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We need a Butlerian Jihad against surveillance. You know what will never stop this? Posts on hacker news. Letters to your congressman (LG can donate a fuqton m

by tedks 12y ago

We need a Butlerian Jihad against surveillance. You know what will never stop this? Posts on hacker news. Letters to your congressman (LG can donate a fuqton more to his re-election campaign than you can). Voting with your dollar (people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between). You know what will? Taking these TVs into the street, smashing and burning them. Mobs storming Best Buy and smashing the surveillance cameras built into these telescreens. Bricks through the window of every mercenary selling your privacy, selling a live feed right to your living room, to the NSA/FBI/creepy internet hackers. It's really hard to get people to commit to sustained, long-term action -- that's why boycotts are not effective and why this trend has continued. But people are actually angry about this and that anger can be fueled into displays of acute disapproval. Like burning a pile of spy TVs in the street and then flipping the cop car that comes to defend the surveillance state and burning that too. Pretty sure this will get downvoted because anything outside the blandly acceptable boring-as-fuck politics always gets downvoted. But just keep in mind that you need to break a few eggs to make an omelet, and the power structures of the world pretty much only respond to Arab Spring-esque events now. We need to make every digital dictator afraid of becoming the next Gaddafi.

ilaksh 12y ago
Well, in my "bat shit insane" reality, the Arab Spring was actually mainly a cyber-intelligence operation on Facebook designed to get Mubarek out of the way so they could get better access to Libya. Mubarek had blocked a previous Libyan invasion attempt in the 80s. And actually Gaddafi was the ultimate non-boring active protester. If you knew what he actually did, instead of the mythological version of events, he is basically your poster child. Gaddafi got got because he wanted to get away from the petrodollar dictatorship. The reality is that there are very serious challenges, not insurmountable, but problems that haven't actually had solutions engineered yet. And the institutions and even deeper, the belief systems that form our global operating framework, are completely outdated. Leading edge technology has already made governments obsolete in some sense. Eventually, I believe that distributed technologies will make traditional governments, and a traditional operating mode based on deadly force and amoral behavior, irrelevant and passe.
- coldtea 12y ago
  All those are almost impossible to comprehend if you were brought up with the same BS "US national interests" version of the News since the eighties, but laughably trivial for most Europeans. That's how you get Bush twice re-elected, or believe that Obama is some kind of great "hope".
coldtea 12y ago
>You know what will never stop this? Posts on hacker news. Letters to your congressman (LG can donate a fuqton more to his re-election campaign than you can). Plus it's not just LG that wants that kind of data. It's the government itself.
jsaxton86 12y ago
Do you think destroying technology and flipping cop cars is going to end the surveillance state? While an interesting thought experiment, it seems unlikely. If anything, it would give the pro-surveillance lobby enough political capital to further reduce whatever legal privacy protection we already have.
- authatheist 12y ago
  There is no "privacy protection". The organization that supposedly protects our privacy is the exact same one we need protection from. It's like a bunch of sheep trusting that wolves will protect them from getting eaten by wolves.
  - trhway 12y ago
    but if the wolves are smart a bit, the sheep can trust that the wolves would eat them in moderation and in orderly fashion as to avoid starving themselves when all the sheep are suddenly eaten.
    - authatheist 12y ago
      That's beside the point, and of no comfort to the sheep that get eaten.
ElDiablo666 12y ago
I'm totally fine with your exciting-as-fuck politics but it will be difficult to get people to that point any time soon, me thinks. I think the problem is that when you say things like "these things don't work" you're glossing over the key to why they don't work: people aren't organized. That's it. It may not be glamorous or fun like tossing over the pigmobile but it's proven to work every single time throughout history. Let's look at boycotts. The problem with boycotts isn't that they're not effective; they can be. My family participated in a successful one against Iceland's whaling policies in the 80s and even though I was young, I never forgot why we did it and that it was right. So what's the problem? They ignore institutional structures that persist despite our actions. If one particular corporation strays too far, boycott pressure is effective. Don't forget how it played into bringing down South African apartheid. My point here is that we don't need to go looking for new solutions. Good old fashioned organizing works. It does combat LG's bought politicians--remember my friend, we still have democratic institutions and we can vote anyone we want into office. People don't like to be reminded of what really works, I think. We need socialism. We need to vote them into office and make good privacy laws. That's that. No need to reinvent the wheel. Then we can talk about an informal technocracy democratically dissolving the state into libertarian socialist anarcho-communism.
- authatheist 12y ago
  He already pointed out that voting or writing to "your" representatives doesn't work, but ypu're still calling for some sort of democratic solution. Please stop.
  - sounds 12y ago
    Actually it's interesting to watch you take the contrary position on an internet forum, but without a concrete call to action. That was his point: what are you going to _do_? I work on a solution to this particular problem every day. I don't just write on the internet about it. Put up or shut up.
    - authatheist 12y ago
      My "solution" is to wake people up to the fact that we should not have rulers at all. That's the only way to achieve a non-nightmarish future in the long term. People see tyranny creeping up all over the West, for example, but it doesn't occur to them that instead of asking our rulers to please not oppress us, we should stop believing in their authority altogether. You have your activism, and I have mine.
