7 ms·

In which Eben Moglen calls out a reporter for having Facebook

135 points by inflatablenerd 15y ago

bigiain 15y ago
"Banks aren’t the problem, he said; the users tempting banks with their Twitter and Facebook postings are the problem. As are reporters who write about privacy issues with social media without first closing their Facebook accounts." You know he's right, don't you?
- vetler 15y ago
  Well I can see how he's right about users tempting banks, but why would reporters who write about this need to close their Facebook accounts?
  - jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago
    Because it would be like an American who complains for the violence of Mexico but buys illegal marijuana and cocaine. He is the cause; but all he does is hoping that others will stop the violence some other way rather than he quitting drugs.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - md224 15y ago
      Or like a reporter writing about global warming while owning an automobile... Wait a second...
    - EGreg 15y ago
      So someone needs to become a vegan in order to write about animal cruelty? Sometimes it's not so clear that things are so black and white. Just because I write about an issue doesn't mean I will first have to get on one side of it.
      - loup-vaillant 15y ago
        However, if you do say that you take sides, take sides. You don't need to be a vegan to write about animal cruelty, but you'd better be one to complain about it. (Assuming for the sake of the argument that eating meat causes animal cruelty.) So, while you don't have to quit Facebook to write about its effects on privacy, you'd better quit if you want to complain about those effects. (EDIT: I retract: other comments point out that acknowledging you contribute to a problem you complain about is sufficient for not being a hypocrite. While it would be better to just stop contributing to that problem, unilaterally deciding that often exposes you to the No Network Effect. So, you can't really be expected to stop first. That first-mover disadvantage is sometimes a deal-breaker. We need some coordination to avoid it. But it is important to acknowledge you're part of the problem. For if you don't, there is no hope.)
    - etfb 15y ago
      That metaphor is wrong in an intriguing and illustrative way. The problem with drugs is that they're illegal, so criminals have a monopoly. If they were legal, that part of the problem would largely disappear. Granted, it would be replaced with other problems, and there are those who believe (I'm not one of them) that the resulting problems would be worse... but the fact remains. How would I recast your metaphor to be more like what Moglen is saying? No idea, since I think he's a crackpot and he's quite wrong, but it was fun thinking about it.
      - andrewcooke 15y ago
        i can't see the logic in your reasoning here. just because legalisation would improve the situation doesn't mean that people who continue to buy drugs illegaly are not also responsible for the problems in mexico. a problem can have multiple causes, and multiple solutions. but that does not mean that you can choose one solution as the "correct" one and discard all the others. the typical american who buys drugs cannot change the law, but they can stop buying drugs and that would reduce the problems. so if they choose not to do so then they have some moral responsibility for the violence in mexico. that is not removed because there are other possible solutions.
        MrScruff 15y ago
        I don't buy that line of argument at all. You're claiming that if you can establish some line of cause and effect then anyone in that chain must take moral responsibility for the outcome. That's like saying an author who writes something that offends Islamists is responsible for any violence perpetrated on them, since they had the choice of not publishing. The moral responsibility for acts of violence lies with those that commit them, or incite others to do so.
        deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
        kstenerud 15y ago
        Criminals will be criminals. They are responsible for their own actions. But if you're contributing to their coffers, you're only encouraging them. You don't even have to frame this in terms of morality. They're doing something you don't like. Do you want to help them or hinder them? Sometimes hindering them involves denying yourself. This is how boycotts work.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      But he's not complaining, just reporting. If I'm fat, is it immoral for me to say that obesity is a problem? Frankly, I find his position ridiculous. He's essentially saying journalists have to be these beacons of virtue above everyone else if they want to report on bad things that are happening.
      - kstenerud 15y ago
        It's fine to say that obesity is a problem, but it's hypocritical to berate Burger King for contributing to obesity when you eat there three nights a week. It's even worse when you excuse it, saying that your circumstances are special somehow. The reporter, similarly, is looking for fuel to blame the banks for their evil practices, when she herself is contributing to the flow of evil information.
        icebraining 15y ago
        But so what if it is hypocritical? Is it any less true? Why should her personal life be in any way relevant? I can understand his point about users being the problem - although that doesn't in any way excuse the banks - but criticizing her specifically is completely ridiculous. It reminds me of how I hear people in my country commenting to each other about how nice is that politician because he rides a scooter instead of a Mercedes, while he and his party continue to sell out the country to big companies. It's an irrelevant, stupid detail that detract from his position and makes him seem like an unreasonable person.
        kstenerud 15y ago
        He's making the point that she just doesn't GET it. He took a confrontational tone specifically to get her to spit out excuses for her continued use of Facebook. His point is not just that users are contributing to the problem, but that users REFUSE to believe they're contributing to the problem. It's the whole "a little bit can't hurt" excuse, which is why he used littering as a metaphor. In the end it doesn't matter what she writes about the evil banks. It's impossible to stop them from using information YOU PUBLISHED against you. If you don't publish it, it can't be used against you. His further rant is against your friends publishing information about you that can be used against you. So yeah, she can write her story about banks denying loans based on photos of your frequent trips to Vegas, but it's not going to help anybody because people will focus on the evil banks, and will still fail to grasp the concept of NOT PUBLISHING PERSONAL INFORMATION.
  - petsos 15y ago
    Did you read the article?
- msh 15y ago
  Well, reporters who write about privacy issues dont have to agree with mister moglens view, so you cant says it like that. But unfortunatly I think he might be right... but well back to facebook for me, what's an socialmedia addict to do other than go find the next fix ;)
- cookiecaper 15y ago
  You can use Facebook in a way that doesn't endanger your personal privacy, it can be primarily a consumption platform for the endangered privacy of all of your associates. :)
  - route66 15y ago
    The people in your network and their habits might tell more about you than you think. http://www.google.nl/search?q=social+network+graph+analysis http://www.google.nl/search?q=social+network+graph+analysis . Not to forget the images tagged with your name ...
  - napoleoncomplex 15y ago
    The article author attempted to weasel himself out with that defence as well, but the nonsense of that argument was one of Moglen's main points. It's not just about you, it's about everyone in your network. To quote it exactly: "You injure other people today also using social media. You’ve informed on them. You’ve created more records about them. You’ve added to the problems not of yourself but of other people. If it were as simple as just you’re only hurting yourself I wouldn’t bother pointing it out to you. See, that’s the difference, okay? The reason that this all works is that even when you know you’re hurting other people, you’re too selfish to stop. And there are hundreds of millions of people like you. That’s why it works."
    - chernevik 15y ago
      As a point of view, fine. As a qualification for reporting / thinking / writing on the issue -- no. Moglen is saying that before Betabeat can report, they must agree with him. Which ignores the possibility, remote as it may be, that Eben Moglen could be wrong about something. And, the implications of the example he sets for others. Respect for freedom of speech is more than insistence on a constitutional norm. It is an attitude of respect for the possibility that you might be wrong even in your strongest beliefs. Such respect is our surest protection against absolutism. Moblen may think his intransigence adds urgency to his message, and it has gotten him a forum this time. But even so he's deteriorating the culture of free speech and thought, and free-riding on the maintenance of that culture by the maturity of others.
