7 ms·

Do what? Record who came in and out of your house?

by gernb 5y ago

strogonoff 5y ago
Imagine if Google offered a retail solution advertised as “record who came in and out of your house”. They would offer a CCTV for free and run centralized face recognition on everybody visiting. They’d give you a bit of stats, but truly they would aggregate data on where people go and build shadow profiles (supposedly to facilitate ad targeting). And imagine 90% of households were using it.
- judge2020 5y ago
  So this is only a problem if the person thinking of visiting their neighbors' or friends' house has an issue with it. Why can't I install such a system if I want to? Why does it matter that 90% of households use this system? In fact, because 90% of households use this system, doesn't that mean society at large agrees that this is an OK thing to have? We all opt for wearing clothes only because society at large has agreed that wearing clothes is a requirement; there is no law of nature mandating this, and select small groups of people congregate in nudist colonies to escape from this societal requirement. Even on the non-private side, if I don't like clothes, why should I be forced to enter government buildings (for official government business such as court appearances) with them on? Surely society shouldn't be forced to make accomodations for me, just because I have a different opinion on these topics. If 90% of households did in fact use such a system, it would be the new normal because it's a nearly universal collective opinion on the technology. A society almost never caters to those that are the ultra-minority if it inconveniences the 90% or directly challenges the 90%'s own freedoms and choices when it comes to their lives, especially when that's in regards to something as low-impact as what sort of privacy visitors to a residence have while on that property.
  - Teever 5y ago
    > because 90% of households use this system, doesn't that mean society at large agrees that this is an OK thing to have? And if 90% of households have slaves doesn't that mean that society at large agrees that this is an OK thing to have?
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Yes. Slavery was OK in the US for a long while. If things hadn't been done to get this changed in the US, it would still be seen as an OK thing to do, and in reality no higher power or law of nature would stop that, even in $current_year - evidenced by how worldwide modern slavery/forced labor is still going strong[0]. My point is that there is no correct moral compass, no general rule as to what behavior is good or evil and no arbitrator that will correct the wrongs humans are doing in the world. Society is only governed by itself, and thus a 'supermajority' of ideals is what will reign over the superminority in terms of law and general consensus. If society accepts and encourages one company to control an absolute record of human movement and presence, it's not going to be stopped and that majority isn't going to cater to the small portion of society that doesn't agree. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#St...
      - FeepingCreature 5y ago
        Are you asserting that it is your current opinion that slavery was morally OK in the US, because it was morally accepted at the time? (Warning: this is a trap question, do not answer yes, the only socially accepted answer is no)
        drusepth 5y ago
        Not the guy you're responding to, but this trap question seemed like you either misunderstood their comment or are unintentionally putting words in their mouth. Their comment explicitly subscribes to a form of ethical relativism [1], which argues that there is no universal concept of "morally right" or "morally wrong", and that morals are determined solely by the society judging them at that time. [1] >Ethical relativism is the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. For the ethical relativist, there are no universal moral standards -- standards that can be universally applied to all peoples at all times. The only moral standards against which a society's practices can be judged are its own. If ethical relativism is correct, there can be no common framework for resolving moral disputes or for reaching agreement on ethical matters among members of different societies. >https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/ethical-relativism/ https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision... It is not a particularly helpful take in an ethical debate (which this whole privacy thread is) outside of making a populist argument ("if everything thinks X is morally acceptable, then it is; who are you to say it's not?"). That said, I'm not sure I'd want to make the loaded comparison of equating "taking notes of who does what in your house" to slavery. One of these things is very clearly significantly worse than the other.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- somenameforme 5y ago
  That's not even the half of it. It's not only building a record of who came in and out, but what they did, where they went, what or who they "engaged" with in the house, and arbitrarily more granular information. And the person visiting your house, on average, has no clue any of this is happening.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- iptq 5y ago
  Isn't this literally what Ring does?
  - Teever 5y ago
    Yeah and isn't this stalking?
    - themacguffinman 5y ago
      You think installing cameras on your own property is stalking? Putting aside that this is legal nonsense, are you saying that the millions of private retail stores, offices, and houses that install security cameras are actually stalking and the majority of citizens that visit grocery stores are stalking victims? I mean, maybe you do believe that, but it's a little ridiculous to freak out over something that most people do and are used to. At most, it's an extension of the status quo. Edit: I suppose it's not that ridiculous if you think most of the world is evil, but I am genuinely curious if you believe that.
      - strogonoff 5y ago
