4 ms·

> And we do need to fight that at each and every turn because until governments get it I read an interesting article somewhat related to this: http://krypt3ia

> And we do need to fight that at each and every turn because until governments get it I read an interesting article somewhat related to this: http://krypt3ia.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/digital-natives-digital-immigrants-exo-nationals-and-the-digital-lord-of-the-flies/ http://krypt3ia.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/digital-natives-dig... It uses Anonymous and Wikileaks as examples (which you may or may not disagree with), but I'm linking it for the general discussion about a sort of digital generation gap, how the "governing class" of people hasn't caught up with this digital era quite yet.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
To be fair, its not just the governing class - I don't think anyone really gets it - the almost total loss of privacy for any digital "native" is stunning. This is a little mental exercise for me so bear with me please. Imagine that all the digital footprints I leave are available through nice open APIs and easily accessible (its not, it wont be but...) Then I know that these are collected without any malicious or surveillance intent: 1. Physical location - iPhone collects this every 5 mins by default. Thats almost everything you need right there. I also log into different wifi hotspots, duck in and out of cells. You can infer an enourmous amount about me by knowing where I am, and even more by knowing who is there with me. My sex life, my business deals. 2. Interests - google searches for itchy skin rashes, my debit and "loyalty" cards with costa coffee and the supermarkets who know what itch cream I just bought. Do i have a cat - I buy cat food at Tescos so its a good guess. One of my two cats just died, which is very sad, but Tesco will know soon as my purchases halve and stay that low. When I buy puppy food Tesco can sell me pet insurance. 3. Networks - who I email (gmail knows all), who I phone (skype, cell provider), Facebook, linkedin, and most insidiously this cross-website-cookie business that is coming up (there is a name for it but basically how ad networks know to show me ads on different sites). If my iphone and one of my contacts iphones meet up, am I preparing to leave my employer? Would you want to know who is in the same location as Google's HR people if you were Zuckerberg? 4. Real world monitoring - CCTV is too poor to convict bank robbers most of the time, but Stanford did a study where a good camera could identify faces and match them to Facebook photos 1 in 3 times. You know the bit in CSI:NY where they search for the baddie and two dzoen photos flash by and suddenly they have an address. Thats real. Just not in neon blue lights with good looking lab assistants. 5. travelcards and train tickets, Uber taxi cab bookings from my mistresses flat to my wife's house. (NB I dont actually have a mistress but you get the point. <- you see the paranoia is getting to me, just in case my wife reads HN :-) I could go on, but really, all this is starting to fall into place - I could happily do an Research MSc on pulling these sources together... Anyway - privacy, gone. And that leaves us with two circles in our Venn diagram of life. Anything that can be found out by someone somewhere in the world , and if there is anything left over it is a secret. Oh and I think my Phd would be on inference of privatives - that is being able to spot the "black holes" in a persons digital footprints that tell you something they want to keep secret is going on. Really, if the Intelligence Services lived up to their names, this is the stuff they should be eating up. (And those vast NSA computer farms....oh yes, of course :-)

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

To be fair, its not just the governing class - I don't think anyone really gets it - the almost total loss of privacy for any digital "native" is stunning. This is a little mental exercise for me so bear with me please. Imagine that all the digital footprints I leave are available through nice open APIs and easily accessible (its not, it wont be but...) Then I know that these are collected without any malicious or surveillance intent: 1. Physical location - iPhone collects this every 5 mins by default. Thats almost everything you need right there. I also log into different wifi hotspots, duck in and out of cells. You can infer an enourmous amount about me by knowing where I am, and even more by knowing who is there with me. My sex life, my business deals. 2. Interests - google searches for itchy skin rashes, my debit and "loyalty" cards with costa coffee and the supermarkets who know what itch cream I just bought. Do i have a cat - I buy cat food at Tescos so its a good guess. One of my two cats just died, which is very sad, but Tesco will know soon as my purchases halve and stay that low. When I buy puppy food Tesco can sell me pet insurance. 3. Networks - who I email (gmail knows all), who I phone (skype, cell provider), Facebook, linkedin, and most insidiously this cross-website-cookie business that is coming up (there is a name for it but basically how ad networks know to show me ads on different sites). If my iphone and one of my contacts iphones meet up, am I preparing to leave my employer? Would you want to know who is in the same location as Google's HR people if you were Zuckerberg? 4. Real world monitoring - CCTV is too poor to convict bank robbers most of the time, but Stanford did a study where a good camera could identify faces and match them to Facebook photos 1 in 3 times. You know the bit in CSI:NY where they search for the baddie and two dzoen photos flash by and suddenly they have an address. Thats real. Just not in neon blue lights with good looking lab assistants. 5. travelcards and train tickets, Uber taxi cab bookings from my mistresses flat to my wife's house. (NB I dont actually have a mistress but you get the point. <- you see the paranoia is getting to me, just in case my wife reads HN :-) I could go on, but really, all this is starting to fall into place - I could happily do an Research MSc on pulling these sources together... Anyway - privacy, gone. And that leaves us with two circles in our Venn diagram of life. Anything that can be found out by someone somewhere in the world , and if there is anything left over it is a secret. Oh and I think my Phd would be on inference of privatives - that is being able to spot the "black holes" in a persons digital footprints that tell you something they want to keep secret is going on. Really, if the Intelligence Services lived up to their names, this is the stuff they should be eating up. (And those vast NSA computer farms....oh yes, of course :-)