10 ms·

The Fantasy of Opting Out

243 points by Fiveplus 6y ago

throwaway98797 6y ago
Hiding in plane sight is powerful. Especially true if one can do it with a community.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  How many bits revealed by choosing the wrong spelling of 'plain'?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
naringas 6y ago
> Those who know about us have power over us. I'm not sure about this, those who can change our behavior have power over us. knowing somebody does not necessarily mean I have power over said somebody. likewise, there are things that have power over us without even having to know us. however if someone has power over somebody AND knows a lot about said somebody then their power is (indeed) more effective.
- ReactiveJelly 6y ago
  If someone can't change your behavior, they can share their knowledge with someone who can.
eternalban 6y ago
Brunton & Nissenbaum describe some of the features and mechanics of the panopticon -- "the apparatus of total surveillance" -- but do not comment on the psychological effects of "total surveillance" on collective and individual behavior. Foucault on 'Panopticism' addresses that far important aspect. Psychologically defeated people will not seek to "opt out". Opting out is the analog of escaping from prison: most prisoners do not seriously entertain such notions, much less act on them. "A real subjection is born mechanically from a ﬁctitious relation." https://foucault.info/documents/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism/ https://foucault.info/documents/foucault.disciplineAndPunish... "Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unveriﬁable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unveriﬁable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so. In order to make the presence or absence of the inspector unveriﬁable, so that the prisoners, in their cells, cannot even see a shadow, Bentham envisaged not only venetian blinds on the windows of the central observation hall, but, on the inside, partitions that intersected the hall at right angles and, in order to pass from one quarter to the other, not doors but zig-zag openings; for the slightest noise, a gleam of light, a brightness in a half-opened door would betray the presence of the guardian. The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen. It is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and disindividualizes power. Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up. The ceremonies, the rituals, the marks by which the sovereign’s surplus power was manifested are useless. There is a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference. Consequently, it does not matter who exercises power. Any individual, taken almost at random, can operate the machine: in the absence of the director, his family, his friends, his visitors, even his servants (Bentham, 45). Similarly, it does not matter what motive animates him: the curiosity of the indiscreet, the malice of a child, the thirst for knowledge of a philosopher who wishes to visit this museum of human nature, or the perversity of those who take pleasure in spying and punishing. The more numerous those anonymous and temporary observers are, the greater the risk for the inmate of being surprised and the greater his anxious awareness of being observed. The Panopticon is a marvellous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power. A real subjection is born mechanically from a ﬁctitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations. "
- mrmikardo 6y ago
  Thanks for reminding me of this. A very pertinent and insightful observation and, as you suggest, one that is missing from the linked article.
marshmallow_12 6y ago
this level of monitoring can only become useful with tools that don't yet exist. it's only theoretically possible to aggregate all the available data on any individual. it will require advanced AI and vastly greater data sharing in order to make this a significant issue. i imagine though that by the time these are developed, they will have their teeth blunted by advanced, new, obfuscation techniques and technologies.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  I think this is a dangerous fantasy, it does not require any AI, just putting all the data together with loads of man hours
  - pksebben 6y ago
    they're already abusing our data. adtech sells to the US army (pointedly: data from apps that are marketed to Muslims). if you wait for the exploitation to be absolute before dealing with it, you'll miss the opportunity to deal with it at all
    - marshmallow_12 6y ago
      The exploitation will never become absolute. Yes, blurred lines are very dangerous, and yes an opportunity is being missed here, but the scale of the danger is being overestimated. The next data crisis will be entirely unexpected but obvious in retrospect. (like every single google account being breached).
      - pksebben 6y ago
        That's orthogonal to the discussion, though. The concern isn't about cybersecurity, or breaches - this is about governments and companies abusing their access. The concern is that given enough time / development / etc handing _anyone_ a "track all folks down to the millimeter" is a fundamentally dangerous proposition. We know for a fact that government agencies misbehave. Imagine McCarthy's America, but with the ability to programatically crawl your every movement and spoken word. _That's_ the nightmare scenario.
germinalphrase 6y ago
There will be a great spookiness to augmented reality. Already, we invite soft surveillance into our private spaces, but will we agree to having those spaces mapped to the millimeter, our objects tracked in kind and location, our private actions (in addition to our words) persistently noticed, considered and logged?
- airstrike 6y ago
