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Exactly what I've been saying about the NSA mass surveillance issue. It's not that many people are "okay with it" but that they don't truly understand what's go

Exactly what I've been saying about the NSA mass surveillance issue. It's not that many people are "okay with it" but that they don't truly understand what's going on. If 1 in 2 people don't even realize their supermarket data is shared with others, how can we expect them to easily understand that the NSA is actually collecting their "dick pics" as well as everything else, including GPS locations, 3G tower locations, and so on? I strongly believe if most people actually understood what was going on, they'd be much more upset about it. There's a reason why "tech people" are much more upset about it. It's not because they're "nerds" or anti-social or what have you. It's because they actually understand what's happening and what can be done with all of that data. And they also pay attention to hacks like the recent OPM one, where the government proves itself to be completely incompetent in keeping our data safe, enforcing the idea that neither the government nor companies should keep too much data about us and for very long. If we could get "normal" people to have as much understanding about these privacy issues as tech people do, that could lead to some real privacy reforms.

hackuser 11y ago
> It's not that many people are "okay with it" but that they don't truly understand what's going on. Also it says that people who know feel powerless to do anything about it. What choice do they have, other than live in a cave?
- asuffield 11y ago
  You can throw away your supermarket loyalty card, and stop getting those 2% discounts. You're not powerless. You're making a choice.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    As with other measures: show me that not using the card guarantees my privacy? The only thing that is guaranteed is that I've lost the discount. Recording accounts from credit, debit, or check payments leaves the customer equally screwed. More likely: I request loyalty cards under assumed names and discard or exchange them often. Though that likely leads to other data trails. Anonymisation and tradecraft are hard.
- wutbrodo 11y ago
  This is absolutely preposterous. Scrubbing every single instance of data collection is obviously very difficult, but there are tons of high impact, low cost things you can do but that people choose not to do. That really belies the "people actually care but feel powerless" nonsense. For example: Browsing only in an incognito window prevents the persistence of many kinds of identity across browsing sessions, at the low cost of having to type a username and password more often. (I already do this for Facebook because their cookie policy passes my personal line. It's not a hardship at all, but that may be because when I have the power to change something I don't like I prefer doing it instead of simply whining and pretending I'm powerless). Not using a loyalty card prevents tracking of your purchases and the only cost is the loss of a two percent discount. Goimg to google's ad settings and turning off personalized ads. The cost is: ten seconds and seeing 10% more ads.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    Counter-counterexample: EFF's Panopticlick shows how much individually identifying data can be obtained simply from browser fingerprints. IP address adds to that. Verizon was injecting tracking headers into its subscribers' Web traffic directly. Again: the problem with countermeasures is that you've got to take a hell of a lot of them before you've any real assurance of even modest privacy. See RMS's "How I do my computing" essay, featured here recently. https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
    - wutbrodo 11y ago
      I did mention that "complete" privacy is rather costly, but I think it's silly to Ignore low cost countermeasures that have a high impact. Hell you can even defend against fingerprinting, which is basically a medium cost very high impact fix. https://panopticlick.eff.org/self-defense.php https://panopticlick.eff.org/self-defense.php I also disagree that the stated countermeasures don't have much of an impact. The universe of entities that get any sort of picture of your behavior narrows VERY sharply, and the remaining holdouts (the govt, those who control the pipes) quite obviously require policy solutions
irishcoffee 11y ago
Heh so, NSA didn't break the law then, people are just too buried in their iphones to care until asked? [Fun fact, POTUS could tell NSA to stop doing something (or anything) whenever they. 8 years, not a word. Information is power, if you are informed.]
- mirimir 11y ago
  Are you sure about that? At least some NSA efforts are buried deeply in need-to-know mazes. How can POTUS tell NSA to stop what he has no way of knowing about? And how would he know whether they had stopped?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
ionised 11y ago
This is the argument I make when faced with the idea that people are 'okay' being spied on, as if it somehow justifies what the NSA is doing. It's not acceptance, it's ignorance of what is actually happening.

hackuser 11y ago

> It's not that many people are "okay with it" but that they don't truly understand what's going on. Also it says that people who know feel powerless to do anything about it. What choice do they have, other than live in a cave?

asuffield 11y ago
You can throw away your supermarket loyalty card, and stop getting those 2% discounts. You're not powerless. You're making a choice.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  As with other measures: show me that not using the card guarantees my privacy? The only thing that is guaranteed is that I've lost the discount. Recording accounts from credit, debit, or check payments leaves the customer equally screwed. More likely: I request loyalty cards under assumed names and discard or exchange them often. Though that likely leads to other data trails. Anonymisation and tradecraft are hard.
wutbrodo 11y ago
This is absolutely preposterous. Scrubbing every single instance of data collection is obviously very difficult, but there are tons of high impact, low cost things you can do but that people choose not to do. That really belies the "people actually care but feel powerless" nonsense. For example: Browsing only in an incognito window prevents the persistence of many kinds of identity across browsing sessions, at the low cost of having to type a username and password more often. (I already do this for Facebook because their cookie policy passes my personal line. It's not a hardship at all, but that may be because when I have the power to change something I don't like I prefer doing it instead of simply whining and pretending I'm powerless). Not using a loyalty card prevents tracking of your purchases and the only cost is the loss of a two percent discount. Goimg to google's ad settings and turning off personalized ads. The cost is: ten seconds and seeing 10% more ads.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Counter-counterexample: EFF's Panopticlick shows how much individually identifying data can be obtained simply from browser fingerprints. IP address adds to that. Verizon was injecting tracking headers into its subscribers' Web traffic directly. Again: the problem with countermeasures is that you've got to take a hell of a lot of them before you've any real assurance of even modest privacy. See RMS's "How I do my computing" essay, featured here recently. https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
  - wutbrodo 11y ago
    I did mention that "complete" privacy is rather costly, but I think it's silly to Ignore low cost countermeasures that have a high impact. Hell you can even defend against fingerprinting, which is basically a medium cost very high impact fix. https://panopticlick.eff.org/self-defense.php https://panopticlick.eff.org/self-defense.php I also disagree that the stated countermeasures don't have much of an impact. The universe of entities that get any sort of picture of your behavior narrows VERY sharply, and the remaining holdouts (the govt, those who control the pipes) quite obviously require policy solutions

irishcoffee 11y ago

Heh so, NSA didn't break the law then, people are just too buried in their iphones to care until asked? [Fun fact, POTUS could tell NSA to stop doing something (or anything) whenever they. 8 years, not a word. Information is power, if you are informed.]

mirimir 11y ago
Are you sure about that? At least some NSA efforts are buried deeply in need-to-know mazes. How can POTUS tell NSA to stop what he has no way of knowing about? And how would he know whether they had stopped?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

ionised 11y ago

This is the argument I make when faced with the idea that people are 'okay' being spied on, as if it somehow justifies what the NSA is doing. It's not acceptance, it's ignorance of what is actually happening.