- temphn 15y ago
  What you want to know is that somewhere there’s a regulator who might stop the bank. But you don’t want to hear that the regulator we really need to call upon is you, yourself. Eben Moglen, libertarian. Amazing to hear him say something so clean and simple. The only regulation that works is people voting with their wallets.
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    People need to take more responsibility for themselves and stop asking the Government to solve all their problems. They are only inviting trouble down the road as the Government gets bigger, more controlling and has more power over the population. All of that makes it harder to change the status quo, too.
    - freshhawk 15y ago
      You know your solution is garbage when it starts with "the first thing we need to do is change fundamental human behaviour"
- dhugiaskmak 15y ago
  You know he's right, don't you? He's half right. Banks are also the problem.
  - kstenerud 15y ago
    Banks are only a problem because this opportunity is available to them. Of course, that doesn't absolve them of responsibility for their actions, but it wouldn't even be an issue if users weren't actively encouraging and tempting them with such juicy information that would help their bottom line in risk assessment. To him, the bank's position is obvious and unworthy of mention. The lack of PERSONAL responsibility is what leads to these kinds of disasters, and that's what people just don't get. Much like people don't want to feel responsible for the greed leading to and maintaining the crazy tort law system in the USA today.
    - dhugiaskmak 15y ago
      Of course you got robbed, you left your doors unlocked!
      - kstenerud 15y ago
        "Of course you got robbed, you left your doors unlocked!" Yes! Exactly that! Except in the case of Facebook your negligence hurts your neighbors.
gojomo 15y ago
Even if you don't buy his whole argument – and especially that the journalist has a partisan duty to abstain from, rather than research, these systems – it's awesome that Moglen is making this point, and this ecological/privacy-littering analogy.
aptwebapps 15y ago
As an exchange, that was awesome and hilarious. The substance, however, is neither.
nl 15y ago
This article makes me angry, and the groupthink of most the replies I read here supporting Moglen make me angry too. You know what causes a real ecological disaster? Washing Machines. Yes, FUCKING washing machines. They use too much of one of the worlds rarest resources (clean water), contribute to global warming and pollute the waste water with phosphates. On the other hand, they have freed up half the worlds workforce from backbreaking manual labor and contributed to society enough that no less than Hans Rosling calls them the greatest invention of the industrial revolution[1] Facebook allows companies to sell advertising and allows law enforcement to track you. On the other hand, it allows quicker and easier communication than ever before, and contributed to the Arab Spring to the point where the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt are known as "the Facebook revolutions" [2][3] Convenience has costs, but who is Moglen to judge if those costs are worthwhile for everyone? [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_... (watch this video - it's really good) [2] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was-facebook-responsible-for-the-arab-spring-after-all/244314/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was... [3] http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38379/ http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38379/ Edit: To all those claiming this is a strawman - it's not. Moglen failed to point out the benefits of social networking, and I'm using an analogy to show that most things have costs and benefits. Please don't get distracted into an argument about that. I'd love to see people try and explain how Moglen is right about Twitter (which has much lower privacy costs than Facebook).
- Adaptive 15y ago
  I agree that washing machines are great. I've lived in places without them for years at a time. It's doable but hand washing is time consuming and not fun. Phosphates are a separate issue. There is phosphate free detergent. There are low water use machines. It's being solved. Let's look at another example of convenience that isn't being solved very well: my car. My car is incredibly convenient. Often I'd rather drive than take the bus. And you can't beat it for hauling stuff around. Better than my bike, for sure. Cars have freed up the world's pedestrians from footwrecking walking! But there's a lot going on here. Cars, roads, the death of public transport (cf trolly cars in LA http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/historic/redcars/ http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/historic/redcars/ ). America, at least, was sold on the car by businesses that had a vested interest in seeing the car succeed. Cities dismantled public transport systems at the behest of these same powerful lobbies. And today our cities are outgrowths of the personal motor vehicle. (Electric cars don't solve anything here, it's still energy being produced). While I think that you make a point worth considering, I believe that we should error on the side of suspicion when utility, or less nobly, convenience, comes at an initially small cost and is heavily promoted by... whom, exactly? I worked in advertising long enough to look squarely to the data-finance industrial complex (tongue only partially in cheek when using that phrase) whenever personal information is involved. Convenience has costs. Moglen may not have the right to judge but we need noisy people that remind us there is a problem.
md224 15y ago
I'm kind of amazed at some of the completely unsympathetic responses on here and on the original article. There are two distinct issues I see here: 1) whether or not Moglen's tone/attitude was appropriate, and 2) if his arguments were valid. Personally I think he was a bit harsh on her and could have at least expressed his feelings in a more diplomatic manner. She's a journalist calling about a story, not someone on trial. The moralist scolding seemed a bit much. I also think his premise is a bit extreme... Social Media can be used recklessly, but so can many things. Suddenly people are saying that if your friends are on Facebook then you should get new friends... I must admit this sentiment sounds extremely reactionary and way over the top. We seem to be operating under the assumption that all information shared about another human being is potentially dangerous... Really? I'm pretty sure that most of what gets shared on Facebook is fairly innocuous, if not utterly mundane.
- gojomo 15y ago
  He was harsh. But reporters should have thick skins. And his harsh attitude delivered... • for her and her site, a full-length story of the call, garnering inlinks and traffic • for him, a detailed description of his views, totally beyond the original 'quote in a box' form-journalism role they wanted him to play • for us, a discussion thread seeded by an interesting, strong, contrarian opinion Why be diplomatic if that would result in none of the above? I think you're missing his point about privacy, that "everything they share is held by someone who is no friend of theirs… whose goal it is to make a profit selling the ability to control human beings by knowing more about themselves than they know." And, "You injure other people today also using social media. You’ve informed on them. You’ve created more records about them. You’ve added to the problems not of yourself but of other people. If it were as simple as just you’re only hurting yourself I wouldn’t bother pointing it out to you." The collectors would like you to think the data you're sharing is 'innocuous' and 'mundane' but they have algorithms and statistical confidences that say it isn't. On the other hand, I think Moglen is hopelessly standing athwart history yelling 'stop' on this issue. Technology would make these behaviors trivial to monitor even if most people opted out (instead of cheerfully opting in). So I tend more towards the David Brin/'Transparent Society' view, that the only workable adaptation will be transparency/accountability and new social mores, because privacy is on its deathbed.
corin_ 15y ago