  Relevant (and still disturbing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
    It is a solid piece of work, but the blaring visual pollution is probably not our biggest worry.
  - pdkl95 6y ago
    I strongly recommend everyone watch Raph Koster's talk "Still Logged In: What AR and VR Can Learn from MMOs"[1] about the ethical issues involved in VR/AR... and how VR/AR can be used as a weapon. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgw8RLHv1j4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgw8RLHv1j4
kodah 6y ago
Giving these big detailed anecdotes about how we're actively in a surveillance state isn't working. People don't care. A lot of those same people have probably helped, in the form of public opinion solidarity, to make it this way. When you support or make excuses for engineering firms that engage in aggressive tracking, you give them clearance. When you constantly murmur about immigration or terrorism, it provides tools and reasoning for these systems to exist. If you fear monger about all the "bad people" on the internet, you create pathways for things like real name policies, sentiment analysis, or private data collection to prove who you are and what faith you come in. Then there's people who will aid these people and say things like, "Well those governments and companies aren't quite sharing data yet!" as if mass aggregation at a governmental level or through private partnerships isn't already happening. When you put all this hand wringing together it forms a useful set of tools for governments and private companies to abuse or misuse. Privacy on the internet was never about one small thing, it was always about an aggregate of decisions that achieve an outcome.
- pksebben 6y ago
  My interpretation of this article is that the author wanted to remind us to engage, and to contribute the conversation because we don't know how to manage the situation. It sounds like you have some format of a game plan to deal with this, would you care to share it? I'm legitimately interested.
  - kodah 6y ago
    > There is no simple solution to the problem of privacy, because privacy itself is a solution to societal challenges that are in constant flux. Some are natural and beyond our control; others are technological and should be within our control but are shaped by a panoply of complex social and material forces with indeterminate effects. Privacy does not mean stopping the flow of data; it means channeling it wisely and justly to serve societal ends and values and the individuals who are its subjects, particularly the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. Innumerable customs, concepts, tools, laws, mechanisms, and protocols have evolved to achieve privacy, so conceived, and it is to that collection that we add obfuscation to sustain it — as an active conversation, a struggle, and a choice. The author comes to the same conclusion I do. I just stated that making vivid images of what your loss of privacy looks like aren't really making a dent. The author also says it best: there is no simple solution. Rather, the problem exists in people's behavior and belief systems. They feel justified in their beliefs for a cause, and once they are galvanized into that belief system they are no longer required to consider second and third order effects from their belief support. In fact, they're totally allowed to just dismiss people altogether as long as they are doing so in support of the cause. This isn't anything new. Hot topics show that people just do this when they feel some type of way about a given topic. If you want to solve these problems I think the place to start is making vocal calls to people within your belief system that are encouraging a loss of privacy. This must be from within your belief system because people don't listen fully to people of polar belief systems and it must be vocal so that everyone sees the example. More or less saying: privacy must be a common concern that is continually addressed and answered for in every discussion where we encourage change. It can no longer be an option.
pdkl95 6y ago
> Obfuscation may be our best digital weapon. From Dan Geer's portentous talk "Cybersecurity as Realpolitik"[1][2]: >> Privacy used to be proportional to that which it is impossible to observe or that which can be observed but not identified. No more -- what is today observable and identifiable kills both privacy as impossible-to-observe and privacy as impossible-to-identify, so what might be an alternative? If you are an optimist or an apparatchik, then your answer will tend toward rules of data procedure administered by a government you trust or control. If you are a pessimist or a hacker/maker, then your answer will tend towards the operational, and your definition of a state of privacy will be my definition: the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI [2] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
- keiferski 6y ago
  Deepfakes may do this job for us.
- waynecochran 6y ago
  Is there any hope in feeding the surveilance noise -- a lot of it? e.g., create bots with my credentials that visit random web sites, have a phone that reports bogus GPS coordinates, numerous dummy accounts, that sort of thing... Or if enough folks gang up and feed the system an avalanche of random (or misdirected) information that we can drown our signature in a sea of noise?
  - marshmallow_12 6y ago
    short term: i expect so, long term not so much. At best, some occasional fuzz will mar an otherwise clear picture of you and your activities. Too many fake accounts will only force users to surrender more personal information in order to authenticate themselves.
antattack 6y ago
