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> And when taken very literally, the promise is true [...] focusing on the term “sell” is essentially a sleight of hand by tech giants The other "technically t

by pdkl95 5y ago

> And when taken very literally, the promise is true [...] focusing on the term “sell” is essentially a sleight of hand by tech giants The other "technically true" sleight of hand frequently used by tech giants is "We don't store ${DATA} about our users" which is carefully interpreted to mean "We don't store ${DATA} in the 'users' table" (we store it in another table with an 'anonymized' primary key and and pretend foreign keys and INNER JOIN don't exist). Maybe "we don't store personal data" is how you say "third normal form" in the marketing dialect? > saying that they don’t sell data to third parties is like a yogurt company saying they’re gluten-free. Yogurt is naturally gluten-free I've seen a bottle of regular table salt* (NaCl) that proudly boasted on it's label that the contents were "Guaranteed GMO Free".

ssss11 5y ago
> The other "technically true" sleight of hand frequently used by tech giants is "We don't store ${DATA} about our users" which is carefully interpreted to mean "We don't store ${DATA} in the 'users' table" (we store it in another table with an 'anonymized' primary key and and pretend foreign keys and INNER JOIN don't exist). Is that true?! That’s outrageous! How on earth can we rein it in if the systems are black boxes and they don’t tell the truth
- pdkl95 5y ago
  The technical details vary a lot, but the basic idea that data can be meaningfully separated is extremely common belief. Most people - even many people with technical backgrounds - don't have personal experience using powerful modern tools like SQL JOIN. I like DJB's description[1] of the problem: >> Hashing is magic crypto pixie-dust, which takes personally identifiable information and makes it incomprehensible to the marketing department. When a marketing person looks at random letters and numbers they have no idea what it means. They can't imagine that anybody could possibly understand the information, reverse the hash, correlate the hashes, track them, save them, record them. In general this isn't an intentional deception. People probably legitimately believe they are protecting data by "anonymizing" (hashing) certain fields. The hashes in the "anonymized" data look impossibly large. The fact that modern computers can simply enumerate all possible hashes in a few minutes[2] is not immediately obvious. > the systems are black boxes The need for algorithmic transparency will only increase over time. Unfortunately, far too many corporations rely on being able to launder private data as their business model. [1] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#bernstein https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/27/new-york-taxi-details-anonymised-data-researchers-warn https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/27/new-york-...
  - ssss11 5y ago
    Coming from a technical background I’m still dumbfounded that this exists. I actually think that the need for algorithmic transparency will result in some industry body that audits closed source code, db schemas and infra/architecture and provides a public rating system.. I’d love to see that. Edit: typo

by pdkl95 5y ago

ssss11 5y ago

> The other "technically true" sleight of hand frequently used by tech giants is "We don't store ${DATA} about our users" which is carefully interpreted to mean "We don't store ${DATA} in the 'users' table" (we store it in another table with an 'anonymized' primary key and and pretend foreign keys and INNER JOIN don't exist). Is that true?! That’s outrageous! How on earth can we rein it in if the systems are black boxes and they don’t tell the truth

pdkl95 5y ago
The technical details vary a lot, but the basic idea that data can be meaningfully separated is extremely common belief. Most people - even many people with technical backgrounds - don't have personal experience using powerful modern tools like SQL JOIN. I like DJB's description[1] of the problem: >> Hashing is magic crypto pixie-dust, which takes personally identifiable information and makes it incomprehensible to the marketing department. When a marketing person looks at random letters and numbers they have no idea what it means. They can't imagine that anybody could possibly understand the information, reverse the hash, correlate the hashes, track them, save them, record them. In general this isn't an intentional deception. People probably legitimately believe they are protecting data by "anonymizing" (hashing) certain fields. The hashes in the "anonymized" data look impossibly large. The fact that modern computers can simply enumerate all possible hashes in a few minutes[2] is not immediately obvious. > the systems are black boxes The need for algorithmic transparency will only increase over time. Unfortunately, far too many corporations rely on being able to launder private data as their business model. [1] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#bernstein https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/27/new-york-taxi-details-anonymised-data-researchers-warn https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/27/new-york-...
- ssss11 5y ago
  Coming from a technical background I’m still dumbfounded that this exists. I actually think that the need for algorithmic transparency will result in some industry body that audits closed source code, db schemas and infra/architecture and provides a public rating system.. I’d love to see that. Edit: typo