rtpg 12y ago
The thing that's missing in this is not that people don't care , it's that a lot of these things are attached to _useful things_. I like my webcam. I can have a skype video chat with someone halfway across the world. Sure, the NSA might watch me in my sleep, and that sucks (I do think rule of law works), but hey. I like that google is data mining my emails. Google Now is amazing, reminds me of things like my flights because it goes through it. If that allows them to show somewhat creepy ads, so be it (google is a lot more subtle with their ads than they could be). The service is cool Also, Rule of Law works. Consumer privacy protection laws exist in the EU, and companies that don't respect it can suffer greatly. So the NSA might not fall under that, but I'm much more comfortable with the NSA looking at me than corporations (though I'd rather have neither). And we _can_ push back on the surveillance apparatus (Church Commission and the like). Really don't need to burn down everything to get things done.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - rtpg 12y ago
    I said more comfortable, not comfortable. I'm for legislative pushback on recent actions of the NSA (as have happened in the past with them or the FBI).
- authatheist 12y ago
  It's absolutely ludicrous to claim that the Rule of Law™ works when, as a random example, highway patrol officers are routinely stopping drivers for the express purpose of confiscating any money they find.
psychometry 12y ago
It's easy to implore others to commit crimes on behalf of your personal philosophy. It's much harder to lead the way and do it yourself.
d23 12y ago
If you don't think you're going to be able to get people riled up enough to stop purchasing the TVs, what makes you think you're going to have them vandalizing private property?
- jamesaguilar 12y ago
  That would be a little thing called wishful thinking. Personally, I think the reason people aren't up in arms is pretty clear. People get up in arms about things that harm them -- oppressive governments (Arab Spring), desperate economic conditions (Ukraine), etc. Real stuff. People don't get up in arms about tracking because it does not hurt them. Not: does not hurt them except in subtle ways they don't even notice. It doesn't hurt them at all, with very few exceptions. That's all there is to it.
CurtMonash 12y ago
I disagree, but I upvoted you anyway for the Dune reference.
vacri 12y ago
Pretty sure this will get downvoted because anything outside the blandly acceptable boring-as-fuck politics always gets downvoted. I love how people set themselves up to 'win' like this if people don't like what they're saying. "If people vote me up, I'm right. If people vote me down, I'm right". Frankly, it's a 'boring-as-fuck' ploy and unfortunately it's on the rise at HN. Learn to take your lumps like a damned adult, and don't make passive-aggressive remarks about people who might downvote you. People can think that you're full of shit without having to subscribe to mainstream viewpoints.
- tedks 12y ago
  You can look at my post history and see I'm totally comfortable with getting downvoted. Downvotes or upvotes don't make me right or wrong, though. I'm actually totally shocked that comment is above negative right now. But it doesn't make me any righter.
saraid216 12y ago
> But just keep in mind that you need to break a few eggs to make an omelet No, no. The full quote is, "But you can't make an omelette without ruthlessly crushing dozens of eggs beneath your steel boot and then publicly disemboweling the chickens that laid them as a warning to others."
diminoten 12y ago
I just don't understand why I'm not allowed to give away my privacy for convenience, in your eyes. I think you'd be surprised at a) how many people realize they're having their data collected and b) how few people care. Is it a risk? Yes. So is driving a car, but I'm not willing to put up with the inconvenience of not being able to drive somewhere.
- rqebmm 12y ago
  This is true, but there's a bigger problem than the mere fact that a lot of data is being collected. It's how transparent companies are about the data that's collected, along with how long it's stored and who has access to it. One might be fine with having their TV scan their face, but does that mean they're okay with that scan being transported to someone else's servers? Who now owns that information? Can the manufacturer sell that to someone else without telling you? This kind of information shouldn't be buried in 46 pages of legalese. Many people aren't aware that Siri functions by sending your voice off to Apple's servers for processing, let alone knowing whether that means that Apple now owns those recordings of their voices. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but the Average Joe isn't going to read the 50 page ToS, let alone be able to accurately parse it. And if Apple chooses to keep that data for themselves, they aren't exactly incentivized to tell people that they now own this information and can resell it.
  - diminoten 12y ago
    I think the readers of this website vastly underestimate how much the average person understands, and vastly overestimate how much the average person values their privacy. It's starting to get annoying, the folks who want to start a "privacy revolution" even when no one's asking them to.
    - loup-vaillant 12y ago
      I think it would be more accurate to say that people vastly underestimate how they actually value their own privacy. Remember the Holocaust? Well, one thing that helped was an initially mostly harmless ethnic census conducted by Napoleon. Then the Nazi got hold of that data, and used it. Oops. Not that you or your descendants actually risk being put down in the gaz chamber because you turn on your TV, but there's a whole range of nasty stuff that can happen between nothing and summary execution.
bcx 12y ago