        Individual businesses aren’t stalking anyone if their CCTVs are watching out for themselves. But as soon as there is a centralized company offering the service and gobbling all the data, and that company acts like Google does with regards to web tracking, then it’d be in some sense no better than stalking (or even worse, stalking at scale). If it only obtains the data to provide you the service of knowing who comes in or out, and deletes the data as soon as it’s not needed anymore, there would be no question; but that’s not where profit is in a double-sided market.
        themacguffinman 5y ago
        Like ADT? Like a lot of security companies that offer monitoring solutions on behalf of clients, especially smaller businesses and individual homeowners? "gobbling all the data" is vaguely scary while being totally meaningless. GTM data is fully managed by the client, Google contractually does not randomly spy on it. Many businesses would argue that they do delete user data after they don't need it anymore, but analytics is useful and therefore necessary for a fairly long time (many platforms have natural retention limits, usually a few years). Google themselves deletes user data on their first party products after 18 months by default (referring to things like Web & App activity and Location history) and users can set it as low as 3 months, approximately the same amount of time as security footage. Edited to correct a number and remove some snark
- eru 5y ago
  Would be a bit creepy sure. But who am I to judge what other people install in their houses? I don't have to go and visit them, if I don't like it.
- inlined 5y ago
  You’re describing the modern experience in a grocery store
bskrobisz 5y ago
And leave a webcam on the door of every single person I'm professionally engaged with, to record their visitors? Use it to understand where each of those persons spends all of their time, to the best of my capability? Learn who has what vices, and sell that information (or a service to employ it) to anyone who would take advantage?
Teever 5y ago
> Do what? All of the things that these companies do to monitor and track as much of the population as they can. What I'm saying is it's funny because it's one of those things that's apparently legal to do in the aggregate but not individually? Imagine if someone started up a business to track Google employees.
- Firmwarrior 5y ago
  Man, that's a great idea Hire a bunch of PIs to follow and publicly report on all the movements and actions of every exec you can manage at Google, Facebook, and smaller/shadier ad companies
  - Teever 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
smt88 5y ago
Bad analogy. It's more like Target, Walmart, and Best Buy recording everything you do in the store (where your eyes go, what you say to your spouse, etc.) and then selling that information to random companies you've never interacted with, including each other. Together, they can create a comprehensive log of everything you do outside (and inside!) your house and secretly sell it. This isn't even an analogy. With Alexa and Google Home, we should expect that it's literally happening.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Why does selling the data matter? If it's fine to collect but not sell it, people would already be fine with Google Ads tracking as Google is solely in possession of that data and will never sell it, lest their competitors gain an edge by out-header-bidding Google (offering higher profit margins to sites) with Google's own user data.
  - smt88 5y ago
    > Why does selling the data matter? It is somewhat galling for your private behavior to be monetized. But you're right that the selling itself is not the core issue. The core issue is that it's being shared. The monetization is an incentive to share, and that's where the problem lies. By contrast, think about your doctor: they can't legally sell your private data. If they share it with anyone, it is for the express purpose of helping you, their patient. No problem there! My doctor shares my data with their lab testing partners and cloud vendor, and it doesn't bother me at all. Now imagine if my doctor could legally sell my data to anyone and make even more money from me. We know with 100% certainty that every hospital would sell that data far and wide. This is what adtech firms are doing, just with (slightly) less sensitive data than my doctor has.
    - runeks 5y ago
      > By contrast, think about your doctor: they can't legally sell your private data. This is not a reasonable comparison. You choose to tell the doctor private information because of patient-doctor confidentiality. The other type of “private information” is collected by observing you in public (e.g. in a Walmart).
culi 5y ago
More like the street in front of your house including people in their cars
RedComet 5y ago
Actual it would be more like a company recording what (physical) mail you read, when you read it, where you were when you read it, how long you read it, where you looked at on the paper, etc. You request data, they send it to you. For example, ad blocking is more akin to paying someone to cut advertisements out of a magazine before you read it.
34679 5y ago
Violate an explicit request for privacy. I would love to leave all of the blinds on the windows in my home open all time, but I live in a neighborhood. The price I pay for privacy is the cost of the blinds and the action of closing them when I want privacy. When those blinds are closed, it is not in any way acceptable for anyone to come along and try to find a way to see around or through them, even if they're trying to sell something. Nobody would be harmed in the above example any more than they would be by having their privacy violated online. Nobody is physically harmed, or had their property stolen. They wouldn't even be inconvenienced in any a way, so long as they are unaware of the intrusion. Now for a personal experience that stuck with me and helped shaped my views on privacy: Many years ago I walked in on my girlfriend in the bathroom, and she asked me to leave. I was going for something in the medicine cabinet and thinking she just didn't want me to see her on the toilet, I replied "I don't mind" and continued toward the cabinet. She exclaimed "But I do!". Of course, she was right and I was wrong, because privacy is about respecting the individual's desire for it.