Isn't this a little bit like saying "You can't claim to be against governments spying on their own citizens if you ever go outside. By going outside they can trace where you are, and who you visit." I don't want to live in a world where I have to not do things to avoid privacy invasion, I want to live in one which doesn't allow privacy invasion. Obviously it's not a simple issue, you can't just sign up to twitter and tick the "no privacy invasion please" checkbox, but if we're going to aim for something, how about we reach for the stars not the dogshit.
- skore 15y ago
  No. Going outside is an act that happens on common grounds. Using facebook happens on commercial grounds. You can choose not to use facebook and eliminate the problem right there. You cannot choose not to use roads. You are right to say that we need better rules to regulate the second, or to go with Moglen - the people should know better than to even ask for such rules instead of staying away from the problem. But that doesn't mean that the same logic must suddenly apply to civil society, no matter how paranoid (and, at times, rightfully paranoid) you may be about the tracking that happens there.
moocow01 15y ago
Somewhat unrelated but I've always wondered how many passwords you could crack by making a word dictionary attack out of a user's status updates and comments. The assumption being that most users have a narrow vocabulary and would naturally pull from it to choose their passwords. None the less it seems like every time you publish on the net with an association to your identity in any form you do willingly degrade some aspect of your own privacy. Truthfully just from analyzing a couple sentences you probably have a pretty good shot at guessing all kinds of things about the person.
nkoren 15y ago
Moglen is of course correct about the problems of privacy and corporate ownership of social networks -- but then goes on to take an absolutist position which is both strategically indefensible and ethically bankrupt. First, a key concept: there is no such thing as absolute freedom. Freedom can exist at many different levels, some of which are mutually exclusive; sometimes abrogations of lower-order freedoms are required to create higher-order freedoms. The archetypal example of this is the law which arbitrarily restricts you from driving on one side of the road. This is a small loss of freedom, but when applied universally, it creates the far greater freedom to drive for long distances without substantial risk of a head-on collision. Now, with social networks and the like, freedoms are created and freedoms are taken away. The problem which Moglen identifies -- and is absolutely correct to call out -- is that there is absolutely no legitimate reason to abrogate the freedoms that are being abrogated. Where he goes wrong is in denying the reality of the freedoms that are being created: namely the most powerful one-to-many communications platforms in history. The citizens of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya are categorically not less free because they used Facebook to organise their revolutions. Whatever freedoms they lose on account of Facebook, pale in significance to the freedoms Facebook has allowed them to create. Whether this calculation holds true in other societies is a perfectly legitimate subject for debate; where Moglen goes wrong is in denying that it's a debatable subject whatsoever. I had the same problem with Richard Stallman, when I recently attended one of his boilerplate talks. While I greatly respect what he has accomplished and agree with the majority of his opinions, he had absolutely no concept that there could possibly be greater freedoms outside of his narrow domain. It was all too easy to picture him castigating, say, Syrian activists for distributing videos of atrocities using non-free codecs, captured by camera phones with non-free firmware. Stallman's position would seem to be that if you can't document an atrocity with fully free software and hardware, then you shouldn't document it at all. This is where he -- and Moglen -- take a swan dive from the moral high ground into the swamp of ethical bankruptcy in which all true zealots swim. The bottom line is that there are greater freedoms and lessor freedoms. The world has collectively decided that the freedoms created by one-to-many communications networks are greater than the freedoms that are (unnecessarily) being lost in the process. Sometimes this decision is clearly correct (Tunisia, Egypt, etc.); other times it probably isn't. What's certain is that asking people to forego what they (often correctly) perceive as the greater freedom, in order to fix an unnecessary abrogation of the lesser freedom, is not an ethically defensible position to take. Please don't get me wrong: unlike road-direction restrictions, there's no reason why social networks need to be compromising our freedoms the way that they are. I'd much rather see social networks created by open-standard distributed protocols rather than centralised corporate systems, just as I'd much rather see mobile phones with fully free firmware that encode video with free codecs. I think it's absolutely worth trying to create all of those things. But simply ignoring the genuine freedoms that are created despite the faults of these platforms is not ethically legitimate. Ethics aside, it's also bad strategy, and just won't work. If you're obligated to give up your car before writing about global warming, or obligated to become a vegan before writing about animal cruelty, or obligated to take monastic vows before writing about conflict in domestic relationships -- then you'll probably never write about any of these issues. And that won't help anybody, will it?
jwallaceparker 15y ago
>> Me: I think that’s totally relevant and will definitely put it in. (N.B.: In the end, I did not put this in the story for several reasons, not the least of it was the fact that it was late and over word limit.) So what ARE the reasons?!?! I'd like to hear why Adrianne Jeffries didn't include any of Moglen's points in the final article. Does Adrianne Jeffries really think Moglen's ideas are "totally relevant"? The tone of her article suggests otherwise. She introduces him as a "militant" professor, and the title of her post appears to mock the entire situation. The telephone exchange is certainly entertaining, but Moglen's points are relevant and I'm disappointed the author didn't include her reasons for omitting them from her article.
- yobfountain 15y ago
  The author is referring to another article in her N.B. It's linked in the first paragraph: http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/13/as-banks-start-nosing-around-facebook-and-twitter-the-wrong-friends-might-just-sink-your-credit/ http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/13/as-banks-start-nosing-aro...
- pessimizer 15y ago
  Her reasons, I think, are as Moglen suggests. She has a false concern for social networking privacy issues that only exists to the extent to which she will not be inconvenienced in any way. She's not willing to indict herself in an article, because her chosen journalistic posture is to present real debates as interesting abstractions rather than as actual moral questions that should have implications on your daily behavior. You really couldn't be both against apartheid and play Sun City, no matter how much you said you sympathized.
bravura 15y ago
Dr. Moglen: Well you called me, you know what the problem is. People lost their homes. People lose their money. People lose their freedom. (??? -ed.) Could someone elaborate upon these? I am not aware of these incidents. (In particular, the first two.)
- spacemanaki 15y ago
  "People lost their homes." makes me think he's talking about he housing market collapse, which was partly caused by unscrupulous banks lending to people they shouldn't have. The topic was banks digging up info on Facebook about borrowers... it's not a parallel but it certainly could be discussed in the same breath. I agree it's a bit obtuse.
- joezydeco 15y ago
  There have to be hundreds of social media-related incidents that came up in the middle east during the Arab Spring uprisings. This one came up first on a search: "Man gets three years in prison for insulting Islam on Facebook" http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/10/arab-spring-in-egypt-man-gets-three-years-in-prison-for-insulting-islam-on-facebook.html http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/10/arab-spring-in-egypt-man-g...
  - jonhendry 15y ago
    And the same result would likely have occurred had he said the same thing on a street corner, or in a pamphlet he handed out at a bus station. The problem here isn't Facebook, it's the government that he lives under. But Facebook did give him a much larger audience than he might otherwise have had.
anon1385 15y ago