Out of curiosity how many aspects of this TV could also be applied to your laptop. 1) It has a webcam 2) It has a microphone 3) You install software all the time that has access to both of these things. 3) Practically everything you do on it is tracked, cookied, and shared. (Sure some companies probably respect Do-Not-Track, but everyone?) 4) Do you realize that facebook knows your age, all of your friends, your demographics, and has like buttons on most pages on the internet. They are also about to launch a big ad platform to help others leverage that knowledge to place ads. 5) Google knows everything in your inbox. Your Xbox has gesture control and voice command too. If you are going to smash TVs, you probably should smash your laptop, and your xbox. I don't think a few burning TVs in the streets are going to change anything. You'll need to think bigger :-)
- sounds 12y ago
  If you're really into avoiding these, at least on a laptop you can: 1) Use a blob-free OS like Trisquel. Heh, your webcam may not have drivers in Trisquel. Or tape over it. 2) Trisquel also. 3) Trisquel also. Another good alternative is TAILS. 4) Use IceWeasel (Firefox source code) and the RequestPolicy extension. 5) Use DuckDuckGo or another anonymizing proxy. I agree with you though, that we must think bigger than buying TVs so we can smash them.
  - JetSpiegel 12y ago
    RequestPolicy is cool, but there's a new addon called Policeman that gives more fine-grained control. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/policeman/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/policeman/
- serf 12y ago
  yeah, but there are answers for a laptop to nearly every one of your bullets. I can't modify the hardware on a television reasonably, I can't change the operating system reasonably, nor can I modify the loaded software. I can't choose to run the server that it phones home to. I can remove my laptop's webcam, or order one without. Same for a mic (lenovo/dell/hp have 'government specials' -- laptops without mics/cams/antennas), I can review the software I install, I can change it, etc. I can run my own email server. One system enables the user to have power over the system itself, one doesn't. We need to stress the importance of users' power and ensure it for the future. Don't buy such walled systems until the walls are removed so as to enable them to be functioning members of our user-centric society, rather than their profit-centric walled garden.
chez17 12y ago
Real life is boring, sorry. Posts like this are all talk. It's a fantasy that makes you feel good inside. Go ahead. Throw the first brick.
xnull2guest 12y ago
Posting to Hacker News does do something though. Not in isolation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic) There's something very powerful when I know what you think, and then you know that I know what you think. When mass understanding foments, common knowledge kicks in and there will be (it's already in the works) a sort of large scale adknowledgement that this is the will of not only us as individuals, but also us as masses. [I will leave my usually blurb about documented programs in the US and elsewhere that specifically target and derail the forming of such community consensus and on the flip side manipulate media to create desirable consensus.] Posts on Hacker News will only go so far, but as a community that makes recommendations and gives technical advice and knowledge to the broader community - and as patriots and democratic citizens - we can (and I do) discuss these issues without bashfulness to everyone we are close with. People care. Old people care and young people care. Democrats, Republicans, Centrists, and Populists care. Religious people care. So do atheists. Information is key and the media has a really poor record - even (especially) with the handling of the Snowden disclosures. The EFF and ACLU can only bring so many cases to court. _We_ need to be the reliable source of information - for those who look to us for technical advice and information. And we need to demand an option during elections. This next (national) election is going to be another 'security year'. Screw that. Neither Ebola nor ISIS pose a credible threat to the United States. The real issues are class issues, democratic issues, police state issues, social issues, etc. Your vote doesn't count for a whole lot. But all of our voices (for the most part) do. Man, it's depressing I had to qualify that... Anyway - posting to HN absolutely contributes. It just isn't the only place you should have your voice heard.
- walterbell 12y ago
  Let's not forget that if you're a hacker news reader who works for a consumer electronics manufacturer, you have an opportunity to come up with creative technological solutions that are privacy preserving, opt-in, respectful of home boundaries and good for business. There is no technical reason why good for business must mean bad for consumer.
forgottenacc56 12y ago
You're clearly a terrorist. Or whatever the correct synonym is for an American who disagrees with authority.
- TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
  I would say 'dysphemism' rather than synonym. (Edit, forgot a word).
kristiandupont 12y ago
>"people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between" >"people are actually angry about this" So which is it? Do people care or not? Would the purpose of storming Best Buy be to inform the masses or to scare the management of LG?
andrewfong 12y ago
> You know what will never stop this? [...] Voting with your dollar (people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between). I disagree. I think voting with your dollar works pretty well actually. Case-in-point: The recent uproar over the Xbox One's Kinect. The original plan called for the Kinect to be a required component and for the microphone to always be on. Thanks to consumer backlash, Microsoft backpedaled on the always-on requirement pretty quickly, and they've started selling Kinect-less Xbox Ones as well. Part of this is because Sony did an excellent job of capitalizing on these mis-steps with the PS4. Because there's no reason a competitor can't do the same against these smart TVs. You don't need customers to read the privacy policy; you just need to tell them that "the TV is telling Uncle Sam when you have sex."
mkesper 12y ago
Come on, this is bullshit. I cannot say about your congressmen but any enterprise will care if their goods will not get bought. And there comes the first step: You must educate people about their needs of privacy. Just smashing things to peaces does not help at all, it's maybe attracting hateful activists but not giving understanding.

