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Depressing thread this.... I think this thread demonstrates why the privacy issues with the likes of google, facebook, etc are pretty much vapor complaints. Es

by alan_cx 13y ago

Depressing thread this.... I think this thread demonstrates why the privacy issues with the likes of google, facebook, etc are pretty much vapor complaints. Essentially, people are happy in the end to sacrifice privacy for convenience. With that mind set, we can easily see why no one really cares about NSA slurping. As far as they are concerned, all the NSA has is what facebook, gmail etc, have. So, what is the problem exactly? And you know what, I can understand the point. I disagree, but equally, I understand. Having read about how people won't move form FB because it easy to stay there, since their "friends" are there, I now realize most people really are not committed to privacy while it means some sort of inconvenience. There is even a reply here where a friend who wont use facebook is referred to as an "outcast"... Understandable, but also says it all. Depressing.

lucisferre 13y ago
I'm not sure if that's more depressing or that so many seem to feel that boy-cotting services is an effective way to address the illegal actions of governments and corporations. I would hope that people would consider instead demanding we hold governments and organizations accountable for crimes directly and demand our rights be respected. Picking up your ball and going home is not the correct response to these things, nor will it help or fix anything.
- antocv 13y ago
  This, online services, and not taking action is no different than not taking action over bankers/politicians stealing your future. If somebody had told me in say 2005 or 2006 that "hey, the government will just print like several trillions of dollars, ultimately backed only by your tax money, and just like that give them to failed banks and other corporations, the CEOs of said banks will then give themselves hefty bonuses for almost killing the economy. oh and the banks will also foreclose many peoples houses because the small people cant pay their debts either." and not one beep was heard from the population, not one broken window. Its not some small money stolen from them either, its entire college-educations and pensions, standard of living lowered. But, hey, they're still better than Africa so its fine.
  - smalltalk 13y ago
    If you believe this is what happened, you need a much better understanding of the financial crisis. I suggest you try reading anything written by anyone, which would be certain to improve your existing knowledge.
- fredBuddemeyer 13y ago
  exercising choice is exercising freedom. pleading for rights from entities that have seized them without your consent is truly depressing because it is hopeless.
  - lucisferre 13y ago
    Is it, or is it not criminal acts we are talking about here? But ignoring that boycotts are largely fruitless. So if it is truly hopeless to demand your government respect your rights and freedoms then yes, you are probably fucked.
jusben1369 13y ago
Is it just me or was the author's point that services can disappear (Reader) yet most of these threads assume the reason to switch are privacy concerns. Maybe we're projecting too much?
- SamWhited 13y ago
  Definitely not just you; privacy concerns were a very (very) small part of this (when Google has all of your data, they have more than the sum of the individual parts). In general, if I want more privacy, I'll say, use PGP instead of switching email providers. This was about not relying too heavily on any one service provider. Plain and simple.
wslh 13y ago
Do you know what is depressing? The gamification of society, of human kind: in the past intelligence agencies needed intelligence and resources to work. Now, they press a button and they receive all the information without much effort. Skipping the obvious opinion against the NSA and "The Society of Likes". At least taxpayers (how I hate this word! but it is ironic in this context) should force the Government to fire a big percentage of its workforce since the work is trivial and algorithms to analyze the information are in general already published.
VikingCoder 13y ago
You're presenting a false choice: It's entirely possible to care about privacy, and still use Facebook and GMail. Simply pretend that everything you post on Facebook and GMail is in the public domain, posted in the public square. If I never share anything I don't want public, then my privacy is guaranteed. I'd advise others with privacy concerns to do the same. Given that you NEVER KNOW, EVER that you can 100% trust the people you're sharing with (no matter which media you use), I think people are kind of crazy to act any other way.
- LoganCale 13y ago
  Facebook tracks your external web browsing history through the use of their embedded buttons, and links that history with your profile. So even if you don't post private information to Facebook, they're tracking your private activity unless you take measures to block such buttons across the web.
  - VikingCoder 13y ago
    ...or use Facebook in a different browser (or Incognito), or specifically log out of Facebook when you're not using it. Or only use it in the Facebook App on your phone, but never log your browser in to it. "Logging in" is completely broken on the internet - no argument, there.
    - chris_mahan 13y ago
      or on a different computer.
      - crpatino 13y ago
        connected to the neighbor's open wifi?
    - LoganCale 13y ago
      The other two approaches may work, but > or specifically log out of Facebook when you're not using it will probably not, because they set tracking cookies that remain even when you log out. Complete speculation here, but if they're willing to do that, who's to say they don't link traffic from known IP addresses as well? It might be linked less strongly but in many cases could still be associated in some way. They track web browsing for non-users already anyway, so if they can connect that to existing users by IP I'd be fairly surprised if they didn't. In order to prevent this, you have to block trackers in all your browsers and devices with Ghostery or similar tools.