Changing Threats To Privacy From Tia To Google (Blackhat 2010) by Moxie Marlinspike http://www.securitytube.net/video/1084 http://www.securitytube.net/video/1084 How many people here would be excited about a law that required everyone to carry a government mandated tracking device with them at all times? Probably very few people right, no-one's really excited about that. How many people here have a cell phone? Right, probably everybody in this room has a mobile phone. And so what is the difference really? A mobile phone is a tracking device that reports its position over an insecure protocol to a few telecommunications companies that are required by law to reveal that information to eavesdroppers and governments worldwide. So what's the difference? Choice. This is the difference. You choose to carry a cell phone, whereas you would be forced to carry a tracking device. Well I have a mobile phone. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have a mobile phone, why would I want one: it's a mobile tracking device, it communicates over an insecure protocol, it's potentially a mobile bug. And yet I have one. So did I choose to have a mobile phone? Maybe. I think if you look at the way that people tend to organise in groups and communities, there are often informal communications networks that bind them together, that allow them to communicate, make plans, coordinate activities. If you introduce something like the GSM cellular network to this group, and if I start using it, I am subject to something that is very well known called the No Network Effect. If I am the only one with a cell phone it's really not worth very much. The value of the network is in the number of people that are connected to it and that if I'm the only one I can't really communicate with anyone. However if I somehow manage to get everyone to start using my communications network it becomes very effective and very valuable. But there is an interesting side effect, which is that the old informal mechanisms people use to communicate and to collaborate disappear, that they are destroyed by the introduction of technology. The technology actually changes the social fabric of how people communicate and coordinate. Mobile phones, there are many obvious examples. People used to make plans, they would say: "I'll meet you on this street corner at this time on this day and, you know, we'll do something" and now people say "I'll call you when I'm getting off work" or "I'll text you" and if you don't have a mobile phone you can't really participate in this type of organisation and you begin to find yourself kind of alone. Because if I now make a choice not to be a part of this cellular network, there is sort of an interesting thing where once again I am subject to the no network effect. The network that used to exist, the informal communications channels, has been destroyed. So yes, I made a choice to have a mobile phone, but what kind of choice did I make? I think this is sort of an interesting phenomenon. What happens is a choice is introduced; it starts as a very simple choice: the choice of whether or not to have a mobile phone, a simple piece of technology. But slowly things happen to expand the scope of that choice until eventually it's so big as to encompass not just whether you have a mobile phone or not but whether you want to be a part of society. In some ways the choice to have a mobile phone today has become not necessarily just whether you have a piece of consumer electronics in your pocket but whether or not you are even a part of society, and that's a much bigger choice. Maybe not one that we should have to make, or at least maybe one that isn't really a choice at all.
ColdAsIce 15y ago
Awesome. I just cant describe how awesome Moglen is. A "journalist" wants a story, a complete article, so she doesnt have to think - get this she says " I was hoping you might be ableto help me think about this particular" - she wants him to think for her! She could as well have told him to please write the article for her in full, but she will take the credit and money. Then he still serves her an idea and a very fruitful thesis which she could write several articles about if she would pull her finger out of her ass for once.
Tichy 15y ago
I have to side with Moglen here. First the journalist decides to call somebody he describes as "a militant privacy advocate" (emphasis mine). Then he says things like "It just doesn’t seem like the consequences are that bad." What did he ever expect? I think Moglen is right in his expectations that any article resulting from that will be bullshit. And really: "N.B.: In the end, I did not put this in the story for several reasons, not the least of it was the fact that it was late and over word limit". Really, the word limit is his excuse? Sorry, but I think the journalist is the jerk here.
16s 15y ago
How comparable are sites like HN to FaceBook and Twitter? I'm genuinely curious what others, here, think about that. I don't use the mainstream social sites, but I do use and like HN. Would professor Moglen think HN users were part of the problem too?
- spacemanaki 15y ago
  Well there are no ads being served on HN, so while it's possible that pg and YC are collecting tons of interesting data on people from analyzing their comments and votes, I think it's easier to imagine that they are not, since there's no clear motive.
rdssassin 15y ago
When privacy advocates are as honest as Moglen, they recognize that the biggest problem facing them is not governments or Facebook but those damn, stupid people who keep letting their privacy be invaded. Sure, people will say they want privacy, when you ask them using that loaded word, but time and again when faced with the choice between revealing information and getting some small thing of value, they reveal the information. But underneath the Moglen viewpoint is a huge disconnect: If privacy is about individuals exercising power over one's own information, and the vast majority of people consistently decline to exercise that power, then what the hell are privacy advocates advocating for?
spinchange 15y ago
It's interesting to me that the impetus for this post is seemingly motivated by the reporter's reaction to Mr. Moglen's tone over the substance of what he said. I know it's "just" betabeat, a blog, etc, but imagine if Leslie Stahl or even Katie Couric made the emphasis of a story how they were "legit yelled at" by an expert source who gave some thought provoking ideas on a silver platter that could have been developed into much more.
masterponomo 15y ago
Mr. Moglen: Thanks for the warm up. I'm having lunch with Stallman in un poco minutos. Bye! Reporter: Like, bye?
billybob 15y ago
Best quote: "The problem is caused by people who would like a little help spying on their friends. And in a genteel way, that’s what the social media offers. They get to surveil other people. In return for a little bit of the product, they assist the growth of these immense commercial spying operations." This has become the crux of my objection to social networks: they exist to gather data on you. Whatever benefit you get from it, their purpose of existence is data mining. As the Pinboard Blog puts it, that's ANTI-social. "We're used to talking about how disturbing this in the context of privacy, but it's worth pointing out how weirdly unsocial it is, too. How are you supposed to feel at home when you know a place is full of one-way mirrors?" http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/ http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/
- bproper 15y ago
  Too bad we can't exchange that for a system where social networks let you own the data and charge a monthly subscription fee.
  - BHSPitMonkey 15y ago
    Diaspora lets you own the data, and it's free. If you wanted to run your own node on a dedicated server rented at a hosting company, you could do that too.
pgroves 15y ago
Facebook now acknowledges what we said for a long time and they didnt acknowledge, that every single photograph uploaded to Facebook is put through facial recognition software they call PhotoDNA which is used to find people for whom any law enforcement agency in the world is looking. How true is this?
- pbburrell 15y ago
  I don't think it's very true at all. From what I've read, PhotoDNA is used to detect child pornography by comparing a photograph's "hash" against a database of hashes for known pornographic images. There's no facial recognition involved. More here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2564235 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2564235
Confusion 15y ago
Did anyone else have the experience of reading this, starting out thinking "Moglen has gone over the edge" and ending in a defeatist "it's actually as bad as he says and there's no stopping it"?
jonhendry 15y ago
Eh. If it's not Facebook, it'll be some dork from Anonymous releasing a bunch of data, including yours, that they hacked from ThinkGeek, because they're offended by the plush bonsai kitten.
y4m4 15y ago
Moglen's argument fits in an idealist world, but having governing laws for Social engineering sites will help in regulating centralized power of corporations. This can be handled outside software too. But somewhat aggressive political behavior of Moglen worries me.