I view it as a done deal, there's no escape and we need to plan for the future: Our current laws are not very detailed, often times they are overly severe to serve as a determent and/or make assumptions based on available evidence (which was less before). As we know more and more of an individual (due to gadgets, online activity, and cashless transactions)- laws and punishment need to take it all into account and be more tailored to actual crime and make less assumptions because there's plenty of evidence to go by. Another important issue is that we should not allow those in power shield themselves from surveillance and accountability under a guise of safety or security.
keiferski 6y ago
I’m sure I’ll be called crazy for this, but the true solution to oppressive societal forces is personal space travel and colonization. When it becomes possible for a small group of people to fund their own “opt out” and escape into outer space, individuals will regain some bargaining power. Obviously this won’t happen for centuries. But on the timeline of “future human existence”, it’s really not very long at all. I see this as an inevitable outcome of technological development, even if the Private Ownership of Spacecraft War of 2346 is bloody. That gives me hope for the future.
- joubert 6y ago
  > oppressive societal forces is personal space travel and colonization Why do you think colonies in space will be different and not see “societal forces” emerge?
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Of course human societies will still have issues. But the option of exiting will exist, as will the option of just going off on your own.
    - ccsnags 6y ago
      I think you are correct. The more accessible opting out becomes, the more leverage regulator people will have when negotiating with the dominant social order. Space travel like this is down the road, but it’s only a long road if you are thinking in terms of your own finite existence. Also, opting out is in demand. From a more immediate perspective, I think that there is a lot of room for innovation around personal privacy and opting out. No system created by humans is permanent. More surveillance means that humans will create systems to subvert it or render it useless. This has already happened in many ways. A system is nicer to its people when they are there voluntarily. These changes will also work to improve the quality of life of those in the system as well as those outside of it.
    - joubert 6y ago
      The article had this but that stood out to me: “It isn’t possible for everyone to live on principle; as a practical matter, many of us must make compromises in asymmetrical relationships, without the control or consent for which we might wish.” Even if you could just “go off on your own into space”, you will likely need to transact with other humans in order to survive. Put differently, I think while it is an “option” in principle, it isn’t in reality.
ThrustVectoring 6y ago
> If the apparatus of total surveillance that we have described here were deliberate, centralized, and explicit, a Big Brother machine toggling between cameras, it would demand revolt, and we could conceive of a life outside the totalitarian microscope. Really not sure how to turn this into actionable legislation, but the fundamental problem isn't the data collection. Rather, it's the massive reduction in cost in organizing and querying the data. The laws and norms were set up when the only way to tell if someone had walked down a specific street was to pay someone to watch or to knock on doors and talk to people with faulty memories. Cameras couldn't store years of footage, databases weren't invented yet, and machine facial recognition was pure fantasy. Like, in the 19th century it'd be absolutely ridiculous to insist that you have a right of "privacy" that means that people can't recognize you when you're walking around in public. And for a long time, pointing a camera outside your window was basically just like looking out it, and it got treated that way. A database of camera footage looking out at a majority of public streets, recording 24/7 with 5 years of back footage, indexed by time + location + facial recognition match, on the other hand, exploits people's privacy in a way that is far more than the sum of parts. Essentially, my view is that some databases are repugnant to public policy and should be illegal to build and to query. GDPR has well shown the problems involved in legislating this, and there's a massive free speech argument that torpedoes the whole thing anyhow, so I'm pessimistic about actually fixing things.
simonh 6y ago
This is silly, we are all observed by other people almost all of our lives, but that's fine because they don't conspire behind our backs to create a comprehensive record that's handed over to the government. I don't mind if the building security records me entering the building, or the bank records me using the ATM, or that London Transport videos me on the train. What I object to is if all of those are stitched together and handed over to advertising agencies or my employer. Likewise I don't care that Google knows what I searched for, or that Twitter knows what I tweeted, or that LinkedIn has my employment history. What I don't want is all of that being sold to Cambridge Analytica to then aggregate and sell on to someone else for goodness knows what purposes. An awful lot of my life and interests are easily searchable. My handle here is basically just my name, and I use the same handle or even more complete versions everywhere I can. When I'm out in public, the public can see me. When I post in public, the public can read what I say. That's fine, that's why I said it. However my private correspondences with my wife and kids on iMessage or WhatsApp are nobody else's business. My bank transactions and online shopping likewise, that latter is mainly between me and Amazon. Where I would get upset is if Amazon sold that data to Google to show me 'relevant ads', or show my purchases to my friends. Remember Facebook Beacon? There need to be clear, hard lines in the sand.
