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I am in the position of being torn apart by two very strong feelings. One is the world where information flow due to companies like Google does a real service t

I am in the position of being torn apart by two very strong feelings. One is the world where information flow due to companies like Google does a real service to humanity: for e.g. wearing devices that can keep us reminded of our meds or monitor sugar levels, to talk just about the possibilities in healthcare. Then I think of Edward Snowden and I now know that what Google knows, maybe America/Russia/China/WhatHaveYou know. Although at this point I am as normal a citizen as you can find, that can't be taken for granted forever. For e.g. in my nation (India) being gay is illegal and so is marijuana, and so is alcohol (in some states) and so is a lot of stuff. This feeling makes me want to minimize my footprint. Wish there was a way to combat either the wariness, or to exacerbate the joy. For, I must be assimilated into the Borg, too. :) EDIT: spellings

k-mcgrady 13y ago
I find myself also questioning this often. It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android, Google services and Apple services. Ideally I would like privacy but I think as we go forward keeping privacy would leave you in the same kind of position someone like RMS is in by sticking to his Free Software philosophy so strongly. I'm always surprised at the number of friends and family I see who have their Facebook set to public - especially considering what they post. When I tell them they don't care. I think the majority of people want some semblance of privacy but they are willing to give up a lot for the efficiency these new products, that require us to give up privacy, provide.
- Touche 13y ago
  > I'm always surprised at the number of friends and family I see who have their Facebook set to public - especially considering what they post. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they are set to public by default... in fact, IIRC they even reset everyone to public when they released that "feature" a couple of years ago. > When I tell them they don't care. I think the majority of people want some semblance of privacy but they are willing to give up a lot for the efficiency these new products, that require us to give up privacy, provide. Sure, and smokers are willing to risk a slow painful death to forgo the pain of quitting. Humans are short-term thinkers.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android, Google services and Apple services. The difference between Apple and Google has recently occurred to me: with Apple, their secrets are in jeopardy. With Google, yours are.
  - danford 13y ago
    I feel the only reason your secrets may not be in jeopardy with Apple is because they don't know as many... If you really want your secrets to be safe you wouldn't use any closed source code at all and would take security precautions to secure the code you do use. Unfortunately we live in a time when closed-source software is the norm and too many people think having a secure, open, communications infrastructure is too complicated and don't quite understand the reasoning behind it (thankfully that attitude seems to be changing a little), but I hope one day we'll look back on this time and wonder what we were thinking by allowing digital goods to be closed source. With 3D printers, neural implants, augmented reality, food and organ printers, and the age of automation, what the future holds is a digital realm that's going to be very scary for people who understand it, especially if the infrastructure is completely owned by corporations and un-trustable governments and even a small amount of the source is closed. I mean look around the room and think of all the things that could be augmented or replaced with 3D printed components.. Why have a physical laptop in front of you when you can augment the key board, 25 screens, and everything else? Not only that, but you can do it for nothing if you know how to code it. We can already print organs and I don't think it will be too long until we can print good tasting food, but what if you execute some code on your food printer that prints a steak with anthrax in it? I think in the next 50 years all this is going to be fairly common place in the developed world and I really hope I have confidence in the system that we have in place at that time.
    - happyscrappy 13y ago
      >but I hope one day we'll look back on this time and wonder what we were thinking by allowing digital goods to be closed source Yes, let's have the government mandate what license your code should have! Facepalm.
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  > It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android Is this only because of the app permissions model? AFAIK, other than that, Android per se isn't any less privacy-oriented than iOS. iOS apps also much more commonly retrieve various user data and marginally more often send data around unencrypted.
  - k-mcgrady 13y ago
    It's because I find Android works best when using Google's services and as I'm not paying for those (and they are using my info to sell ads) I trust Apple more to protect my data (it's in their interest).
    - jhvh1134 13y ago
      Weren't they recently caught silently logging GPS coordinates and transmitting them once the phone was connected to a computer? How is it not in there interest to utilize personalized data?
    - psbp 13y ago
      Aren't Google's ad monetization practices fairly transparent? You can see all the data collected in the dashboard, you can see how ads are targeted under the ad settings. It seems like people are alluding to Google's data usage as some sort of black box where it seems pretty open to me.
