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Good. All of this stealing of personal information as a business model is pretty ethically questionable. It's time that these companies come up with a revenue

by chroem- 12y ago

Good. All of this stealing of personal information as a business model is pretty ethically questionable. It's time that these companies come up with a revenue model that doesn't involve facilitating the profiling and persecution of individuals by government agencies and private interests such as HR.

japhyr 12y ago
> Good. All of this stealing of personal information as a business model is pretty ethically questionable. I agree that "stealing personal information as a business model" is something we should minimize. But is Edelson going after companies that are abusing personal information, or just any business that collects information, which might mean a payday for him or his clients?
- mhuffman 12y ago
  Even collecting it, without explicitly stating what you are going to do with it, should be punished and prohibited. If it can identify you, you should be clear what is to be done with it before you can make an informed decision to give it to someone.
  - jsprogrammer 12y ago
    On what basis?
    - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
      Basic human rights?
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    So if I listen to a person speak and deduce that they are Marathi without telling them I plan to do so, I should be punished? Suppose lady has a conversation with me and deduces that I'm a man whore (happened to me a couple of weeks ago). Should she also be punished? Or is it merely the act of making deductions with math that should be punished and prohibited? So if I use intuition and heuristics it's fine, but if I mentally apply Bayes rule I should be punished?
    - mhuffman 12y ago
      If you are she can do millions of those in your head and use it for profit without telling the people that you are going to do so, and how, then yes. You and her should be punished.
      - yummyfajitas 12y ago
        Accent detection is almost certainly thousands if not millions of calculations. So is white guy detection + overcharging for auto ride, let alone nice shoe detection plus upsell, emotion detection, or any of the thousands of things salespeople do every day.
        mhuffman 12y ago
        I think you misunderstand what I said -- not millions of calculations, millions of individualized data that uniquely identify a person, then use it without telling the person how. If people know you are using information to serve them a better ad, and agree to it, no problem -- if you have not made that clear, or use it for other purposes that they are not aware of, then it is a big problem and should be illegal.
        jsprogrammer 12y ago
        What about humans who recognize faces?
        yummyfajitas 12y ago
        It's unlikely that anyone has millions of data points on any individual. Thousands at most (possible exception: high resolution images, kind of like what human eyes process every day). Rather, ordinary data from across millions of people is combined to deliver better ads. Again, not very different from what most sales people do.
- kbenson 12y ago
  Today's ethical company that collects more information than needed but uses it responsibly is tomorrow's acquisition of choice by the less ethical mega-corp. These are not people, which you can have at least some hope will maintain some similar level of behavior across their life, these are companies, which are only constrained by the current leadership and the law. In this respect, leadership changes far too easily for my tastes.
- x0x0 12y ago
  That would be one of the downsides of outsourcing law enforcement to private, for profit, concerns. I'd support far more funding and enforcement actions for the ftc who can, should, and mostly do act in the public interest. But again, we decided to outsource law enforcement, so it's hardly fair to bitch that the private enforcers act in their own interests, to the extent that their and our interests differ.
_delirium 12y ago
Some of the text-message class actions were pretty justified as well imo. Besides straightforward spam (which like the old fax spam, costs recipients money), there was a whole ecosystem of fraudulent sign-ups to subscription services (sometimes called "cramming"). The telcos were forced to stop enabling that (at least allowing people to opt out) after settling some class-action suits.

by chroem- 12y ago

japhyr 12y ago

> Good. All of this stealing of personal information as a business model is pretty ethically questionable. I agree that "stealing personal information as a business model" is something we should minimize. But is Edelson going after companies that are abusing personal information, or just any business that collects information, which might mean a payday for him or his clients?

mhuffman 12y ago
Even collecting it, without explicitly stating what you are going to do with it, should be punished and prohibited. If it can identify you, you should be clear what is to be done with it before you can make an informed decision to give it to someone.
- jsprogrammer 12y ago
  On what basis?
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    Basic human rights?
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  So if I listen to a person speak and deduce that they are Marathi without telling them I plan to do so, I should be punished? Suppose lady has a conversation with me and deduces that I'm a man whore (happened to me a couple of weeks ago). Should she also be punished? Or is it merely the act of making deductions with math that should be punished and prohibited? So if I use intuition and heuristics it's fine, but if I mentally apply Bayes rule I should be punished?
  - mhuffman 12y ago
    If you are she can do millions of those in your head and use it for profit without telling the people that you are going to do so, and how, then yes. You and her should be punished.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      Accent detection is almost certainly thousands if not millions of calculations. So is white guy detection + overcharging for auto ride, let alone nice shoe detection plus upsell, emotion detection, or any of the thousands of things salespeople do every day.
      - mhuffman 12y ago
        I think you misunderstand what I said -- not millions of calculations, millions of individualized data that uniquely identify a person, then use it without telling the person how. If people know you are using information to serve them a better ad, and agree to it, no problem -- if you have not made that clear, or use it for other purposes that they are not aware of, then it is a big problem and should be illegal.
        jsprogrammer 12y ago
        What about humans who recognize faces?
        yummyfajitas 12y ago
        It's unlikely that anyone has millions of data points on any individual. Thousands at most (possible exception: high resolution images, kind of like what human eyes process every day). Rather, ordinary data from across millions of people is combined to deliver better ads. Again, not very different from what most sales people do.
kbenson 12y ago
Today's ethical company that collects more information than needed but uses it responsibly is tomorrow's acquisition of choice by the less ethical mega-corp. These are not people, which you can have at least some hope will maintain some similar level of behavior across their life, these are companies, which are only constrained by the current leadership and the law. In this respect, leadership changes far too easily for my tastes.
x0x0 12y ago
That would be one of the downsides of outsourcing law enforcement to private, for profit, concerns. I'd support far more funding and enforcement actions for the ftc who can, should, and mostly do act in the public interest. But again, we decided to outsource law enforcement, so it's hardly fair to bitch that the private enforcers act in their own interests, to the extent that their and our interests differ.

_delirium 12y ago

Some of the text-message class actions were pretty justified as well imo. Besides straightforward spam (which like the old fax spam, costs recipients money), there was a whole ecosystem of fraudulent sign-ups to subscription services (sometimes called "cramming"). The telcos were forced to stop enabling that (at least allowing people to opt out) after settling some class-action suits.