Do what? Record who came in and out of your house?

by gernb 5y ago

Do what? Record who came in and out of your house?

Imagine if Google offered a retail solution advertised as “record who came in and out of your house”. They would offer a CCTV for free and run centralized face recognition on everybody visiting. They’d give you a bit of stats, but truly they would aggregate data on where people go and build shadow profiles (supposedly to facilitate ad targeting). And imagine 90% of households were using it.

judge2020 5y ago
So this is only a problem if the person thinking of visiting their neighbors' or friends' house has an issue with it. Why can't I install such a system if I want to? Why does it matter that 90% of households use this system? In fact, because 90% of households use this system, doesn't that mean society at large agrees that this is an OK thing to have? We all opt for wearing clothes only because society at large has agreed that wearing clothes is a requirement; there is no law of nature mandating this, and select small groups of people congregate in nudist colonies to escape from this societal requirement. Even on the non-private side, if I don't like clothes, why should I be forced to enter government buildings (for official government business such as court appearances) with them on? Surely society shouldn't be forced to make accomodations for me, just because I have a different opinion on these topics. If 90% of households did in fact use such a system, it would be the new normal because it's a nearly universal collective opinion on the technology. A society almost never caters to those that are the ultra-minority if it inconveniences the 90% or directly challenges the 90%'s own freedoms and choices when it comes to their lives, especially when that's in regards to something as low-impact as what sort of privacy visitors to a residence have while on that property.
- Teever 5y ago
  > because 90% of households use this system, doesn't that mean society at large agrees that this is an OK thing to have? And if 90% of households have slaves doesn't that mean that society at large agrees that this is an OK thing to have?
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Yes. Slavery was OK in the US for a long while. If things hadn't been done to get this changed in the US, it would still be seen as an OK thing to do, and in reality no higher power or law of nature would stop that, even in $current_year - evidenced by how worldwide modern slavery/forced labor is still going strong[0]. My point is that there is no correct moral compass, no general rule as to what behavior is good or evil and no arbitrator that will correct the wrongs humans are doing in the world. Society is only governed by itself, and thus a 'supermajority' of ideals is what will reign over the superminority in terms of law and general consensus. If society accepts and encourages one company to control an absolute record of human movement and presence, it's not going to be stopped and that majority isn't going to cater to the small portion of society that doesn't agree. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#St...
    - FeepingCreature 5y ago
      Are you asserting that it is your current opinion that slavery was morally OK in the US, because it was morally accepted at the time? (Warning: this is a trap question, do not answer yes, the only socially accepted answer is no)
      - drusepth 5y ago
        Not the guy you're responding to, but this trap question seemed like you either misunderstood their comment or are unintentionally putting words in their mouth. Their comment explicitly subscribes to a form of ethical relativism [1], which argues that there is no universal concept of "morally right" or "morally wrong", and that morals are determined solely by the society judging them at that time. [1] >Ethical relativism is the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. For the ethical relativist, there are no universal moral standards -- standards that can be universally applied to all peoples at all times. The only moral standards against which a society's practices can be judged are its own. If ethical relativism is correct, there can be no common framework for resolving moral disputes or for reaching agreement on ethical matters among members of different societies. >https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/ethical-relativism/ https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision... It is not a particularly helpful take in an ethical debate (which this whole privacy thread is) outside of making a populist argument ("if everything thinks X is morally acceptable, then it is; who are you to say it's not?"). That said, I'm not sure I'd want to make the loaded comparison of equating "taking notes of who does what in your house" to slavery. One of these things is very clearly significantly worse than the other.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
somenameforme 5y ago
That's not even the half of it. It's not only building a record of who came in and out, but what they did, where they went, what or who they "engaged" with in the house, and arbitrarily more granular information. And the person visiting your house, on average, has no clue any of this is happening.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
iptq 5y ago
Isn't this literally what Ring does?
- Teever 5y ago
  Yeah and isn't this stalking?
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    You think installing cameras on your own property is stalking? Putting aside that this is legal nonsense, are you saying that the millions of private retail stores, offices, and houses that install security cameras are actually stalking and the majority of citizens that visit grocery stores are stalking victims? I mean, maybe you do believe that, but it's a little ridiculous to freak out over something that most people do and are used to. At most, it's an extension of the status quo. Edit: I suppose it's not that ridiculous if you think most of the world is evil, but I am genuinely curious if you believe that.
    - strogonoff 5y ago
      Individual businesses aren’t stalking anyone if their CCTVs are watching out for themselves. But as soon as there is a centralized company offering the service and gobbling all the data, and that company acts like Google does with regards to web tracking, then it’d be in some sense no better than stalking (or even worse, stalking at scale). If it only obtains the data to provide you the service of knowing who comes in or out, and deletes the data as soon as it’s not needed anymore, there would be no question; but that’s not where profit is in a double-sided market.
      - themacguffinman 5y ago
        Like ADT? Like a lot of security companies that offer monitoring solutions on behalf of clients, especially smaller businesses and individual homeowners? "gobbling all the data" is vaguely scary while being totally meaningless. GTM data is fully managed by the client, Google contractually does not randomly spy on it. Many businesses would argue that they do delete user data after they don't need it anymore, but analytics is useful and therefore necessary for a fairly long time (many platforms have natural retention limits, usually a few years). Google themselves deletes user data on their first party products after 18 months by default (referring to things like Web & App activity and Location history) and users can set it as low as 3 months, approximately the same amount of time as security footage. Edited to correct a number and remove some snark
eru 5y ago
Would be a bit creepy sure. But who am I to judge what other people install in their houses? I don't have to go and visit them, if I don't like it.
inlined 5y ago
You’re describing the modern experience in a grocery store