135 points by inflatablenerd 15y ago

"Banks aren’t the problem, he said; the users tempting banks with their Twitter and Facebook postings are the problem. As are reporters who write about privacy issues with social media without first closing their Facebook accounts." You know he's right, don't you?

vetler 15y ago
Well I can see how he's right about users tempting banks, but why would reporters who write about this need to close their Facebook accounts?
- jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago
  Because it would be like an American who complains for the violence of Mexico but buys illegal marijuana and cocaine. He is the cause; but all he does is hoping that others will stop the violence some other way rather than he quitting drugs.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - md224 15y ago
    Or like a reporter writing about global warming while owning an automobile... Wait a second...
  - EGreg 15y ago
    So someone needs to become a vegan in order to write about animal cruelty? Sometimes it's not so clear that things are so black and white. Just because I write about an issue doesn't mean I will first have to get on one side of it.
    - loup-vaillant 15y ago
      However, if you do say that you take sides, take sides. You don't need to be a vegan to write about animal cruelty, but you'd better be one to complain about it. (Assuming for the sake of the argument that eating meat causes animal cruelty.) So, while you don't have to quit Facebook to write about its effects on privacy, you'd better quit if you want to complain about those effects. (EDIT: I retract: other comments point out that acknowledging you contribute to a problem you complain about is sufficient for not being a hypocrite. While it would be better to just stop contributing to that problem, unilaterally deciding that often exposes you to the No Network Effect. So, you can't really be expected to stop first. That first-mover disadvantage is sometimes a deal-breaker. We need some coordination to avoid it. But it is important to acknowledge you're part of the problem. For if you don't, there is no hope.)
  - etfb 15y ago
    That metaphor is wrong in an intriguing and illustrative way. The problem with drugs is that they're illegal, so criminals have a monopoly. If they were legal, that part of the problem would largely disappear. Granted, it would be replaced with other problems, and there are those who believe (I'm not one of them) that the resulting problems would be worse... but the fact remains. How would I recast your metaphor to be more like what Moglen is saying? No idea, since I think he's a crackpot and he's quite wrong, but it was fun thinking about it.
    - andrewcooke 15y ago
      i can't see the logic in your reasoning here. just because legalisation would improve the situation doesn't mean that people who continue to buy drugs illegaly are not also responsible for the problems in mexico. a problem can have multiple causes, and multiple solutions. but that does not mean that you can choose one solution as the "correct" one and discard all the others. the typical american who buys drugs cannot change the law, but they can stop buying drugs and that would reduce the problems. so if they choose not to do so then they have some moral responsibility for the violence in mexico. that is not removed because there are other possible solutions.
      - MrScruff 15y ago
        I don't buy that line of argument at all. You're claiming that if you can establish some line of cause and effect then anyone in that chain must take moral responsibility for the outcome. That's like saying an author who writes something that offends Islamists is responsible for any violence perpetrated on them, since they had the choice of not publishing. The moral responsibility for acts of violence lies with those that commit them, or incite others to do so.
        deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
        kstenerud 15y ago
        Criminals will be criminals. They are responsible for their own actions. But if you're contributing to their coffers, you're only encouraging them. You don't even have to frame this in terms of morality. They're doing something you don't like. Do you want to help them or hinder them? Sometimes hindering them involves denying yourself. This is how boycotts work.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    But he's not complaining, just reporting. If I'm fat, is it immoral for me to say that obesity is a problem? Frankly, I find his position ridiculous. He's essentially saying journalists have to be these beacons of virtue above everyone else if they want to report on bad things that are happening.
    - kstenerud 15y ago
      It's fine to say that obesity is a problem, but it's hypocritical to berate Burger King for contributing to obesity when you eat there three nights a week. It's even worse when you excuse it, saying that your circumstances are special somehow. The reporter, similarly, is looking for fuel to blame the banks for their evil practices, when she herself is contributing to the flow of evil information.
      - icebraining 15y ago
        But so what if it is hypocritical? Is it any less true? Why should her personal life be in any way relevant? I can understand his point about users being the problem - although that doesn't in any way excuse the banks - but criticizing her specifically is completely ridiculous. It reminds me of how I hear people in my country commenting to each other about how nice is that politician because he rides a scooter instead of a Mercedes, while he and his party continue to sell out the country to big companies. It's an irrelevant, stupid detail that detract from his position and makes him seem like an unreasonable person.
        kstenerud 15y ago
        He's making the point that she just doesn't GET it. He took a confrontational tone specifically to get her to spit out excuses for her continued use of Facebook. His point is not just that users are contributing to the problem, but that users REFUSE to believe they're contributing to the problem. It's the whole "a little bit can't hurt" excuse, which is why he used littering as a metaphor. In the end it doesn't matter what she writes about the evil banks. It's impossible to stop them from using information YOU PUBLISHED against you. If you don't publish it, it can't be used against you. His further rant is against your friends publishing information about you that can be used against you. So yeah, she can write her story about banks denying loans based on photos of your frequent trips to Vegas, but it's not going to help anybody because people will focus on the evil banks, and will still fail to grasp the concept of NOT PUBLISHING PERSONAL INFORMATION.
- petsos 15y ago
  Did you read the article?
msh 15y ago
Well, reporters who write about privacy issues dont have to agree with mister moglens view, so you cant says it like that. But unfortunatly I think he might be right... but well back to facebook for me, what's an socialmedia addict to do other than go find the next fix ;)
cookiecaper 15y ago
You can use Facebook in a way that doesn't endanger your personal privacy, it can be primarily a consumption platform for the endangered privacy of all of your associates. :)
- route66 15y ago
  The people in your network and their habits might tell more about you than you think. http://www.google.nl/search?q=social+network+graph+analysis http://www.google.nl/search?q=social+network+graph+analysis . Not to forget the images tagged with your name ...
- napoleoncomplex 15y ago
  The article author attempted to weasel himself out with that defence as well, but the nonsense of that argument was one of Moglen's main points. It's not just about you, it's about everyone in your network. To quote it exactly: "You injure other people today also using social media. You’ve informed on them. You’ve created more records about them. You’ve added to the problems not of yourself but of other people. If it were as simple as just you’re only hurting yourself I wouldn’t bother pointing it out to you. See, that’s the difference, okay? The reason that this all works is that even when you know you’re hurting other people, you’re too selfish to stop. And there are hundreds of millions of people like you. That’s why it works."
  - chernevik 15y ago
    As a point of view, fine. As a qualification for reporting / thinking / writing on the issue -- no. Moglen is saying that before Betabeat can report, they must agree with him. Which ignores the possibility, remote as it may be, that Eben Moglen could be wrong about something. And, the implications of the example he sets for others. Respect for freedom of speech is more than insistence on a constitutional norm. It is an attitude of respect for the possibility that you might be wrong even in your strongest beliefs. Such respect is our surest protection against absolutism. Moblen may think his intransigence adds urgency to his message, and it has gotten him a forum this time. But even so he's deteriorating the culture of free speech and thought, and free-riding on the maintenance of that culture by the maturity of others.
temphn 15y ago
What you want to know is that somewhere there’s a regulator who might stop the bank. But you don’t want to hear that the regulator we really need to call upon is you, yourself. Eben Moglen, libertarian. Amazing to hear him say something so clean and simple. The only regulation that works is people voting with their wallets.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  People need to take more responsibility for themselves and stop asking the Government to solve all their problems. They are only inviting trouble down the road as the Government gets bigger, more controlling and has more power over the population. All of that makes it harder to change the status quo, too.
  - freshhawk 15y ago
    You know your solution is garbage when it starts with "the first thing we need to do is change fundamental human behaviour"
dhugiaskmak 15y ago
You know he's right, don't you? He's half right. Banks are also the problem.
- kstenerud 15y ago
  Banks are only a problem because this opportunity is available to them. Of course, that doesn't absolve them of responsibility for their actions, but it wouldn't even be an issue if users weren't actively encouraging and tempting them with such juicy information that would help their bottom line in risk assessment. To him, the bank's position is obvious and unworthy of mention. The lack of PERSONAL responsibility is what leads to these kinds of disasters, and that's what people just don't get. Much like people don't want to feel responsible for the greed leading to and maintaining the crazy tort law system in the USA today.
  - dhugiaskmak 15y ago
    Of course you got robbed, you left your doors unlocked!
    - kstenerud 15y ago
      "Of course you got robbed, you left your doors unlocked!" Yes! Exactly that! Except in the case of Facebook your negligence hurts your neighbors.