- zeta0134 6y ago
  This is something I wish was noted more often. When I'm searching for something on Amazon, I have intentionally visited that storefront and am willfully handing them my data (in the form of search and browsing history); of course Amazon is going to keep that and use it to personalize my results. Frankly that's part of their value add, so this is neither surprising nor particularly upsetting. What's surprising to most people (and should be the focus of any litigation, imho) is precisely this third-party data sharing. It's partly why the cookie law drives me nuts, since it's made all tracking the bogeyman, and in reality, most first party "tracking" is completely benign. If companies would agree not to sell or share my data with third parties (law enforcement serving a warrant being the major exception) then I have no real issue with the tech. The blatant sharing, and especially ad networks make my blood boil.
  - 6y ago
hedora 6y ago
The world needs to move to making all data collection opt-in. There should be no negative impact to failing to opt in, unless absolutely necessary. Those exceptions should be clearly legislated, and be easily challenge in court. This would require a right-to-privacy constitutional amendment in the US.
GCA10 6y ago
In today's society, the desire to be noticed is easily 50x the level of anxiety about being in a surveillance state. We could start with the nonstop, look-at-me nature of Instagram (or any other social site). They satisfy a deep craving that just keeps growing. We could marvel at the Jan. 6 rioters posting their moments in history for all to see. It's endless, and it isn't slowing down. Yes, there's a powerful argument to be made that nonstop surveillance could work out badly. But after 15 years of seeing such pieces thunder into obscurity, rehashing the same arguments in isolation seems futile. Anyone who wants to contribute to the conversation needs to spend serious time thinking about the reasons why so many people want strangers to know about them. It's a deep-felt desire. For a lot of people, the dread of being unknown/un-noticed/ignored is greater than the risks that come from being noticed. Once we understand why that's so, we might be able to move forward.
- lucasmullens 6y ago
  These seem unrelated to me. I should be able to post on social media publicly while still wanting privacy in other aspects of my life. A desire to be seen is not in any way fulfilled by security cameras and tracking cookies.
  - GCA10 6y ago
    Dash cam footage! Why has dash-cam footage become a thing on YouTube? Why aren't people demanding that it be shut down? Even security cameras are now part of performance culture
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I like watching dash cam footage.
- colllectorof 6y ago
  The wast majority of people out there have no mental capacity to imagine how data they post online and provide to various orgs could be and most likely eventually will be used against them. This is evidenced by the continuing proliferation of dumb comments along the lines of "I am boring", "I am doing nothing wrong", etc. There is a tremendous cognitive bias in play here. The idea that because most people around you don't weaponize certain types of information means no one anywhere will ever weaponize that information, even if it is globally and indefinitely available.
jpm_sd 6y ago
David Brin covered this topic in a 1996 Wired article [1] and a follow-on 1998 book [2]. So far, we're not doing great on the "Accountability" part. Bruce Schneier disagreed with him in 2008 [3] (and probably still does). [1] https://www.wired.com/1996/12/fftransparent/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/fftransparent/ [2] https://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety.html https://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety.html [3] https://www.wired.com/2008/03/securitymatters-0306/amp https://www.wired.com/2008/03/securitymatters-0306/amp
raintrees 6y ago
A concept explored by Greg Bear in his book Slant: https://www.amazon.com/Slant-Novel-Greg-Bear/dp/0812524829 https://www.amazon.com/Slant-Novel-Greg-Bear/dp/0812524829
ergl 6y ago
Needs a (2019) in the title
bogomipz 6y ago
>"The browser plugins TrackMeNot and AdNauseam, which explore obfuscation techniques by issuing many fake search requests and loading and clicking every ad, respectively. I would be curios to hear anyone's experience and/or feedback on these plugins.
purplezooey 6y ago
"life outside the totalitarian microscope?"... exaggerate much?
jtbayly 6y ago
Needs 2019 added to title
choeger 6y ago
The issue will become obvious rather soon. It won't be the state that uses the surveillance like Stasi or Gestapo would have (although, it might come closer with excuses like IP or public health). Instead my bet is on online shopping. Right now dynamic pricing is still asynchronous. If They do it, They have a model of you that fits some marketeers understanding of people. And this model suggests a price increase or maybe even a decrease. But what will happen is real-time data exchange. Say you booked a nice hotel for your vacation and now search for flights. Wonder why your prices are 50% higher? Say your TV just broke, or your car didn't start this morning, or you mentioned on whatsapp how you need new sports equipment. Basically whenever you will need something, you will pay a Premium. No matter where the data comes from. That's the price of giving up privacy.
frompdx 6y ago
Privacy does not mean stopping the flow of data; it means channeling it wisely and justly to serve societal ends and values and the individuals who are its subjects, particularly the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. I found the conclusion to be very open ended. Who decides what it means to channel the flow of data wisely and justly, and to what ends?