bskrobisz 5y ago

And leave a webcam on the door of every single person I'm professionally engaged with, to record their visitors? Use it to understand where each of those persons spends all of their time, to the best of my capability? Learn who has what vices, and sell that information (or a service to employ it) to anyone who would take advantage?

Teever 5y ago

> Do what? All of the things that these companies do to monitor and track as much of the population as they can. What I'm saying is it's funny because it's one of those things that's apparently legal to do in the aggregate but not individually? Imagine if someone started up a business to track Google employees.

Firmwarrior 5y ago
Man, that's a great idea Hire a bunch of PIs to follow and publicly report on all the movements and actions of every exec you can manage at Google, Facebook, and smaller/shadier ad companies
- Teever 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

smt88 5y ago

Bad analogy. It's more like Target, Walmart, and Best Buy recording everything you do in the store (where your eyes go, what you say to your spouse, etc.) and then selling that information to random companies you've never interacted with, including each other. Together, they can create a comprehensive log of everything you do outside (and inside!) your house and secretly sell it. This isn't even an analogy. With Alexa and Google Home, we should expect that it's literally happening.

judge2020 5y ago
Why does selling the data matter? If it's fine to collect but not sell it, people would already be fine with Google Ads tracking as Google is solely in possession of that data and will never sell it, lest their competitors gain an edge by out-header-bidding Google (offering higher profit margins to sites) with Google's own user data.
- smt88 5y ago
  > Why does selling the data matter? It is somewhat galling for your private behavior to be monetized. But you're right that the selling itself is not the core issue. The core issue is that it's being shared. The monetization is an incentive to share, and that's where the problem lies. By contrast, think about your doctor: they can't legally sell your private data. If they share it with anyone, it is for the express purpose of helping you, their patient. No problem there! My doctor shares my data with their lab testing partners and cloud vendor, and it doesn't bother me at all. Now imagine if my doctor could legally sell my data to anyone and make even more money from me. We know with 100% certainty that every hospital would sell that data far and wide. This is what adtech firms are doing, just with (slightly) less sensitive data than my doctor has.
  - runeks 5y ago
    > By contrast, think about your doctor: they can't legally sell your private data. This is not a reasonable comparison. You choose to tell the doctor private information because of patient-doctor confidentiality. The other type of “private information” is collected by observing you in public (e.g. in a Walmart).

culi 5y ago

More like the street in front of your house including people in their cars

RedComet 5y ago

Actual it would be more like a company recording what (physical) mail you read, when you read it, where you were when you read it, how long you read it, where you looked at on the paper, etc. You request data, they send it to you. For example, ad blocking is more akin to paying someone to cut advertisements out of a magazine before you read it.

34679 5y ago

Violate an explicit request for privacy. I would love to leave all of the blinds on the windows in my home open all time, but I live in a neighborhood. The price I pay for privacy is the cost of the blinds and the action of closing them when I want privacy. When those blinds are closed, it is not in any way acceptable for anyone to come along and try to find a way to see around or through them, even if they're trying to sell something. Nobody would be harmed in the above example any more than they would be by having their privacy violated online. Nobody is physically harmed, or had their property stolen. They wouldn't even be inconvenienced in any a way, so long as they are unaware of the intrusion. Now for a personal experience that stuck with me and helped shaped my views on privacy: Many years ago I walked in on my girlfriend in the bathroom, and she asked me to leave. I was going for something in the medicine cabinet and thinking she just didn't want me to see her on the toilet, I replied "I don't mind" and continued toward the cabinet. She exclaimed "But I do!". Of course, she was right and I was wrong, because privacy is about respecting the individual's desire for it.