4 ms·

The surveillance you describe is ephemeral. After you move, your neighbors will forget you ever existed. The bookshop assistant probably forgets you the moment

by eurleif 14y ago

The surveillance you describe is ephemeral. After you move, your neighbors will forget you ever existed. The bookshop assistant probably forgets you the moment you walk out the door. Internet data is not that way. It potentially lasts forever. A fear I've heard expressed is that in the future, totalitarianism will arrive, and past data will be used against people.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
Who will be running that totalitarian regieme and can we see their Facebook pages from their early twenties? In the end how the hell will you use data against people if you do not already do all the dictator necessary things anyway - torture, secrecy, disappearances. These are the things to fight, not the data storage but the people torture. March to stop privatisation of the army, to stop torture in our names, to stop child labour. Fix those, then we have nothing to fear about our Facebook shopping trends. Edit: some might comment that eg their sexual preferences might be discoverable on Facebook and that would be a breach of their rights to privacy. Firstly we change privacy - it has always been politeness not to mention what all your friends knew. The fact that anyone interested can now piece it together does not change that. Second - the use of that data "against" you only matters if it matters outside of politeness. Alan Turing could not today be prosecuted for being gay, could not be chemically castrated nor driven to suicide. Because the legal system has been changed - so that the only thing that matters if people find out you are gay is politeness. Live in a free society - have to learn to deal with impoliteness. Don't live in a free society - deal with that not the Internet. We know how to defeat dictators, and the iPhone won't fix it for free.
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  >>In the end how the hell will you use data against people if you do not already do all the dictator necessary things anyway - torture, secrecy, disappearances. Drone strikes too. Let's not forget that one.
- dmoo 14y ago
  But if Turing were in Uganda for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/04/gay-people-uganda-love-run http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/04/gay-people-ugand...
- dwiel 14y ago
  This doesn't work if access to that information tempts those in power to do things that they wouldn't have if the the information didn't exist.
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    I kind of understand but I believe the benefits will outweigh the costs in all cases, and we can mitigate with sensible laws respecting the rights of individuals. Or in short, that argument could have been made about fire, bronze, iron, steel, writing, printing cameras etc
snowwrestler 14y ago
I worry about the opposite--that we will lose too much information over time when everything is stored digitally. My employer has been running at least one website for almost 15 years. We've been collecting server logs that entire time. Where are they now? With the exception of logs from the last year, I could not tell you. They were all discarded or lost. On a larger scale, look at the problem of link rot. We can't even keep track of the public information we have. The Rosetta Stone (the real one) survived thousands of years of neglect to teach us about our past. What digital assets will survive that long? How many digital assets from 20 years ago are still findable, recoverable, readable, searchable?
- graue 14y ago
  Outside of an electromagnetic pulse or similar disaster, I'm not worried at all about that outcome. The Wayback Machine archives almost everything publicly available. When you put stuff in the cloud — which includes tweets on Twitter, photos on Facebook, and emails on Gmail — you'll never lose it to a hard drive crash. When I have fears of losing data, I have to ask myself: is that data really important to begin with? Or is it junk, digital detritus? I've simplified by selling, giving away or throwing out a lot of my physical possessions, and it feels great to do so. Recently I'm beginning to feel the same way about digital possessions. It is better to reduce. Unless you have some specific business case for extrapolating from your over-a-year-old logs, what do you need them for? Do you just want them because you could make a neat graph or something? Why not let it go? Your possessions start to own you. Extra data that could get you or other people in trouble, can similarly be a liability.

by eurleif 14y ago

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

Who will be running that totalitarian regieme and can we see their Facebook pages from their early twenties? In the end how the hell will you use data against people if you do not already do all the dictator necessary things anyway - torture, secrecy, disappearances. These are the things to fight, not the data storage but the people torture. March to stop privatisation of the army, to stop torture in our names, to stop child labour. Fix those, then we have nothing to fear about our Facebook shopping trends. Edit: some might comment that eg their sexual preferences might be discoverable on Facebook and that would be a breach of their rights to privacy. Firstly we change privacy - it has always been politeness not to mention what all your friends knew. The fact that anyone interested can now piece it together does not change that. Second - the use of that data "against" you only matters if it matters outside of politeness. Alan Turing could not today be prosecuted for being gay, could not be chemically castrated nor driven to suicide. Because the legal system has been changed - so that the only thing that matters if people find out you are gay is politeness. Live in a free society - have to learn to deal with impoliteness. Don't live in a free society - deal with that not the Internet. We know how to defeat dictators, and the iPhone won't fix it for free.

enraged_camel 14y ago
>>In the end how the hell will you use data against people if you do not already do all the dictator necessary things anyway - torture, secrecy, disappearances. Drone strikes too. Let's not forget that one.
dmoo 14y ago
But if Turing were in Uganda for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/04/gay-people-uganda-love-run http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/04/gay-people-ugand...
dwiel 14y ago
This doesn't work if access to that information tempts those in power to do things that they wouldn't have if the the information didn't exist.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  I kind of understand but I believe the benefits will outweigh the costs in all cases, and we can mitigate with sensible laws respecting the rights of individuals. Or in short, that argument could have been made about fire, bronze, iron, steel, writing, printing cameras etc

snowwrestler 14y ago

I worry about the opposite--that we will lose too much information over time when everything is stored digitally. My employer has been running at least one website for almost 15 years. We've been collecting server logs that entire time. Where are they now? With the exception of logs from the last year, I could not tell you. They were all discarded or lost. On a larger scale, look at the problem of link rot. We can't even keep track of the public information we have. The Rosetta Stone (the real one) survived thousands of years of neglect to teach us about our past. What digital assets will survive that long? How many digital assets from 20 years ago are still findable, recoverable, readable, searchable?

graue 14y ago
Outside of an electromagnetic pulse or similar disaster, I'm not worried at all about that outcome. The Wayback Machine archives almost everything publicly available. When you put stuff in the cloud — which includes tweets on Twitter, photos on Facebook, and emails on Gmail — you'll never lose it to a hard drive crash. When I have fears of losing data, I have to ask myself: is that data really important to begin with? Or is it junk, digital detritus? I've simplified by selling, giving away or throwing out a lot of my physical possessions, and it feels great to do so. Recently I'm beginning to feel the same way about digital possessions. It is better to reduce. Unless you have some specific business case for extrapolating from your over-a-year-old logs, what do you need them for? Do you just want them because you could make a neat graph or something? Why not let it go? Your possessions start to own you. Extra data that could get you or other people in trouble, can similarly be a liability.