243 points by Fiveplus 6y ago

throwaway98797 6y ago

Hiding in plane sight is powerful. Especially true if one can do it with a community.

maxerickson 6y ago
How many bits revealed by choosing the wrong spelling of 'plain'?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

naringas 6y ago

> Those who know about us have power over us. I'm not sure about this, those who can change our behavior have power over us. knowing somebody does not necessarily mean I have power over said somebody. likewise, there are things that have power over us without even having to know us. however if someone has power over somebody AND knows a lot about said somebody then their power is (indeed) more effective.

ReactiveJelly 6y ago
If someone can't change your behavior, they can share their knowledge with someone who can.

eternalban 6y ago

Brunton & Nissenbaum describe some of the features and mechanics of the panopticon -- "the apparatus of total surveillance" -- but do not comment on the psychological effects of "total surveillance" on collective and individual behavior. Foucault on 'Panopticism' addresses that far important aspect. Psychologically defeated people will not seek to "opt out". Opting out is the analog of escaping from prison: most prisoners do not seriously entertain such notions, much less act on them. "A real subjection is born mechanically from a ﬁctitious relation." https://foucault.info/documents/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism/ https://foucault.info/documents/foucault.disciplineAndPunish... "Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unveriﬁable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unveriﬁable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so. In order to make the presence or absence of the inspector unveriﬁable, so that the prisoners, in their cells, cannot even see a shadow, Bentham envisaged not only venetian blinds on the windows of the central observation hall, but, on the inside, partitions that intersected the hall at right angles and, in order to pass from one quarter to the other, not doors but zig-zag openings; for the slightest noise, a gleam of light, a brightness in a half-opened door would betray the presence of the guardian. The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen. It is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and disindividualizes power. Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up. The ceremonies, the rituals, the marks by which the sovereign’s surplus power was manifested are useless. There is a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference. Consequently, it does not matter who exercises power. Any individual, taken almost at random, can operate the machine: in the absence of the director, his family, his friends, his visitors, even his servants (Bentham, 45). Similarly, it does not matter what motive animates him: the curiosity of the indiscreet, the malice of a child, the thirst for knowledge of a philosopher who wishes to visit this museum of human nature, or the perversity of those who take pleasure in spying and punishing. The more numerous those anonymous and temporary observers are, the greater the risk for the inmate of being surprised and the greater his anxious awareness of being observed. The Panopticon is a marvellous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power. A real subjection is born mechanically from a ﬁctitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations. "

mrmikardo 6y ago
Thanks for reminding me of this. A very pertinent and insightful observation and, as you suggest, one that is missing from the linked article.

marshmallow_12 6y ago

this level of monitoring can only become useful with tools that don't yet exist. it's only theoretically possible to aggregate all the available data on any individual. it will require advanced AI and vastly greater data sharing in order to make this a significant issue. i imagine though that by the time these are developed, they will have their teeth blunted by advanced, new, obfuscation techniques and technologies.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
I think this is a dangerous fantasy, it does not require any AI, just putting all the data together with loads of man hours
- pksebben 6y ago
  they're already abusing our data. adtech sells to the US army (pointedly: data from apps that are marketed to Muslims). if you wait for the exploitation to be absolute before dealing with it, you'll miss the opportunity to deal with it at all
  - marshmallow_12 6y ago
    The exploitation will never become absolute. Yes, blurred lines are very dangerous, and yes an opportunity is being missed here, but the scale of the danger is being overestimated. The next data crisis will be entirely unexpected but obvious in retrospect. (like every single google account being breached).
    - pksebben 6y ago
      That's orthogonal to the discussion, though. The concern isn't about cybersecurity, or breaches - this is about governments and companies abusing their access. The concern is that given enough time / development / etc handing _anyone_ a "track all folks down to the millimeter" is a fundamentally dangerous proposition. We know for a fact that government agencies misbehave. Imagine McCarthy's America, but with the ability to programatically crawl your every movement and spoken word. _That's_ the nightmare scenario.

germinalphrase 6y ago

There will be a great spookiness to augmented reality. Already, we invite soft surveillance into our private spaces, but will we agree to having those spaces mapped to the millimeter, our objects tracked in kind and location, our private actions (in addition to our words) persistently noticed, considered and logged?