by tedks 12y ago

ilaksh 12y ago

Well, in my "bat shit insane" reality, the Arab Spring was actually mainly a cyber-intelligence operation on Facebook designed to get Mubarek out of the way so they could get better access to Libya. Mubarek had blocked a previous Libyan invasion attempt in the 80s. And actually Gaddafi was the ultimate non-boring active protester. If you knew what he actually did, instead of the mythological version of events, he is basically your poster child. Gaddafi got got because he wanted to get away from the petrodollar dictatorship. The reality is that there are very serious challenges, not insurmountable, but problems that haven't actually had solutions engineered yet. And the institutions and even deeper, the belief systems that form our global operating framework, are completely outdated. Leading edge technology has already made governments obsolete in some sense. Eventually, I believe that distributed technologies will make traditional governments, and a traditional operating mode based on deadly force and amoral behavior, irrelevant and passe.

coldtea 12y ago
All those are almost impossible to comprehend if you were brought up with the same BS "US national interests" version of the News since the eighties, but laughably trivial for most Europeans. That's how you get Bush twice re-elected, or believe that Obama is some kind of great "hope".

coldtea 12y ago

>You know what will never stop this? Posts on hacker news. Letters to your congressman (LG can donate a fuqton more to his re-election campaign than you can). Plus it's not just LG that wants that kind of data. It's the government itself.