      - nfoz 13y ago
        Their practices are fairly transparent, they show me that they sell my info in a way that I dislike.
        psbp 13y ago
        Selling info is a misnomer.
        hahainternet 13y ago
        Except they don't. They sell your potential clicks.
- nawitus 13y ago
  >I'm always surprised at the number of friends and family I see who have their Facebook set to public - especially considering what they post. I think that's actually smart. In reality the privacy setting on Facebook has no real effect on privacy, because companies and the NSA will still get your information. You might as well treat everything you post on Facebook as public.
  - astrange 13y ago
    > because companies Which companies? > the NSA You mean, law enforcement agencies who specifically request your information with a subpoena?
smokinjoe 13y ago
More and more I'm thinking that some sort of Digital Bill of Rights is necessary to carry on in this technological-based World. At first I always thought of it as a nice thing, but perhaps a little too abstract or extreme to really do what it needs to do. However now we have some very large and real threats to our personal lives via this medium. I just feel like it makes a lot of good sense to produce something of the sort. I'm also naive enough to believe that it isn't too late to attempt to establish such a document and have it not contain all sorts of loopholes that would render it useless. I can understand why the feds want to monitor the Internet and various communications, however there needs to be that pushback, that line drawn where we can hold their overreach accountable. It may not always work, but there needs to be something that us ordinary citizens can lean back on for protection.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  One approach would be to require that a person/group/company that is aggregating information report the storage and use of the information to the people in the database. You could have some arbitrary cutoffs, like don't worry about information on less than 1000 people or stored less than 3 months (or whatever numbers you want to pick out of the air, the point is that the threshold for reporting might not be 0). What I think this might do in many cases is make storing the information more expensive than any value derived from it. It also gives people a chance to learn that the water company is sharing their usage with the police (or whatever).
- AndrewKemendo 13y ago
  I think a Digital bill of rights is great, but completely unenforceable. Largely because the powers that would be enforcing it wouldn't desire to be signatories.
  - smokinjoe 13y ago
    That's just one of the issues - however like I said, I'm naive enough to believe (and donate/protest/assemble) if there was a strong enough movement for it.
- 13y ago
dictum 13y ago
> in my nation (India) being gay is illegal Sorry for the flame material, but why is it that this is rarely mentioned in western news media (at least in the countries whose news I follow)? For those who, like me, didn't know that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_India
- hugofirth 13y ago
  It is odd - there was uproar around the Russian propaganda laws regarding Homosexual relationships running up to the winter olympics (and rightly so! I am not suggesting otherwise). Yet, I (who, perhaps arrogantly, consider myself fairly well informed) had absolutely no idea that homosexuality is illegal in India. This is wtf-worthy.
  - wutbrodo 13y ago
    This was the case in something like 15 us States until the Supreme Court struck it down.... In 2003. (far more States are included if you go back just another decade) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_Sta...
  - chaosmonkey 13y ago
    It's really incompetence. The issue went to the supreme court and they said this matter is for the legislature to decide. The good thing (unlike Russia) is that almost everyone from the ruling government, media, public, etc want this law abolished.
    - 0x006A 13y ago
      Sadly that is not true. The right-wing party, that will most likely win the upcoming elections, will never approve an amendment to change this through parliament. The judge that reverted the supreme court decision if fully aware of this and it was a political decision on his side.
  - DominikR 13y ago
pizza234 13y ago
Watch out, because it's a common (and extremely dangerous) misconception that personal data abuses afflict only people who are perceived (or perceive theirselves) as criminal. There are two reasons. First, legal systems with an excessive power in the hands of the prosecution can take an ordinary, civil citizen, and legally rape him (this description was used some time ago on an HN article) Second, anybody that lives a regular life has secrets to hide; this is just a fact. And that secrets will be abused if it would be instrumental to the authorities. I've said "extremely dangerous" - why? Because data collection today is considered/perceived/felt as a big nuisance, but not much more. In reality, it's an oppression instrument, and it's not perceived by the general population just because they're not in prominent positions towards the government.
- danford 13y ago
  Don't forget that even if you believe you can trust the entity collecting the information, can you trust all the persons that have access to it? Is it inconceivable to believe that people who work for the Chinese government have never sold top secret data to US officials or even corporations? Why couldn't an NSA employee do the same thing? What if the NSA's servers weren't as secure as they thought they were?