gojomo 15y ago

Even if you don't buy his whole argument – and especially that the journalist has a partisan duty to abstain from, rather than research, these systems – it's awesome that Moglen is making this point, and this ecological/privacy-littering analogy.

aptwebapps 15y ago

As an exchange, that was awesome and hilarious. The substance, however, is neither.

nl 15y ago

This article makes me angry, and the groupthink of most the replies I read here supporting Moglen make me angry too. You know what causes a real ecological disaster? Washing Machines. Yes, FUCKING washing machines. They use too much of one of the worlds rarest resources (clean water), contribute to global warming and pollute the waste water with phosphates. On the other hand, they have freed up half the worlds workforce from backbreaking manual labor and contributed to society enough that no less than Hans Rosling calls them the greatest invention of the industrial revolution[1] Facebook allows companies to sell advertising and allows law enforcement to track you. On the other hand, it allows quicker and easier communication than ever before, and contributed to the Arab Spring to the point where the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt are known as "the Facebook revolutions" [2][3] Convenience has costs, but who is Moglen to judge if those costs are worthwhile for everyone? [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_... (watch this video - it's really good) [2] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was-facebook-responsible-for-the-arab-spring-after-all/244314/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was... [3] http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38379/ http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38379/ Edit: To all those claiming this is a strawman - it's not. Moglen failed to point out the benefits of social networking, and I'm using an analogy to show that most things have costs and benefits. Please don't get distracted into an argument about that. I'd love to see people try and explain how Moglen is right about Twitter (which has much lower privacy costs than Facebook).

Adaptive 15y ago
I agree that washing machines are great. I've lived in places without them for years at a time. It's doable but hand washing is time consuming and not fun. Phosphates are a separate issue. There is phosphate free detergent. There are low water use machines. It's being solved. Let's look at another example of convenience that isn't being solved very well: my car. My car is incredibly convenient. Often I'd rather drive than take the bus. And you can't beat it for hauling stuff around. Better than my bike, for sure. Cars have freed up the world's pedestrians from footwrecking walking! But there's a lot going on here. Cars, roads, the death of public transport (cf trolly cars in LA http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/historic/redcars/ http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/historic/redcars/ ). America, at least, was sold on the car by businesses that had a vested interest in seeing the car succeed. Cities dismantled public transport systems at the behest of these same powerful lobbies. And today our cities are outgrowths of the personal motor vehicle. (Electric cars don't solve anything here, it's still energy being produced). While I think that you make a point worth considering, I believe that we should error on the side of suspicion when utility, or less nobly, convenience, comes at an initially small cost and is heavily promoted by... whom, exactly? I worked in advertising long enough to look squarely to the data-finance industrial complex (tongue only partially in cheek when using that phrase) whenever personal information is involved. Convenience has costs. Moglen may not have the right to judge but we need noisy people that remind us there is a problem.

md224 15y ago

I'm kind of amazed at some of the completely unsympathetic responses on here and on the original article. There are two distinct issues I see here: 1) whether or not Moglen's tone/attitude was appropriate, and 2) if his arguments were valid. Personally I think he was a bit harsh on her and could have at least expressed his feelings in a more diplomatic manner. She's a journalist calling about a story, not someone on trial. The moralist scolding seemed a bit much. I also think his premise is a bit extreme... Social Media can be used recklessly, but so can many things. Suddenly people are saying that if your friends are on Facebook then you should get new friends... I must admit this sentiment sounds extremely reactionary and way over the top. We seem to be operating under the assumption that all information shared about another human being is potentially dangerous... Really? I'm pretty sure that most of what gets shared on Facebook is fairly innocuous, if not utterly mundane.

gojomo 15y ago
He was harsh. But reporters should have thick skins. And his harsh attitude delivered... • for her and her site, a full-length story of the call, garnering inlinks and traffic • for him, a detailed description of his views, totally beyond the original 'quote in a box' form-journalism role they wanted him to play • for us, a discussion thread seeded by an interesting, strong, contrarian opinion Why be diplomatic if that would result in none of the above? I think you're missing his point about privacy, that "everything they share is held by someone who is no friend of theirs… whose goal it is to make a profit selling the ability to control human beings by knowing more about themselves than they know." And, "You injure other people today also using social media. You’ve informed on them. You’ve created more records about them. You’ve added to the problems not of yourself but of other people. If it were as simple as just you’re only hurting yourself I wouldn’t bother pointing it out to you." The collectors would like you to think the data you're sharing is 'innocuous' and 'mundane' but they have algorithms and statistical confidences that say it isn't. On the other hand, I think Moglen is hopelessly standing athwart history yelling 'stop' on this issue. Technology would make these behaviors trivial to monitor even if most people opted out (instead of cheerfully opting in). So I tend more towards the David Brin/'Transparent Society' view, that the only workable adaptation will be transparency/accountability and new social mores, because privacy is on its deathbed.

corin_ 15y ago

Isn't this a little bit like saying "You can't claim to be against governments spying on their own citizens if you ever go outside. By going outside they can trace where you are, and who you visit." I don't want to live in a world where I have to not do things to avoid privacy invasion, I want to live in one which doesn't allow privacy invasion. Obviously it's not a simple issue, you can't just sign up to twitter and tick the "no privacy invasion please" checkbox, but if we're going to aim for something, how about we reach for the stars not the dogshit.