nahname 13y ago
There is a really good talk (short too) from Moxie Marlinspike on privacy. His talk is very much along the same lines. Definitely worth watching. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qzldtKV1PY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qzldtKV1PY
- acomar 13y ago
  The whole talk is about 45 minutes long, but yea, it's well worth watching. Thanks for sharing that!
aw3c2 13y ago
It is not about convenience, it is about participating in society. I am dependent on Facebook to keep my friends. No quotation marks. They are my real friends and they moved there for a lot of important communication. Should I instead be an outcast? No, THAT would be depressing. Please watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qzldtKV1PY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qzldtKV1PY , which nahname linked.
- sanderjd 13y ago
  I'm never sure if this is a generational thing or just a who-you-happen-to-know thing, but the concept of being an "outcast" because of not using Facebook just sounds ludicrous to me. Your friends wouldn't IM you or email you or text you or call you or talk to you in person if you weren't on Facebook?
  - alanh 13y ago
    For some (many?) people, these steps are followed: 1. Plan event (e.g. party) 2. Invite people on Facebook It’s massively easier than texting/IMing people. Yeah, you will do it for people you really care about, but you can easily miss out if you aren’t on FB.
  - burntsushi 13y ago
    I have one friend who doesn't use Facebook (for reasons unrelated to privacy), and it's really quite frustrating. If someone wants to hang out, they send a group message on Facebook. Then someone has to be responsible for communicating to my "outcast" friend via some other medium about the event. This becomes a pain in the ass when trying to schedule things. I personally would love to use email, but people just refuse to do it. Everyone wants to use Facebook because everyone is on it. Believe me, I've tried to get people to switch to email. But it always reverts back to Facebook.
    - lkrubner 13y ago
      I wonder why this was downvoted? It's presented as a factual anecdote about a real experience. I can only imagine 2 reasons to downvote this: 1.) You have evidence that burntsushi is lying and that the story is untrue. 2.) You don't want what burntsushi is saying to be true (you disagree with the lifestyle choices of burntsushi's friends). Do we really downvote people for #2 on Hacker News? Or is their proof for #1?
loginalready 13y ago
The fact that people are not prepared to stand alone doesn't mean they don't care about privacy. Very few people are in a position to make a difference alone, and even fewer dare to act. There's only one Snowden. The rest of us, we vote, support civil liberties organisations, sign petitions, and the most active amongst us lobby and demonstrate. The notion that the way to change things is by individual sacrifice, and if we don't we obviously don't care enough, is an fundamentalist libertarian fantasy. The real world doesn't work that way. Real people don't work that way. At least 99% of us don't.
- uxp 13y ago
  > Real people don't work that way. At least 99% of us don't. This statement rings with me quite a bit. I'm reminded of the day the FBI released the video and photos of the Tsarnaevs just after the Boston bombing and it was discovered that they were from Chechnya. If you visited twitter and searched for their names, you could have found a few thousand tweets asking why the Czech Republic was attacking the US. Here are thousands of Americans, typing words into a computer connected to the largest distributed information storage network ever conceived by man, and they don't bother to verify that Chechnya and the Czech Republic aren't the same place. Most people aren't stupid, they just don't care. How many times last week did knowing the difference between Chechnya and the Czech Republic come in handy for you? Likewise, knowing that the NSA is actively slurping all your phone calls and emails, what can you do that doesn't require massive lifestyle changes?
- click170 13y ago
  >>The notion that the way to change things is by individual sacrifice, and if we don't we obviously don't care enough, is an fundamentalist libertarian fantasy. Thank goodness not everyone feels the same way you do. You can't change the world if you don't at least try. I'm glad that at least 1% does work that way. I think it's too bad there aren't more of these types of people in the world.
00rion 13y ago
I deleted my facebook after the NSA leak partly due to feeling uncomfortable sharing that information with the government, but more because I feel that facebook doesn't really do much for me. I'd rather have 5 great friends than 200 "friends" who passively consume information about me.
dllthomas 13y ago
> [A]ll the NSA has is what facebook, gmail etc, have. Facebook has what Facebook has. Google has what Google has. Verizon has what Verizon has. The NSA has what all of them have, put together. The NSA can therefore draw conclusions that Facebook and Verizon and Google can't, and therefore I lose privacy when that data is handed over even if I happen to use some subset of the services in question. That's not my only objection, but it's a substantial one...
burntsushi 13y ago
Privacy isn't just about hiding my data in general. It's also about hiding it from certain people. I'm not sure why you haven't considered the possibility that I don't want the government to have my data from an entire collection of web sites, but might not mind any one particular web site having it. More to the point, I worry a lot more about what the government can do with my data than what Facebook can do.
joyeuse6701 13y ago
if someone made an sGoogle/sFacebook/s whatever that could move your info and maintain same look/functionality with one button, people would switch, because a button switch for more security (like turning the deadbolt on your door) is something people are willing to do. Otherwise the cost of switching is too high.