k-mcgrady 13y ago

I find myself also questioning this often. It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android, Google services and Apple services. Ideally I would like privacy but I think as we go forward keeping privacy would leave you in the same kind of position someone like RMS is in by sticking to his Free Software philosophy so strongly. I'm always surprised at the number of friends and family I see who have their Facebook set to public - especially considering what they post. When I tell them they don't care. I think the majority of people want some semblance of privacy but they are willing to give up a lot for the efficiency these new products, that require us to give up privacy, provide.

Touche 13y ago
> I'm always surprised at the number of friends and family I see who have their Facebook set to public - especially considering what they post. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they are set to public by default... in fact, IIRC they even reset everyone to public when they released that "feature" a couple of years ago. > When I tell them they don't care. I think the majority of people want some semblance of privacy but they are willing to give up a lot for the efficiency these new products, that require us to give up privacy, provide. Sure, and smokers are willing to risk a slow painful death to forgo the pain of quitting. Humans are short-term thinkers.
lutusp 13y ago
> It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android, Google services and Apple services. The difference between Apple and Google has recently occurred to me: with Apple, their secrets are in jeopardy. With Google, yours are.
- danford 13y ago
  I feel the only reason your secrets may not be in jeopardy with Apple is because they don't know as many... If you really want your secrets to be safe you wouldn't use any closed source code at all and would take security precautions to secure the code you do use. Unfortunately we live in a time when closed-source software is the norm and too many people think having a secure, open, communications infrastructure is too complicated and don't quite understand the reasoning behind it (thankfully that attitude seems to be changing a little), but I hope one day we'll look back on this time and wonder what we were thinking by allowing digital goods to be closed source. With 3D printers, neural implants, augmented reality, food and organ printers, and the age of automation, what the future holds is a digital realm that's going to be very scary for people who understand it, especially if the infrastructure is completely owned by corporations and un-trustable governments and even a small amount of the source is closed. I mean look around the room and think of all the things that could be augmented or replaced with 3D printed components.. Why have a physical laptop in front of you when you can augment the key board, 25 screens, and everything else? Not only that, but you can do it for nothing if you know how to code it. We can already print organs and I don't think it will be too long until we can print good tasting food, but what if you execute some code on your food printer that prints a steak with anthrax in it? I think in the next 50 years all this is going to be fairly common place in the developed world and I really hope I have confidence in the system that we have in place at that time.
  - happyscrappy 13y ago
    >but I hope one day we'll look back on this time and wonder what we were thinking by allowing digital goods to be closed source Yes, let's have the government mandate what license your code should have! Facepalm.
wutbrodo 13y ago
> It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android Is this only because of the app permissions model? AFAIK, other than that, Android per se isn't any less privacy-oriented than iOS. iOS apps also much more commonly retrieve various user data and marginally more often send data around unencrypted.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  It's because I find Android works best when using Google's services and as I'm not paying for those (and they are using my info to sell ads) I trust Apple more to protect my data (it's in their interest).
  - jhvh1134 13y ago
    Weren't they recently caught silently logging GPS coordinates and transmitting them once the phone was connected to a computer? How is it not in there interest to utilize personalized data?
  - psbp 13y ago
    Aren't Google's ad monetization practices fairly transparent? You can see all the data collected in the dashboard, you can see how ads are targeted under the ad settings. It seems like people are alluding to Google's data usage as some sort of black box where it seems pretty open to me.
    - nfoz 13y ago
      Their practices are fairly transparent, they show me that they sell my info in a way that I dislike.
      - psbp 13y ago
        Selling info is a misnomer.
      - hahainternet 13y ago
        Except they don't. They sell your potential clicks.
nawitus 13y ago
>I'm always surprised at the number of friends and family I see who have their Facebook set to public - especially considering what they post. I think that's actually smart. In reality the privacy setting on Facebook has no real effect on privacy, because companies and the NSA will still get your information. You might as well treat everything you post on Facebook as public.
- astrange 13y ago
  > because companies Which companies? > the NSA You mean, law enforcement agencies who specifically request your information with a subpoena?

