
  Compare that to certain countries where posting a meme will get you thrown into jail, or have the lives of your family threatened. If your whole digital life is invested into a single company, that's on you. There are plenty of ways to hedge that risk. Unfortunately for those without wealth, hedging government risk is near impossible.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Having read what I've read about governments down through history I'd have to disagree. I am not that worried about google turning fascist and then kicking my door in and putting a gun in my mouth because I said something bad about dear leader. I'll take the bursting spam mail folder to that any day of the week.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

Businesses can't imprison me for humiliating them. Neither can foreign governments while I remain on my home soil. This is why my own governments will always pose the greatest possible risk to my liberties.