jsaxton86 12y ago

Do you think destroying technology and flipping cop cars is going to end the surveillance state? While an interesting thought experiment, it seems unlikely. If anything, it would give the pro-surveillance lobby enough political capital to further reduce whatever legal privacy protection we already have.

authatheist 12y ago
There is no "privacy protection". The organization that supposedly protects our privacy is the exact same one we need protection from. It's like a bunch of sheep trusting that wolves will protect them from getting eaten by wolves.
- trhway 12y ago
  but if the wolves are smart a bit, the sheep can trust that the wolves would eat them in moderation and in orderly fashion as to avoid starving themselves when all the sheep are suddenly eaten.
  - authatheist 12y ago
    That's beside the point, and of no comfort to the sheep that get eaten.

ElDiablo666 12y ago

I'm totally fine with your exciting-as-fuck politics but it will be difficult to get people to that point any time soon, me thinks. I think the problem is that when you say things like "these things don't work" you're glossing over the key to why they don't work: people aren't organized. That's it. It may not be glamorous or fun like tossing over the pigmobile but it's proven to work every single time throughout history. Let's look at boycotts. The problem with boycotts isn't that they're not effective; they can be. My family participated in a successful one against Iceland's whaling policies in the 80s and even though I was young, I never forgot why we did it and that it was right. So what's the problem? They ignore institutional structures that persist despite our actions. If one particular corporation strays too far, boycott pressure is effective. Don't forget how it played into bringing down South African apartheid. My point here is that we don't need to go looking for new solutions. Good old fashioned organizing works. It does combat LG's bought politicians--remember my friend, we still have democratic institutions and we can vote anyone we want into office. People don't like to be reminded of what really works, I think. We need socialism. We need to vote them into office and make good privacy laws. That's that. No need to reinvent the wheel. Then we can talk about an informal technocracy democratically dissolving the state into libertarian socialist anarcho-communism.

authatheist 12y ago
He already pointed out that voting or writing to "your" representatives doesn't work, but ypu're still calling for some sort of democratic solution. Please stop.
- sounds 12y ago
  Actually it's interesting to watch you take the contrary position on an internet forum, but without a concrete call to action. That was his point: what are you going to _do_? I work on a solution to this particular problem every day. I don't just write on the internet about it. Put up or shut up.
  - authatheist 12y ago
    My "solution" is to wake people up to the fact that we should not have rulers at all. That's the only way to achieve a non-nightmarish future in the long term. People see tyranny creeping up all over the West, for example, but it doesn't occur to them that instead of asking our rulers to please not oppress us, we should stop believing in their authority altogether. You have your activism, and I have mine.

rtpg 12y ago

The thing that's missing in this is not that people don't care , it's that a lot of these things are attached to _useful things_. I like my webcam. I can have a skype video chat with someone halfway across the world. Sure, the NSA might watch me in my sleep, and that sucks (I do think rule of law works), but hey. I like that google is data mining my emails. Google Now is amazing, reminds me of things like my flights because it goes through it. If that allows them to show somewhat creepy ads, so be it (google is a lot more subtle with their ads than they could be). The service is cool Also, Rule of Law works. Consumer privacy protection laws exist in the EU, and companies that don't respect it can suffer greatly. So the NSA might not fall under that, but I'm much more comfortable with the NSA looking at me than corporations (though I'd rather have neither). And we _can_ push back on the surveillance apparatus (Church Commission and the like). Really don't need to burn down everything to get things done.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- rtpg 12y ago
  I said more comfortable, not comfortable. I'm for legislative pushback on recent actions of the NSA (as have happened in the past with them or the FBI).
authatheist 12y ago
It's absolutely ludicrous to claim that the Rule of Law™ works when, as a random example, highway patrol officers are routinely stopping drivers for the express purpose of confiscating any money they find.

psychometry 12y ago

It's easy to implore others to commit crimes on behalf of your personal philosophy. It's much harder to lead the way and do it yourself.

d23 12y ago

If you don't think you're going to be able to get people riled up enough to stop purchasing the TVs, what makes you think you're going to have them vandalizing private property?

jamesaguilar 12y ago
That would be a little thing called wishful thinking. Personally, I think the reason people aren't up in arms is pretty clear. People get up in arms about things that harm them -- oppressive governments (Arab Spring), desperate economic conditions (Ukraine), etc. Real stuff. People don't get up in arms about tracking because it does not hurt them. Not: does not hurt them except in subtle ways they don't even notice. It doesn't hurt them at all, with very few exceptions. That's all there is to it.