airstrike 6y ago
Relevant (and still disturbing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  It is a solid piece of work, but the blaring visual pollution is probably not our biggest worry.
- pdkl95 6y ago
  I strongly recommend everyone watch Raph Koster's talk "Still Logged In: What AR and VR Can Learn from MMOs"[1] about the ethical issues involved in VR/AR... and how VR/AR can be used as a weapon. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgw8RLHv1j4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgw8RLHv1j4

kodah 6y ago

Giving these big detailed anecdotes about how we're actively in a surveillance state isn't working. People don't care. A lot of those same people have probably helped, in the form of public opinion solidarity, to make it this way. When you support or make excuses for engineering firms that engage in aggressive tracking, you give them clearance. When you constantly murmur about immigration or terrorism, it provides tools and reasoning for these systems to exist. If you fear monger about all the "bad people" on the internet, you create pathways for things like real name policies, sentiment analysis, or private data collection to prove who you are and what faith you come in. Then there's people who will aid these people and say things like, "Well those governments and companies aren't quite sharing data yet!" as if mass aggregation at a governmental level or through private partnerships isn't already happening. When you put all this hand wringing together it forms a useful set of tools for governments and private companies to abuse or misuse. Privacy on the internet was never about one small thing, it was always about an aggregate of decisions that achieve an outcome.

pksebben 6y ago
My interpretation of this article is that the author wanted to remind us to engage, and to contribute the conversation because we don't know how to manage the situation. It sounds like you have some format of a game plan to deal with this, would you care to share it? I'm legitimately interested.
- kodah 6y ago
  > There is no simple solution to the problem of privacy, because privacy itself is a solution to societal challenges that are in constant flux. Some are natural and beyond our control; others are technological and should be within our control but are shaped by a panoply of complex social and material forces with indeterminate effects. Privacy does not mean stopping the flow of data; it means channeling it wisely and justly to serve societal ends and values and the individuals who are its subjects, particularly the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. Innumerable customs, concepts, tools, laws, mechanisms, and protocols have evolved to achieve privacy, so conceived, and it is to that collection that we add obfuscation to sustain it — as an active conversation, a struggle, and a choice. The author comes to the same conclusion I do. I just stated that making vivid images of what your loss of privacy looks like aren't really making a dent. The author also says it best: there is no simple solution. Rather, the problem exists in people's behavior and belief systems. They feel justified in their beliefs for a cause, and once they are galvanized into that belief system they are no longer required to consider second and third order effects from their belief support. In fact, they're totally allowed to just dismiss people altogether as long as they are doing so in support of the cause. This isn't anything new. Hot topics show that people just do this when they feel some type of way about a given topic. If you want to solve these problems I think the place to start is making vocal calls to people within your belief system that are encouraging a loss of privacy. This must be from within your belief system because people don't listen fully to people of polar belief systems and it must be vocal so that everyone sees the example. More or less saying: privacy must be a common concern that is continually addressed and answered for in every discussion where we encourage change. It can no longer be an option.

pdkl95 6y ago

> Obfuscation may be our best digital weapon. From Dan Geer's portentous talk "Cybersecurity as Realpolitik"[1][2]: >> Privacy used to be proportional to that which it is impossible to observe or that which can be observed but not identified. No more -- what is today observable and identifiable kills both privacy as impossible-to-observe and privacy as impossible-to-identify, so what might be an alternative? If you are an optimist or an apparatchik, then your answer will tend toward rules of data procedure administered by a government you trust or control. If you are a pessimist or a hacker/maker, then your answer will tend towards the operational, and your definition of a state of privacy will be my definition: the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI [2] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt

keiferski 6y ago
Deepfakes may do this job for us.
waynecochran 6y ago
Is there any hope in feeding the surveilance noise -- a lot of it? e.g., create bots with my credentials that visit random web sites, have a phone that reports bogus GPS coordinates, numerous dummy accounts, that sort of thing... Or if enough folks gang up and feed the system an avalanche of random (or misdirected) information that we can drown our signature in a sea of noise?
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  short term: i expect so, long term not so much. At best, some occasional fuzz will mar an otherwise clear picture of you and your activities. Too many fake accounts will only force users to surrender more personal information in order to authenticate themselves.

antattack 6y ago

I view it as a done deal, there's no escape and we need to plan for the future: Our current laws are not very detailed, often times they are overly severe to serve as a determent and/or make assumptions based on available evidence (which was less before). As we know more and more of an individual (due to gadgets, online activity, and cashless transactions)- laws and punishment need to take it all into account and be more tailored to actual crime and make less assumptions because there's plenty of evidence to go by. Another important issue is that we should not allow those in power shield themselves from surveillance and accountability under a guise of safety or security.