by alan_cx 13y ago

lucisferre 13y ago

I'm not sure if that's more depressing or that so many seem to feel that boy-cotting services is an effective way to address the illegal actions of governments and corporations. I would hope that people would consider instead demanding we hold governments and organizations accountable for crimes directly and demand our rights be respected. Picking up your ball and going home is not the correct response to these things, nor will it help or fix anything.

antocv 13y ago
This, online services, and not taking action is no different than not taking action over bankers/politicians stealing your future. If somebody had told me in say 2005 or 2006 that "hey, the government will just print like several trillions of dollars, ultimately backed only by your tax money, and just like that give them to failed banks and other corporations, the CEOs of said banks will then give themselves hefty bonuses for almost killing the economy. oh and the banks will also foreclose many peoples houses because the small people cant pay their debts either." and not one beep was heard from the population, not one broken window. Its not some small money stolen from them either, its entire college-educations and pensions, standard of living lowered. But, hey, they're still better than Africa so its fine.
- smalltalk 13y ago
  If you believe this is what happened, you need a much better understanding of the financial crisis. I suggest you try reading anything written by anyone, which would be certain to improve your existing knowledge.
fredBuddemeyer 13y ago
exercising choice is exercising freedom. pleading for rights from entities that have seized them without your consent is truly depressing because it is hopeless.
- lucisferre 13y ago
  Is it, or is it not criminal acts we are talking about here? But ignoring that boycotts are largely fruitless. So if it is truly hopeless to demand your government respect your rights and freedoms then yes, you are probably fucked.

jusben1369 13y ago

Is it just me or was the author's point that services can disappear (Reader) yet most of these threads assume the reason to switch are privacy concerns. Maybe we're projecting too much?

SamWhited 13y ago
Definitely not just you; privacy concerns were a very (very) small part of this (when Google has all of your data, they have more than the sum of the individual parts). In general, if I want more privacy, I'll say, use PGP instead of switching email providers. This was about not relying too heavily on any one service provider. Plain and simple.

wslh 13y ago

Do you know what is depressing? The gamification of society, of human kind: in the past intelligence agencies needed intelligence and resources to work. Now, they press a button and they receive all the information without much effort. Skipping the obvious opinion against the NSA and "The Society of Likes". At least taxpayers (how I hate this word! but it is ironic in this context) should force the Government to fire a big percentage of its workforce since the work is trivial and algorithms to analyze the information are in general already published.

VikingCoder 13y ago

You're presenting a false choice: It's entirely possible to care about privacy, and still use Facebook and GMail. Simply pretend that everything you post on Facebook and GMail is in the public domain, posted in the public square. If I never share anything I don't want public, then my privacy is guaranteed. I'd advise others with privacy concerns to do the same. Given that you NEVER KNOW, EVER that you can 100% trust the people you're sharing with (no matter which media you use), I think people are kind of crazy to act any other way.

LoganCale 13y ago
Facebook tracks your external web browsing history through the use of their embedded buttons, and links that history with your profile. So even if you don't post private information to Facebook, they're tracking your private activity unless you take measures to block such buttons across the web.
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  ...or use Facebook in a different browser (or Incognito), or specifically log out of Facebook when you're not using it. Or only use it in the Facebook App on your phone, but never log your browser in to it. "Logging in" is completely broken on the internet - no argument, there.
  - chris_mahan 13y ago
    or on a different computer.
    - crpatino 13y ago
      connected to the neighbor's open wifi?
  - LoganCale 13y ago
    The other two approaches may work, but > or specifically log out of Facebook when you're not using it will probably not, because they set tracking cookies that remain even when you log out. Complete speculation here, but if they're willing to do that, who's to say they don't link traffic from known IP addresses as well? It might be linked less strongly but in many cases could still be associated in some way. They track web browsing for non-users already anyway, so if they can connect that to existing users by IP I'd be fairly surprised if they didn't. In order to prevent this, you have to block trackers in all your browsers and devices with Ghostery or similar tools.

nahname 13y ago

There is a really good talk (short too) from Moxie Marlinspike on privacy. His talk is very much along the same lines. Definitely worth watching. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qzldtKV1PY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qzldtKV1PY

acomar 13y ago
The whole talk is about 45 minutes long, but yea, it's well worth watching. Thanks for sharing that!

