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Companies are taking their cues from Facebook and now they're all in a race to build back-end data warehouses of information of individuals, while congress stay

Companies are taking their cues from Facebook and now they're all in a race to build back-end data warehouses of information of individuals, while congress stays oblivious to the practice, and drops the ball on regulating and enforcing protection of privacy. Because of how embedded mobile phones and cameras are into our lives now, the field for collection of personal data can give a company a huge database of information on anyone based on how they interact with their phones. Even your phone and Alexa devices are literal microphones that can tap into your personal life at any given time. When this is combined with social media, email, photos and videos, and of course your browser history, anyone can be targeted at any time by these private companies for any reason. Blackmail will be a likely result. Corporate espionage will also be a constant threat. The future is going to be wild, and we'll likely need to lock our phones up and have private conversations in rooms with no tech at all unless privacy invasion and surveillance is reigned in properly by Gov leadership around the world. There is, in contrast, probably a fast growing pool of independent hackers and whistleblowers out there to counter these bad behaviors and practices by big corporate interests... The future is both interesting and scary citing all of this.

choeger 5y ago
Forget government. China actually shows what all governments more or less publicly desire: Better and deeper control of their feared enemy: The population. In fact, I think we are about to enter an era where our personal devices not only don't work exclusively for us but instead work explicitly against us. It will take a while for governments to gather some experience, but I won't be surprised when data gathering becomes mandatory. Wouldn't it be great for instance, if police could just tap into Alexa's records to clarify a case of rape? Or throttle down your intelligent thermostat because you are wasting so much of our CO2 budget? Or stop your car because it already entered that particular city twice this year?
- ypcx 5y ago
  A distinction should always be made between the government and the elites who influence it to benefit their interests. Being a member of the elite doesn't preclude one of being a (high-ranking) member of the government, or becoming a member of elite that way.
  - winternett 5y ago
    There is usually a lot more accountability for corruption in being a government official than a private citizen in collecting and controlling private information. There is a lot more illicit profit in being corrupt as a private citizen than in being a government official who collects and holds private information. This is why the government is the only one that should be authorized to hold LIMITED private information. Somehow it's mis-construed to private individuals and companies collecting UNLIMITED personal data on everyone. Strange times.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  >Forget government. China actually shows what all governments more or less publicly desire: Better and deeper control of their feared enemy: The population. After the uprising of the 17th of June The Secretary of the Writers' Union Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the government And could only win it back By increased work quotas. Would it not in that case be simpler for the government To dissolve the people And elect another?
- sofixa 5y ago
  > China actually shows what all governments more or less publicly desire I doubt China is the best example for what "governments desire". Many people of different kinds go into politics for different reasons, and i personally doubt controlling people is among the top ones. Enriching oneself, having power and reputation, fixing things, etc. seem to be more popular.
  - summm 5y ago
    In what respect is "having power" different from "controlling people"?
    - MerelyMortal 5y ago
      Does Bill Gates have power? Does Bill Gates control people? My answers to those two questions are Yes and No, respectively. That is the difference.
      - Nevermark 5y ago
        Bill Gates got his power by amazing wealth that buys the things and activities that he needs. He still magnifies that power by harnessing the latent power of money over people. Politicians as a rule get most, or all, their power by getting themselves in a position where they can control people.
- chuckee 5y ago
  > we are about to enter an era where our personal devices not only don't work exclusively for us but instead work explicitly against us. About to? LG smart TVs send filenames on connected storage devices back to LG, Google's phones by default (and until they were caught, even if you explicitly disabled it) send your location to Google for logging, that is then accessed by police with geofence warrants, printers add tracking dots to deanonymize you, Intel and AMD refuse to sell CPUs without their management engines (except to special customers), printers want "authorized" ink, and all of DRM is explicitly anti-user. We are already firmly in that era, even if you ignore China.
- winternett 5y ago
  I read somewhere that the latest iPhone uses either sonar or radar to detect room layouts and many other things now. It's crazy how we're actually paying for the very devices that monitor us and share information back to the companies that sold us the devices... I don't do anything illegal of course, but it's just wild to me that we now pay for our own "wire taps" without any real public transparency about it.
foobarian 5y ago
I've been watching a French show Bureau which has a lot of hacking/spying technobabble, but as far as those things go I think it has some interesting actually plausible things. - Locate a phone using discovery data from nearby Bluetooth devices under adversary's control - Track/access a turned-off phone via a secondary battery-powered GPS module (or similar, like in new iPhones) - Localize nearby phones via IMSI catchers The main implausible line of plot devices there are the ability to access any target device at will, just a matter of time/effort. This alludes to organizations having access to zero-day exploits but that's still very unlikely to work against a random phone.
- dannyw 5y ago
  Pegasus says hi??? Literally accessing any phone is just a matter of knowing it's phone number and paying NSO Group and its ever-constant cache of 0 click remote 0days.
zxcb1 5y ago
Corporate superintelligences are eating the world
nuerow 5y ago
> Companies are taking their cues from Facebook and now they're all in a race to build back-end data warehouses of information of individuals (...) The current state of affairs can be explained without dragging Facebook or other bogeymen into the picture. The inception of A/B testing, business metrics, and even crash analytics on applications deployed to devices that are always on is prime ground to emit tons of metrics regarding anything the application/device does. Even though I agree that this state of affairs goes against the users' best interests, there's no need to refer to bogeymen to explain why apps phone home.
- winternett 5y ago
  Common diagnostic info primarily reports on the device's status, there aren't many privacy concerns in that past transgression. What I'm worried about is the practice of device reporting done on individual user behaviors unrelated to device operation, which previously required careful measures to not report in software-based monitoring. Rules exist within the US government to protect Personally Identifiable Information, but somehow now not within private companies like FaceBook? Now that real-time connectivity and information is available, companies have access to data (well beyond what even most governments can collect) that can easily be weaponized against individuals, or even compromised by hackers or less-ethical companies and then also weaponized against individuals or groups in ways no-one has even thought about yet... "Boogeymen" is perhaps an improper name because they don't even know the devastating impacts that this personal data collection trend will lead to into the future... "Incompetent Egoists" and "Ignorant God Complex" are probably better terms to use in describing the individuals involved in implementing this type of reckless societal behavior monitoring.