keiferski 6y ago

I’m sure I’ll be called crazy for this, but the true solution to oppressive societal forces is personal space travel and colonization. When it becomes possible for a small group of people to fund their own “opt out” and escape into outer space, individuals will regain some bargaining power. Obviously this won’t happen for centuries. But on the timeline of “future human existence”, it’s really not very long at all. I see this as an inevitable outcome of technological development, even if the Private Ownership of Spacecraft War of 2346 is bloody. That gives me hope for the future.

joubert 6y ago
> oppressive societal forces is personal space travel and colonization Why do you think colonies in space will be different and not see “societal forces” emerge?
- keiferski 6y ago
  Of course human societies will still have issues. But the option of exiting will exist, as will the option of just going off on your own.
  - ccsnags 6y ago
    I think you are correct. The more accessible opting out becomes, the more leverage regulator people will have when negotiating with the dominant social order. Space travel like this is down the road, but it’s only a long road if you are thinking in terms of your own finite existence. Also, opting out is in demand. From a more immediate perspective, I think that there is a lot of room for innovation around personal privacy and opting out. No system created by humans is permanent. More surveillance means that humans will create systems to subvert it or render it useless. This has already happened in many ways. A system is nicer to its people when they are there voluntarily. These changes will also work to improve the quality of life of those in the system as well as those outside of it.
  - joubert 6y ago
    The article had this but that stood out to me: “It isn’t possible for everyone to live on principle; as a practical matter, many of us must make compromises in asymmetrical relationships, without the control or consent for which we might wish.” Even if you could just “go off on your own into space”, you will likely need to transact with other humans in order to survive. Put differently, I think while it is an “option” in principle, it isn’t in reality.

ThrustVectoring 6y ago

> If the apparatus of total surveillance that we have described here were deliberate, centralized, and explicit, a Big Brother machine toggling between cameras, it would demand revolt, and we could conceive of a life outside the totalitarian microscope. Really not sure how to turn this into actionable legislation, but the fundamental problem isn't the data collection. Rather, it's the massive reduction in cost in organizing and querying the data. The laws and norms were set up when the only way to tell if someone had walked down a specific street was to pay someone to watch or to knock on doors and talk to people with faulty memories. Cameras couldn't store years of footage, databases weren't invented yet, and machine facial recognition was pure fantasy. Like, in the 19th century it'd be absolutely ridiculous to insist that you have a right of "privacy" that means that people can't recognize you when you're walking around in public. And for a long time, pointing a camera outside your window was basically just like looking out it, and it got treated that way. A database of camera footage looking out at a majority of public streets, recording 24/7 with 5 years of back footage, indexed by time + location + facial recognition match, on the other hand, exploits people's privacy in a way that is far more than the sum of parts. Essentially, my view is that some databases are repugnant to public policy and should be illegal to build and to query. GDPR has well shown the problems involved in legislating this, and there's a massive free speech argument that torpedoes the whole thing anyhow, so I'm pessimistic about actually fixing things.

simonh 6y ago

This is silly, we are all observed by other people almost all of our lives, but that's fine because they don't conspire behind our backs to create a comprehensive record that's handed over to the government. I don't mind if the building security records me entering the building, or the bank records me using the ATM, or that London Transport videos me on the train. What I object to is if all of those are stitched together and handed over to advertising agencies or my employer. Likewise I don't care that Google knows what I searched for, or that Twitter knows what I tweeted, or that LinkedIn has my employment history. What I don't want is all of that being sold to Cambridge Analytica to then aggregate and sell on to someone else for goodness knows what purposes. An awful lot of my life and interests are easily searchable. My handle here is basically just my name, and I use the same handle or even more complete versions everywhere I can. When I'm out in public, the public can see me. When I post in public, the public can read what I say. That's fine, that's why I said it. However my private correspondences with my wife and kids on iMessage or WhatsApp are nobody else's business. My bank transactions and online shopping likewise, that latter is mainly between me and Amazon. Where I would get upset is if Amazon sold that data to Google to show me 'relevant ads', or show my purchases to my friends. Remember Facebook Beacon? There need to be clear, hard lines in the sand.

zeta0134 6y ago
This is something I wish was noted more often. When I'm searching for something on Amazon, I have intentionally visited that storefront and am willfully handing them my data (in the form of search and browsing history); of course Amazon is going to keep that and use it to personalize my results. Frankly that's part of their value add, so this is neither surprising nor particularly upsetting. What's surprising to most people (and should be the focus of any litigation, imho) is precisely this third-party data sharing. It's partly why the cookie law drives me nuts, since it's made all tracking the bogeyman, and in reality, most first party "tracking" is completely benign. If companies would agree not to sell or share my data with third parties (law enforcement serving a warrant being the major exception) then I have no real issue with the tech. The blatant sharing, and especially ad networks make my blood boil.
- 6y ago

hedora 6y ago

The world needs to move to making all data collection opt-in. There should be no negative impact to failing to opt in, unless absolutely necessary. Those exceptions should be clearly legislated, and be easily challenge in court. This would require a right-to-privacy constitutional amendment in the US.