CurtMonash 12y ago

I disagree, but I upvoted you anyway for the Dune reference.

vacri 12y ago

Pretty sure this will get downvoted because anything outside the blandly acceptable boring-as-fuck politics always gets downvoted. I love how people set themselves up to 'win' like this if people don't like what they're saying. "If people vote me up, I'm right. If people vote me down, I'm right". Frankly, it's a 'boring-as-fuck' ploy and unfortunately it's on the rise at HN. Learn to take your lumps like a damned adult, and don't make passive-aggressive remarks about people who might downvote you. People can think that you're full of shit without having to subscribe to mainstream viewpoints.

tedks 12y ago
You can look at my post history and see I'm totally comfortable with getting downvoted. Downvotes or upvotes don't make me right or wrong, though. I'm actually totally shocked that comment is above negative right now. But it doesn't make me any righter.

saraid216 12y ago

> But just keep in mind that you need to break a few eggs to make an omelet No, no. The full quote is, "But you can't make an omelette without ruthlessly crushing dozens of eggs beneath your steel boot and then publicly disemboweling the chickens that laid them as a warning to others."

diminoten 12y ago

I just don't understand why I'm not allowed to give away my privacy for convenience, in your eyes. I think you'd be surprised at a) how many people realize they're having their data collected and b) how few people care. Is it a risk? Yes. So is driving a car, but I'm not willing to put up with the inconvenience of not being able to drive somewhere.

rqebmm 12y ago
This is true, but there's a bigger problem than the mere fact that a lot of data is being collected. It's how transparent companies are about the data that's collected, along with how long it's stored and who has access to it. One might be fine with having their TV scan their face, but does that mean they're okay with that scan being transported to someone else's servers? Who now owns that information? Can the manufacturer sell that to someone else without telling you? This kind of information shouldn't be buried in 46 pages of legalese. Many people aren't aware that Siri functions by sending your voice off to Apple's servers for processing, let alone knowing whether that means that Apple now owns those recordings of their voices. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but the Average Joe isn't going to read the 50 page ToS, let alone be able to accurately parse it. And if Apple chooses to keep that data for themselves, they aren't exactly incentivized to tell people that they now own this information and can resell it.
- diminoten 12y ago
  I think the readers of this website vastly underestimate how much the average person understands, and vastly overestimate how much the average person values their privacy. It's starting to get annoying, the folks who want to start a "privacy revolution" even when no one's asking them to.
  - loup-vaillant 12y ago
    I think it would be more accurate to say that people vastly underestimate how they actually value their own privacy. Remember the Holocaust? Well, one thing that helped was an initially mostly harmless ethnic census conducted by Napoleon. Then the Nazi got hold of that data, and used it. Oops. Not that you or your descendants actually risk being put down in the gaz chamber because you turn on your TV, but there's a whole range of nasty stuff that can happen between nothing and summary execution.

bcx 12y ago

Out of curiosity how many aspects of this TV could also be applied to your laptop. 1) It has a webcam 2) It has a microphone 3) You install software all the time that has access to both of these things. 3) Practically everything you do on it is tracked, cookied, and shared. (Sure some companies probably respect Do-Not-Track, but everyone?) 4) Do you realize that facebook knows your age, all of your friends, your demographics, and has like buttons on most pages on the internet. They are also about to launch a big ad platform to help others leverage that knowledge to place ads. 5) Google knows everything in your inbox. Your Xbox has gesture control and voice command too. If you are going to smash TVs, you probably should smash your laptop, and your xbox. I don't think a few burning TVs in the streets are going to change anything. You'll need to think bigger :-)