skore 15y ago
No. Going outside is an act that happens on common grounds. Using facebook happens on commercial grounds. You can choose not to use facebook and eliminate the problem right there. You cannot choose not to use roads. You are right to say that we need better rules to regulate the second, or to go with Moglen - the people should know better than to even ask for such rules instead of staying away from the problem. But that doesn't mean that the same logic must suddenly apply to civil society, no matter how paranoid (and, at times, rightfully paranoid) you may be about the tracking that happens there.

moocow01 15y ago

Somewhat unrelated but I've always wondered how many passwords you could crack by making a word dictionary attack out of a user's status updates and comments. The assumption being that most users have a narrow vocabulary and would naturally pull from it to choose their passwords. None the less it seems like every time you publish on the net with an association to your identity in any form you do willingly degrade some aspect of your own privacy. Truthfully just from analyzing a couple sentences you probably have a pretty good shot at guessing all kinds of things about the person.

nkoren 15y ago

Moglen is of course correct about the problems of privacy and corporate ownership of social networks -- but then goes on to take an absolutist position which is both strategically indefensible and ethically bankrupt. First, a key concept: there is no such thing as absolute freedom. Freedom can exist at many different levels, some of which are mutually exclusive; sometimes abrogations of lower-order freedoms are required to create higher-order freedoms. The archetypal example of this is the law which arbitrarily restricts you from driving on one side of the road. This is a small loss of freedom, but when applied universally, it creates the far greater freedom to drive for long distances without substantial risk of a head-on collision. Now, with social networks and the like, freedoms are created and freedoms are taken away. The problem which Moglen identifies -- and is absolutely correct to call out -- is that there is absolutely no legitimate reason to abrogate the freedoms that are being abrogated. Where he goes wrong is in denying the reality of the freedoms that are being created: namely the most powerful one-to-many communications platforms in history. The citizens of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya are categorically not less free because they used Facebook to organise their revolutions. Whatever freedoms they lose on account of Facebook, pale in significance to the freedoms Facebook has allowed them to create. Whether this calculation holds true in other societies is a perfectly legitimate subject for debate; where Moglen goes wrong is in denying that it's a debatable subject whatsoever. I had the same problem with Richard Stallman, when I recently attended one of his boilerplate talks. While I greatly respect what he has accomplished and agree with the majority of his opinions, he had absolutely no concept that there could possibly be greater freedoms outside of his narrow domain. It was all too easy to picture him castigating, say, Syrian activists for distributing videos of atrocities using non-free codecs, captured by camera phones with non-free firmware. Stallman's position would seem to be that if you can't document an atrocity with fully free software and hardware, then you shouldn't document it at all. This is where he -- and Moglen -- take a swan dive from the moral high ground into the swamp of ethical bankruptcy in which all true zealots swim. The bottom line is that there are greater freedoms and lessor freedoms. The world has collectively decided that the freedoms created by one-to-many communications networks are greater than the freedoms that are (unnecessarily) being lost in the process. Sometimes this decision is clearly correct (Tunisia, Egypt, etc.); other times it probably isn't. What's certain is that asking people to forego what they (often correctly) perceive as the greater freedom, in order to fix an unnecessary abrogation of the lesser freedom, is not an ethically defensible position to take. Please don't get me wrong: unlike road-direction restrictions, there's no reason why social networks need to be compromising our freedoms the way that they are. I'd much rather see social networks created by open-standard distributed protocols rather than centralised corporate systems, just as I'd much rather see mobile phones with fully free firmware that encode video with free codecs. I think it's absolutely worth trying to create all of those things. But simply ignoring the genuine freedoms that are created despite the faults of these platforms is not ethically legitimate. Ethics aside, it's also bad strategy, and just won't work. If you're obligated to give up your car before writing about global warming, or obligated to become a vegan before writing about animal cruelty, or obligated to take monastic vows before writing about conflict in domestic relationships -- then you'll probably never write about any of these issues. And that won't help anybody, will it?

jwallaceparker 15y ago

>> Me: I think that’s totally relevant and will definitely put it in. (N.B.: In the end, I did not put this in the story for several reasons, not the least of it was the fact that it was late and over word limit.) So what ARE the reasons?!?! I'd like to hear why Adrianne Jeffries didn't include any of Moglen's points in the final article. Does Adrianne Jeffries really think Moglen's ideas are "totally relevant"? The tone of her article suggests otherwise. She introduces him as a "militant" professor, and the title of her post appears to mock the entire situation. The telephone exchange is certainly entertaining, but Moglen's points are relevant and I'm disappointed the author didn't include her reasons for omitting them from her article.

yobfountain 15y ago
The author is referring to another article in her N.B. It's linked in the first paragraph: http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/13/as-banks-start-nosing-around-facebook-and-twitter-the-wrong-friends-might-just-sink-your-credit/ http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/13/as-banks-start-nosing-aro...
pessimizer 15y ago
Her reasons, I think, are as Moglen suggests. She has a false concern for social networking privacy issues that only exists to the extent to which she will not be inconvenienced in any way. She's not willing to indict herself in an article, because her chosen journalistic posture is to present real debates as interesting abstractions rather than as actual moral questions that should have implications on your daily behavior. You really couldn't be both against apartheid and play Sun City, no matter how much you said you sympathized.

bravura 15y ago

Dr. Moglen: Well you called me, you know what the problem is. People lost their homes. People lose their money. People lose their freedom. (??? -ed.) Could someone elaborate upon these? I am not aware of these incidents. (In particular, the first two.)

spacemanaki 15y ago
"People lost their homes." makes me think he's talking about he housing market collapse, which was partly caused by unscrupulous banks lending to people they shouldn't have. The topic was banks digging up info on Facebook about borrowers... it's not a parallel but it certainly could be discussed in the same breath. I agree it's a bit obtuse.
joezydeco 15y ago
There have to be hundreds of social media-related incidents that came up in the middle east during the Arab Spring uprisings. This one came up first on a search: "Man gets three years in prison for insulting Islam on Facebook" http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/10/arab-spring-in-egypt-man-gets-three-years-in-prison-for-insulting-islam-on-facebook.html http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/10/arab-spring-in-egypt-man-g...
- jonhendry 15y ago
  And the same result would likely have occurred had he said the same thing on a street corner, or in a pamphlet he handed out at a bus station. The problem here isn't Facebook, it's the government that he lives under. But Facebook did give him a much larger audience than he might otherwise have had.