choeger 5y ago

Forget government. China actually shows what all governments more or less publicly desire: Better and deeper control of their feared enemy: The population. In fact, I think we are about to enter an era where our personal devices not only don't work exclusively for us but instead work explicitly against us. It will take a while for governments to gather some experience, but I won't be surprised when data gathering becomes mandatory. Wouldn't it be great for instance, if police could just tap into Alexa's records to clarify a case of rape? Or throttle down your intelligent thermostat because you are wasting so much of our CO2 budget? Or stop your car because it already entered that particular city twice this year?

ypcx 5y ago
A distinction should always be made between the government and the elites who influence it to benefit their interests. Being a member of the elite doesn't preclude one of being a (high-ranking) member of the government, or becoming a member of elite that way.
- winternett 5y ago
  There is usually a lot more accountability for corruption in being a government official than a private citizen in collecting and controlling private information. There is a lot more illicit profit in being corrupt as a private citizen than in being a government official who collects and holds private information. This is why the government is the only one that should be authorized to hold LIMITED private information. Somehow it's mis-construed to private individuals and companies collecting UNLIMITED personal data on everyone. Strange times.
HideousKojima 5y ago
>Forget government. China actually shows what all governments more or less publicly desire: Better and deeper control of their feared enemy: The population. After the uprising of the 17th of June The Secretary of the Writers' Union Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the government And could only win it back By increased work quotas. Would it not in that case be simpler for the government To dissolve the people And elect another?
sofixa 5y ago
> China actually shows what all governments more or less publicly desire I doubt China is the best example for what "governments desire". Many people of different kinds go into politics for different reasons, and i personally doubt controlling people is among the top ones. Enriching oneself, having power and reputation, fixing things, etc. seem to be more popular.
- summm 5y ago
  In what respect is "having power" different from "controlling people"?
  - MerelyMortal 5y ago
    Does Bill Gates have power? Does Bill Gates control people? My answers to those two questions are Yes and No, respectively. That is the difference.
    - Nevermark 5y ago
      Bill Gates got his power by amazing wealth that buys the things and activities that he needs. He still magnifies that power by harnessing the latent power of money over people. Politicians as a rule get most, or all, their power by getting themselves in a position where they can control people.
chuckee 5y ago
> we are about to enter an era where our personal devices not only don't work exclusively for us but instead work explicitly against us. About to? LG smart TVs send filenames on connected storage devices back to LG, Google's phones by default (and until they were caught, even if you explicitly disabled it) send your location to Google for logging, that is then accessed by police with geofence warrants, printers add tracking dots to deanonymize you, Intel and AMD refuse to sell CPUs without their management engines (except to special customers), printers want "authorized" ink, and all of DRM is explicitly anti-user. We are already firmly in that era, even if you ignore China.
winternett 5y ago
I read somewhere that the latest iPhone uses either sonar or radar to detect room layouts and many other things now. It's crazy how we're actually paying for the very devices that monitor us and share information back to the companies that sold us the devices... I don't do anything illegal of course, but it's just wild to me that we now pay for our own "wire taps" without any real public transparency about it.

foobarian 5y ago

I've been watching a French show Bureau which has a lot of hacking/spying technobabble, but as far as those things go I think it has some interesting actually plausible things. - Locate a phone using discovery data from nearby Bluetooth devices under adversary's control - Track/access a turned-off phone via a secondary battery-powered GPS module (or similar, like in new iPhones) - Localize nearby phones via IMSI catchers The main implausible line of plot devices there are the ability to access any target device at will, just a matter of time/effort. This alludes to organizations having access to zero-day exploits but that's still very unlikely to work against a random phone.

dannyw 5y ago
Pegasus says hi??? Literally accessing any phone is just a matter of knowing it's phone number and paying NSO Group and its ever-constant cache of 0 click remote 0days.

zxcb1 5y ago

Corporate superintelligences are eating the world

nuerow 5y ago

> Companies are taking their cues from Facebook and now they're all in a race to build back-end data warehouses of information of individuals (...) The current state of affairs can be explained without dragging Facebook or other bogeymen into the picture. The inception of A/B testing, business metrics, and even crash analytics on applications deployed to devices that are always on is prime ground to emit tons of metrics regarding anything the application/device does. Even though I agree that this state of affairs goes against the users' best interests, there's no need to refer to bogeymen to explain why apps phone home.

winternett 5y ago
Common diagnostic info primarily reports on the device's status, there aren't many privacy concerns in that past transgression. What I'm worried about is the practice of device reporting done on individual user behaviors unrelated to device operation, which previously required careful measures to not report in software-based monitoring. Rules exist within the US government to protect Personally Identifiable Information, but somehow now not within private companies like FaceBook? Now that real-time connectivity and information is available, companies have access to data (well beyond what even most governments can collect) that can easily be weaponized against individuals, or even compromised by hackers or less-ethical companies and then also weaponized against individuals or groups in ways no-one has even thought about yet... "Boogeymen" is perhaps an improper name because they don't even know the devastating impacts that this personal data collection trend will lead to into the future... "Incompetent Egoists" and "Ignorant God Complex" are probably better terms to use in describing the individuals involved in implementing this type of reckless societal behavior monitoring.