sounds 12y ago
If you're really into avoiding these, at least on a laptop you can: 1) Use a blob-free OS like Trisquel. Heh, your webcam may not have drivers in Trisquel. Or tape over it. 2) Trisquel also. 3) Trisquel also. Another good alternative is TAILS. 4) Use IceWeasel (Firefox source code) and the RequestPolicy extension. 5) Use DuckDuckGo or another anonymizing proxy. I agree with you though, that we must think bigger than buying TVs so we can smash them.
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  RequestPolicy is cool, but there's a new addon called Policeman that gives more fine-grained control. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/policeman/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/policeman/
serf 12y ago
yeah, but there are answers for a laptop to nearly every one of your bullets. I can't modify the hardware on a television reasonably, I can't change the operating system reasonably, nor can I modify the loaded software. I can't choose to run the server that it phones home to. I can remove my laptop's webcam, or order one without. Same for a mic (lenovo/dell/hp have 'government specials' -- laptops without mics/cams/antennas), I can review the software I install, I can change it, etc. I can run my own email server. One system enables the user to have power over the system itself, one doesn't. We need to stress the importance of users' power and ensure it for the future. Don't buy such walled systems until the walls are removed so as to enable them to be functioning members of our user-centric society, rather than their profit-centric walled garden.

chez17 12y ago

Real life is boring, sorry. Posts like this are all talk. It's a fantasy that makes you feel good inside. Go ahead. Throw the first brick.

xnull2guest 12y ago

Posting to Hacker News does do something though. Not in isolation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic) There's something very powerful when I know what you think, and then you know that I know what you think. When mass understanding foments, common knowledge kicks in and there will be (it's already in the works) a sort of large scale adknowledgement that this is the will of not only us as individuals, but also us as masses. [I will leave my usually blurb about documented programs in the US and elsewhere that specifically target and derail the forming of such community consensus and on the flip side manipulate media to create desirable consensus.] Posts on Hacker News will only go so far, but as a community that makes recommendations and gives technical advice and knowledge to the broader community - and as patriots and democratic citizens - we can (and I do) discuss these issues without bashfulness to everyone we are close with. People care. Old people care and young people care. Democrats, Republicans, Centrists, and Populists care. Religious people care. So do atheists. Information is key and the media has a really poor record - even (especially) with the handling of the Snowden disclosures. The EFF and ACLU can only bring so many cases to court. _We_ need to be the reliable source of information - for those who look to us for technical advice and information. And we need to demand an option during elections. This next (national) election is going to be another 'security year'. Screw that. Neither Ebola nor ISIS pose a credible threat to the United States. The real issues are class issues, democratic issues, police state issues, social issues, etc. Your vote doesn't count for a whole lot. But all of our voices (for the most part) do. Man, it's depressing I had to qualify that... Anyway - posting to HN absolutely contributes. It just isn't the only place you should have your voice heard.

walterbell 12y ago
Let's not forget that if you're a hacker news reader who works for a consumer electronics manufacturer, you have an opportunity to come up with creative technological solutions that are privacy preserving, opt-in, respectful of home boundaries and good for business. There is no technical reason why good for business must mean bad for consumer.

forgottenacc56 12y ago

You're clearly a terrorist. Or whatever the correct synonym is for an American who disagrees with authority.

TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
I would say 'dysphemism' rather than synonym. (Edit, forgot a word).

kristiandupont 12y ago

>"people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between" >"people are actually angry about this" So which is it? Do people care or not? Would the purpose of storming Best Buy be to inform the masses or to scare the management of LG?

andrewfong 12y ago

> You know what will never stop this? [...] Voting with your dollar (people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between). I disagree. I think voting with your dollar works pretty well actually. Case-in-point: The recent uproar over the Xbox One's Kinect. The original plan called for the Kinect to be a required component and for the microphone to always be on. Thanks to consumer backlash, Microsoft backpedaled on the always-on requirement pretty quickly, and they've started selling Kinect-less Xbox Ones as well. Part of this is because Sony did an excellent job of capitalizing on these mis-steps with the PS4. Because there's no reason a competitor can't do the same against these smart TVs. You don't need customers to read the privacy policy; you just need to tell them that "the TV is telling Uncle Sam when you have sex."

mkesper 12y ago

Come on, this is bullshit. I cannot say about your congressmen but any enterprise will care if their goods will not get bought. And there comes the first step: You must educate people about their needs of privacy. Just smashing things to peaces does not help at all, it's maybe attracting hateful activists but not giving understanding.