aw3c2 13y ago

It is not about convenience, it is about participating in society. I am dependent on Facebook to keep my friends. No quotation marks. They are my real friends and they moved there for a lot of important communication. Should I instead be an outcast? No, THAT would be depressing. Please watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qzldtKV1PY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qzldtKV1PY , which nahname linked.

sanderjd 13y ago
I'm never sure if this is a generational thing or just a who-you-happen-to-know thing, but the concept of being an "outcast" because of not using Facebook just sounds ludicrous to me. Your friends wouldn't IM you or email you or text you or call you or talk to you in person if you weren't on Facebook?
- alanh 13y ago
  For some (many?) people, these steps are followed: 1. Plan event (e.g. party) 2. Invite people on Facebook It’s massively easier than texting/IMing people. Yeah, you will do it for people you really care about, but you can easily miss out if you aren’t on FB.
- burntsushi 13y ago
  I have one friend who doesn't use Facebook (for reasons unrelated to privacy), and it's really quite frustrating. If someone wants to hang out, they send a group message on Facebook. Then someone has to be responsible for communicating to my "outcast" friend via some other medium about the event. This becomes a pain in the ass when trying to schedule things. I personally would love to use email, but people just refuse to do it. Everyone wants to use Facebook because everyone is on it. Believe me, I've tried to get people to switch to email. But it always reverts back to Facebook.
  - lkrubner 13y ago
    I wonder why this was downvoted? It's presented as a factual anecdote about a real experience. I can only imagine 2 reasons to downvote this: 1.) You have evidence that burntsushi is lying and that the story is untrue. 2.) You don't want what burntsushi is saying to be true (you disagree with the lifestyle choices of burntsushi's friends). Do we really downvote people for #2 on Hacker News? Or is their proof for #1?

loginalready 13y ago

The fact that people are not prepared to stand alone doesn't mean they don't care about privacy. Very few people are in a position to make a difference alone, and even fewer dare to act. There's only one Snowden. The rest of us, we vote, support civil liberties organisations, sign petitions, and the most active amongst us lobby and demonstrate. The notion that the way to change things is by individual sacrifice, and if we don't we obviously don't care enough, is an fundamentalist libertarian fantasy. The real world doesn't work that way. Real people don't work that way. At least 99% of us don't.

uxp 13y ago
> Real people don't work that way. At least 99% of us don't. This statement rings with me quite a bit. I'm reminded of the day the FBI released the video and photos of the Tsarnaevs just after the Boston bombing and it was discovered that they were from Chechnya. If you visited twitter and searched for their names, you could have found a few thousand tweets asking why the Czech Republic was attacking the US. Here are thousands of Americans, typing words into a computer connected to the largest distributed information storage network ever conceived by man, and they don't bother to verify that Chechnya and the Czech Republic aren't the same place. Most people aren't stupid, they just don't care. How many times last week did knowing the difference between Chechnya and the Czech Republic come in handy for you? Likewise, knowing that the NSA is actively slurping all your phone calls and emails, what can you do that doesn't require massive lifestyle changes?
click170 13y ago
>>The notion that the way to change things is by individual sacrifice, and if we don't we obviously don't care enough, is an fundamentalist libertarian fantasy. Thank goodness not everyone feels the same way you do. You can't change the world if you don't at least try. I'm glad that at least 1% does work that way. I think it's too bad there aren't more of these types of people in the world.

00rion 13y ago

I deleted my facebook after the NSA leak partly due to feeling uncomfortable sharing that information with the government, but more because I feel that facebook doesn't really do much for me. I'd rather have 5 great friends than 200 "friends" who passively consume information about me.

dllthomas 13y ago

> [A]ll the NSA has is what facebook, gmail etc, have. Facebook has what Facebook has. Google has what Google has. Verizon has what Verizon has. The NSA has what all of them have, put together. The NSA can therefore draw conclusions that Facebook and Verizon and Google can't, and therefore I lose privacy when that data is handed over even if I happen to use some subset of the services in question. That's not my only objection, but it's a substantial one...

burntsushi 13y ago

Privacy isn't just about hiding my data in general. It's also about hiding it from certain people. I'm not sure why you haven't considered the possibility that I don't want the government to have my data from an entire collection of web sites, but might not mind any one particular web site having it. More to the point, I worry a lot more about what the government can do with my data than what Facebook can do.

joyeuse6701 13y ago

if someone made an sGoogle/sFacebook/s whatever that could move your info and maintain same look/functionality with one button, people would switch, because a button switch for more security (like turning the deadbolt on your door) is something people are willing to do. Otherwise the cost of switching is too high.