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@rsc, if you ever see this, your proposal here means that I will never use any software written in Go ever again, if at all possible. What others have said in

@rsc, if you ever see this, your proposal here means that I will never use any software written in Go ever again, if at all possible. What others have said in this thread about telemetry becoming an "accelerant" will happen. Abuse will happen. Data will be put up for sale. IP's will be logged because users can't verify that they're not. The only thing users can verify is what is sent and to whom. And only if they run packet inspection. Most users don't. (Edit: I just realized that users may not even be able to tell who data is sent to because of proxies or the original collector selling the data.) I have no reason to believe your personal motives are anything but pure; however, this capability will not just be in your hands. It will be in the hands of anyone with less-than-pure motives. I applaud your efforts to make telemetry more transparent, but they are destined to fail. When it comes to figuring out how users use software, the only thing to do legwork. Ask your users. Watch them if they'll let you do user studies. Pay non-users to use the software for a user study and put them through all situations, including rare ones. This is the same thing we programmers tell the police to do when the police whine about end-to-end encryption: do old-fashioned legwork. Why should we, as programmers, demand that of police when we give ourselves tools to violate the privacy of users in the exact same way that police want? Yes, that's right, the exact same way. Telemetry is a backdoor on a private conversation between a user and a machine. Just do the work. I'm pretty sure Google has the money to do so. You may respond that this is for Open Source developers to get data on their users. Well, if those developers are hobbyists, they don't have time to crunch data, and they're probably scratching an itch. If they are not hobbyists, they are paid and should do the legwork. There is no excuse for telemetry. Just do the work.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
icholy 4y ago
What world do you live in?
- Thaxll 4y ago
  All browser have telemetry in them, but he probably used netcat to post that message.
- gavinhoward 4y ago
  A custom-built Gentoo that uses the Awesome Window Manager for a minimal install, builds Firefox from source, and uses OpenSnitch to sniff everything. My machine is locked down hard. Oh, and I checked what depends on Go on my machine. The one kicker was libcap, which won't depend on Go if I tell it not to build captree. So I did that. I uninstalled Docker. That leaves: * `arduino-builder` (for my custom keyboard). * Hugo (for my websites). * An unnamed program. * Gitea. Besides `arduino-builder`, I have a plan to get rid of all three of those. For two, Hugo and Gitea, I had already planned to. The unnamed program is harder, but someone has already done one. Unfortunately, it's in Go, so I'm going to have to do something else myself. `arduino-builder`, though, that's tough.
  - icholy 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - gavinhoward 4y ago
      It actually is because I can utilize my machine better by having less processes running and lighter ones at that. I can run ZFS easily. I can have a minimal kernel, reducing my attack surface. I can customize installed packages, such as what I did above. Also, it taught me system administration. Totally worth the effort. As for getting rid of Go, I'm surprised that I had so few Go programs, and like I said, I was already planning on replacing two with my own stuff.
rogpeppe1 4y ago
> @rsc, if you ever see this, your proposal here means that I will never use any software written in Go ever again, if at all possible. Have you actually read the articles? The "data put up for sale" is to be made available publicly. IP logging can already be done (the Go proxy is enabled by default). All the source code is open. What's your actual problem with this, beyond a knee-jerk reaction to the idea?
- gavinhoward 4y ago
  > The "data put up for sale" is to be made available publicly. How can users verify this? > IP logging can already be done (the Go proxy is enabled by default). Sure, but more data will be attached to it. Also, in his proposal, he said that IP addresses will not be logged. I seriously doubt that. > What's your actual problem with this, beyond a knee-jerk reaction to the idea? Putting telemetry in a programming language. Working with a programming language is the number one thing I do on a computer. This means that, except for the fact that I don't work in Go, most of my private conversation with a machine could be backdoored.
  - rogpeppe1 4y ago
    > Sure, but more data will be attached to it. Also, in his proposal, he said that IP addresses will not be logged. I seriously doubt that. I think it's worth quoting what Russ said in the article, which sounds very reasonable to me: > The server would necessarily observe the source IP address in the TCP session uploading the report, but the server would not record that address with the data, a fact that can be confirmed by inspecting the reporting server source code (the server would be open source like the rest of Go) or by reference to a stated privacy policy like the one for the Go module mirror, depending on whether you lean more toward trusting software engineers or lawyers. A company could also run their own HTTP proxy to shield individual system’s IP addresses and arrange for employee systems to set GOTELEMETRY to the address of that proxy. It may also make sense to allow Go module proxies to proxy uploads, so that the existing GOPROXY setting also works for redirecting the upload and shielding the system’s IP address. > This means that, except for the fact that I don't work in Go, most of my private conversation with a machine could be backdoored. I don't get this. Given the design that the article is describing, how could most of your private conversation with a machine be backdoored? Specifically given that the Go tool is open source and used by millions already. Are you worried about sneaky code hidden inside that source code? If so, you should be worried already, because there's no reason that they couldn't already be doing that if they were so inclined.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