GCA10 6y ago

In today's society, the desire to be noticed is easily 50x the level of anxiety about being in a surveillance state. We could start with the nonstop, look-at-me nature of Instagram (or any other social site). They satisfy a deep craving that just keeps growing. We could marvel at the Jan. 6 rioters posting their moments in history for all to see. It's endless, and it isn't slowing down. Yes, there's a powerful argument to be made that nonstop surveillance could work out badly. But after 15 years of seeing such pieces thunder into obscurity, rehashing the same arguments in isolation seems futile. Anyone who wants to contribute to the conversation needs to spend serious time thinking about the reasons why so many people want strangers to know about them. It's a deep-felt desire. For a lot of people, the dread of being unknown/un-noticed/ignored is greater than the risks that come from being noticed. Once we understand why that's so, we might be able to move forward.

lucasmullens 6y ago
These seem unrelated to me. I should be able to post on social media publicly while still wanting privacy in other aspects of my life. A desire to be seen is not in any way fulfilled by security cameras and tracking cookies.
- GCA10 6y ago
  Dash cam footage! Why has dash-cam footage become a thing on YouTube? Why aren't people demanding that it be shut down? Even security cameras are now part of performance culture
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I like watching dash cam footage.
colllectorof 6y ago
The wast majority of people out there have no mental capacity to imagine how data they post online and provide to various orgs could be and most likely eventually will be used against them. This is evidenced by the continuing proliferation of dumb comments along the lines of "I am boring", "I am doing nothing wrong", etc. There is a tremendous cognitive bias in play here. The idea that because most people around you don't weaponize certain types of information means no one anywhere will ever weaponize that information, even if it is globally and indefinitely available.

jpm_sd 6y ago

David Brin covered this topic in a 1996 Wired article [1] and a follow-on 1998 book [2]. So far, we're not doing great on the "Accountability" part. Bruce Schneier disagreed with him in 2008 [3] (and probably still does). [1] https://www.wired.com/1996/12/fftransparent/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/fftransparent/ [2] https://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety.html https://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety.html [3] https://www.wired.com/2008/03/securitymatters-0306/amp https://www.wired.com/2008/03/securitymatters-0306/amp

raintrees 6y ago

A concept explored by Greg Bear in his book Slant: https://www.amazon.com/Slant-Novel-Greg-Bear/dp/0812524829 https://www.amazon.com/Slant-Novel-Greg-Bear/dp/0812524829

ergl 6y ago

Needs a (2019) in the title

bogomipz 6y ago

>"The browser plugins TrackMeNot and AdNauseam, which explore obfuscation techniques by issuing many fake search requests and loading and clicking every ad, respectively. I would be curios to hear anyone's experience and/or feedback on these plugins.

purplezooey 6y ago

"life outside the totalitarian microscope?"... exaggerate much?

jtbayly 6y ago

Needs 2019 added to title

choeger 6y ago

The issue will become obvious rather soon. It won't be the state that uses the surveillance like Stasi or Gestapo would have (although, it might come closer with excuses like IP or public health). Instead my bet is on online shopping. Right now dynamic pricing is still asynchronous. If They do it, They have a model of you that fits some marketeers understanding of people. And this model suggests a price increase or maybe even a decrease. But what will happen is real-time data exchange. Say you booked a nice hotel for your vacation and now search for flights. Wonder why your prices are 50% higher? Say your TV just broke, or your car didn't start this morning, or you mentioned on whatsapp how you need new sports equipment. Basically whenever you will need something, you will pay a Premium. No matter where the data comes from. That's the price of giving up privacy.

frompdx 6y ago

Privacy does not mean stopping the flow of data; it means channeling it wisely and justly to serve societal ends and values and the individuals who are its subjects, particularly the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. I found the conclusion to be very open ended. Who decides what it means to channel the flow of data wisely and justly, and to what ends?