anon1385 15y ago

Changing Threats To Privacy From Tia To Google (Blackhat 2010) by Moxie Marlinspike http://www.securitytube.net/video/1084 http://www.securitytube.net/video/1084 How many people here would be excited about a law that required everyone to carry a government mandated tracking device with them at all times? Probably very few people right, no-one's really excited about that. How many people here have a cell phone? Right, probably everybody in this room has a mobile phone. And so what is the difference really? A mobile phone is a tracking device that reports its position over an insecure protocol to a few telecommunications companies that are required by law to reveal that information to eavesdroppers and governments worldwide. So what's the difference? Choice. This is the difference. You choose to carry a cell phone, whereas you would be forced to carry a tracking device. Well I have a mobile phone. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have a mobile phone, why would I want one: it's a mobile tracking device, it communicates over an insecure protocol, it's potentially a mobile bug. And yet I have one. So did I choose to have a mobile phone? Maybe. I think if you look at the way that people tend to organise in groups and communities, there are often informal communications networks that bind them together, that allow them to communicate, make plans, coordinate activities. If you introduce something like the GSM cellular network to this group, and if I start using it, I am subject to something that is very well known called the No Network Effect. If I am the only one with a cell phone it's really not worth very much. The value of the network is in the number of people that are connected to it and that if I'm the only one I can't really communicate with anyone. However if I somehow manage to get everyone to start using my communications network it becomes very effective and very valuable. But there is an interesting side effect, which is that the old informal mechanisms people use to communicate and to collaborate disappear, that they are destroyed by the introduction of technology. The technology actually changes the social fabric of how people communicate and coordinate. Mobile phones, there are many obvious examples. People used to make plans, they would say: "I'll meet you on this street corner at this time on this day and, you know, we'll do something" and now people say "I'll call you when I'm getting off work" or "I'll text you" and if you don't have a mobile phone you can't really participate in this type of organisation and you begin to find yourself kind of alone. Because if I now make a choice not to be a part of this cellular network, there is sort of an interesting thing where once again I am subject to the no network effect. The network that used to exist, the informal communications channels, has been destroyed. So yes, I made a choice to have a mobile phone, but what kind of choice did I make? I think this is sort of an interesting phenomenon. What happens is a choice is introduced; it starts as a very simple choice: the choice of whether or not to have a mobile phone, a simple piece of technology. But slowly things happen to expand the scope of that choice until eventually it's so big as to encompass not just whether you have a mobile phone or not but whether you want to be a part of society. In some ways the choice to have a mobile phone today has become not necessarily just whether you have a piece of consumer electronics in your pocket but whether or not you are even a part of society, and that's a much bigger choice. Maybe not one that we should have to make, or at least maybe one that isn't really a choice at all.

ColdAsIce 15y ago

Awesome. I just cant describe how awesome Moglen is. A "journalist" wants a story, a complete article, so she doesnt have to think - get this she says " I was hoping you might be ableto help me think about this particular" - she wants him to think for her! She could as well have told him to please write the article for her in full, but she will take the credit and money. Then he still serves her an idea and a very fruitful thesis which she could write several articles about if she would pull her finger out of her ass for once.

Tichy 15y ago

I have to side with Moglen here. First the journalist decides to call somebody he describes as "a militant privacy advocate" (emphasis mine). Then he says things like "It just doesn’t seem like the consequences are that bad." What did he ever expect? I think Moglen is right in his expectations that any article resulting from that will be bullshit. And really: "N.B.: In the end, I did not put this in the story for several reasons, not the least of it was the fact that it was late and over word limit". Really, the word limit is his excuse? Sorry, but I think the journalist is the jerk here.

16s 15y ago

How comparable are sites like HN to FaceBook and Twitter? I'm genuinely curious what others, here, think about that. I don't use the mainstream social sites, but I do use and like HN. Would professor Moglen think HN users were part of the problem too?

spacemanaki 15y ago
Well there are no ads being served on HN, so while it's possible that pg and YC are collecting tons of interesting data on people from analyzing their comments and votes, I think it's easier to imagine that they are not, since there's no clear motive.

rdssassin 15y ago

When privacy advocates are as honest as Moglen, they recognize that the biggest problem facing them is not governments or Facebook but those damn, stupid people who keep letting their privacy be invaded. Sure, people will say they want privacy, when you ask them using that loaded word, but time and again when faced with the choice between revealing information and getting some small thing of value, they reveal the information. But underneath the Moglen viewpoint is a huge disconnect: If privacy is about individuals exercising power over one's own information, and the vast majority of people consistently decline to exercise that power, then what the hell are privacy advocates advocating for?

spinchange 15y ago

It's interesting to me that the impetus for this post is seemingly motivated by the reporter's reaction to Mr. Moglen's tone over the substance of what he said. I know it's "just" betabeat, a blog, etc, but imagine if Leslie Stahl or even Katie Couric made the emphasis of a story how they were "legit yelled at" by an expert source who gave some thought provoking ideas on a silver platter that could have been developed into much more.

masterponomo 15y ago

Mr. Moglen: Thanks for the warm up. I'm having lunch with Stallman in un poco minutos. Bye! Reporter: Like, bye?

billybob 15y ago

Best quote: "The problem is caused by people who would like a little help spying on their friends. And in a genteel way, that’s what the social media offers. They get to surveil other people. In return for a little bit of the product, they assist the growth of these immense commercial spying operations." This has become the crux of my objection to social networks: they exist to gather data on you. Whatever benefit you get from it, their purpose of existence is data mining. As the Pinboard Blog puts it, that's ANTI-social. "We're used to talking about how disturbing this in the context of privacy, but it's worth pointing out how weirdly unsocial it is, too. How are you supposed to feel at home when you know a place is full of one-way mirrors?" http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/ http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/

bproper 15y ago
Too bad we can't exchange that for a system where social networks let you own the data and charge a monthly subscription fee.
- BHSPitMonkey 15y ago
  Diaspora lets you own the data, and it's free. If you wanted to run your own node on a dedicated server rented at a hosting company, you could do that too.

pgroves 15y ago

Facebook now acknowledges what we said for a long time and they didnt acknowledge, that every single photograph uploaded to Facebook is put through facial recognition software they call PhotoDNA which is used to find people for whom any law enforcement agency in the world is looking. How true is this?

pbburrell 15y ago
I don't think it's very true at all. From what I've read, PhotoDNA is used to detect child pornography by comparing a photograph's "hash" against a database of hashes for known pornographic images. There's no facial recognition involved. More here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2564235 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2564235

Confusion 15y ago

Did anyone else have the experience of reading this, starting out thinking "Moglen has gone over the edge" and ending in a defeatist "it's actually as bad as he says and there's no stopping it"?

jonhendry 15y ago

Eh. If it's not Facebook, it'll be some dork from Anonymous releasing a bunch of data, including yours, that they hacked from ThinkGeek, because they're offended by the plush bonsai kitten.

y4m4 15y ago

Moglen's argument fits in an idealist world, but having governing laws for Social engineering sites will help in regulating centralized power of corporations. This can be handled outside software too. But somewhat aggressive political behavior of Moglen worries me.