icholy 4y ago

What world do you live in?

Thaxll 4y ago
All browser have telemetry in them, but he probably used netcat to post that message.
gavinhoward 4y ago
A custom-built Gentoo that uses the Awesome Window Manager for a minimal install, builds Firefox from source, and uses OpenSnitch to sniff everything. My machine is locked down hard. Oh, and I checked what depends on Go on my machine. The one kicker was libcap, which won't depend on Go if I tell it not to build captree. So I did that. I uninstalled Docker. That leaves: * `arduino-builder` (for my custom keyboard). * Hugo (for my websites). * An unnamed program. * Gitea. Besides `arduino-builder`, I have a plan to get rid of all three of those. For two, Hugo and Gitea, I had already planned to. The unnamed program is harder, but someone has already done one. Unfortunately, it's in Go, so I'm going to have to do something else myself. `arduino-builder`, though, that's tough.
- icholy 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - gavinhoward 4y ago
    It actually is because I can utilize my machine better by having less processes running and lighter ones at that. I can run ZFS easily. I can have a minimal kernel, reducing my attack surface. I can customize installed packages, such as what I did above. Also, it taught me system administration. Totally worth the effort. As for getting rid of Go, I'm surprised that I had so few Go programs, and like I said, I was already planning on replacing two with my own stuff.

rogpeppe1 4y ago

> @rsc, if you ever see this, your proposal here means that I will never use any software written in Go ever again, if at all possible. Have you actually read the articles? The "data put up for sale" is to be made available publicly. IP logging can already be done (the Go proxy is enabled by default). All the source code is open. What's your actual problem with this, beyond a knee-jerk reaction to the idea?

gavinhoward 4y ago
> The "data put up for sale" is to be made available publicly. How can users verify this? > IP logging can already be done (the Go proxy is enabled by default). Sure, but more data will be attached to it. Also, in his proposal, he said that IP addresses will not be logged. I seriously doubt that. > What's your actual problem with this, beyond a knee-jerk reaction to the idea? Putting telemetry in a programming language. Working with a programming language is the number one thing I do on a computer. This means that, except for the fact that I don't work in Go, most of my private conversation with a machine could be backdoored.
- rogpeppe1 4y ago
  > Sure, but more data will be attached to it. Also, in his proposal, he said that IP addresses will not be logged. I seriously doubt that. I think it's worth quoting what Russ said in the article, which sounds very reasonable to me: > The server would necessarily observe the source IP address in the TCP session uploading the report, but the server would not record that address with the data, a fact that can be confirmed by inspecting the reporting server source code (the server would be open source like the rest of Go) or by reference to a stated privacy policy like the one for the Go module mirror, depending on whether you lean more toward trusting software engineers or lawyers. A company could also run their own HTTP proxy to shield individual system’s IP addresses and arrange for employee systems to set GOTELEMETRY to the address of that proxy. It may also make sense to allow Go module proxies to proxy uploads, so that the existing GOPROXY setting also works for redirecting the upload and shielding the system’s IP address. > This means that, except for the fact that I don't work in Go, most of my private conversation with a machine could be backdoored. I don't get this. Given the design that the article is describing, how could most of your private conversation with a machine be backdoored? Specifically given that the Go tool is open source and used by millions already. Are you worried about sneaky code hidden inside that source code? If so, you should be worried already, because there's no reason that they couldn't already be doing that if they were so inclined.