smokinjoe 13y ago

More and more I'm thinking that some sort of Digital Bill of Rights is necessary to carry on in this technological-based World. At first I always thought of it as a nice thing, but perhaps a little too abstract or extreme to really do what it needs to do. However now we have some very large and real threats to our personal lives via this medium. I just feel like it makes a lot of good sense to produce something of the sort. I'm also naive enough to believe that it isn't too late to attempt to establish such a document and have it not contain all sorts of loopholes that would render it useless. I can understand why the feds want to monitor the Internet and various communications, however there needs to be that pushback, that line drawn where we can hold their overreach accountable. It may not always work, but there needs to be something that us ordinary citizens can lean back on for protection.

maxerickson 13y ago
One approach would be to require that a person/group/company that is aggregating information report the storage and use of the information to the people in the database. You could have some arbitrary cutoffs, like don't worry about information on less than 1000 people or stored less than 3 months (or whatever numbers you want to pick out of the air, the point is that the threshold for reporting might not be 0). What I think this might do in many cases is make storing the information more expensive than any value derived from it. It also gives people a chance to learn that the water company is sharing their usage with the police (or whatever).
AndrewKemendo 13y ago
I think a Digital bill of rights is great, but completely unenforceable. Largely because the powers that would be enforcing it wouldn't desire to be signatories.
- smokinjoe 13y ago
  That's just one of the issues - however like I said, I'm naive enough to believe (and donate/protest/assemble) if there was a strong enough movement for it.
13y ago

dictum 13y ago

> in my nation (India) being gay is illegal Sorry for the flame material, but why is it that this is rarely mentioned in western news media (at least in the countries whose news I follow)? For those who, like me, didn't know that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_India

hugofirth 13y ago
It is odd - there was uproar around the Russian propaganda laws regarding Homosexual relationships running up to the winter olympics (and rightly so! I am not suggesting otherwise). Yet, I (who, perhaps arrogantly, consider myself fairly well informed) had absolutely no idea that homosexuality is illegal in India. This is wtf-worthy.
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  This was the case in something like 15 us States until the Supreme Court struck it down.... In 2003. (far more States are included if you go back just another decade) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_Sta...
- chaosmonkey 13y ago
  It's really incompetence. The issue went to the supreme court and they said this matter is for the legislature to decide. The good thing (unlike Russia) is that almost everyone from the ruling government, media, public, etc want this law abolished.
  - 0x006A 13y ago
    Sadly that is not true. The right-wing party, that will most likely win the upcoming elections, will never approve an amendment to change this through parliament. The judge that reverted the supreme court decision if fully aware of this and it was a political decision on his side.
- DominikR 13y ago

pizza234 13y ago

Watch out, because it's a common (and extremely dangerous) misconception that personal data abuses afflict only people who are perceived (or perceive theirselves) as criminal. There are two reasons. First, legal systems with an excessive power in the hands of the prosecution can take an ordinary, civil citizen, and legally rape him (this description was used some time ago on an HN article) Second, anybody that lives a regular life has secrets to hide; this is just a fact. And that secrets will be abused if it would be instrumental to the authorities. I've said "extremely dangerous" - why? Because data collection today is considered/perceived/felt as a big nuisance, but not much more. In reality, it's an oppression instrument, and it's not perceived by the general population just because they're not in prominent positions towards the government.

danford 13y ago
Don't forget that even if you believe you can trust the entity collecting the information, can you trust all the persons that have access to it? Is it inconceivable to believe that people who work for the Chinese government have never sold top secret data to US officials or even corporations? Why couldn't an NSA employee do the same thing? What if the NSA's servers weren't as secure as they thought they were?