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FTC Worries About Consumers, Cloud Data, and Privacy
pcause writes "Ars Techina has a nice article about the FTC's concern that consumers don't understand the implications of storing their data in the cloud. From the article: 'Data is now sitting on servers outside of your control, where it can be accessed far more easily by Google itself, hackers, and law enforcement than it ever could if kept within the device. Once data passes over the network, it gets much easier to access in realtime; once it is stored on a remote server, it gets much easier to access at any time. And those are just the phone settings. Google also has access to search history data, anything stored in Google Docs or Spreadsheets, complete schedules stored in Google Calendar, and recent Maps searches. Combine them all, and companies like Google become one-stop shops for authorities looking for personal information.' Do you think the average consumer even has a clue about this issue?"
A hard drive in your house is just as accessible as data in the cloud, they just need a warrant. However, they have a hard time hiding the fact they took your computer, it's somewhat questionable whether you can detect they got a wiretap, and outright impossible to tell what they copied out of a cloud... so the net change is that you'll have a harder time telling you've been snooped on, but that won't make it any easier to do the snooping. If you have info, they can make you turn it over whether you want to or not. What's at stake here is whether you know.
Won't make it easier? When companies can just roll over and hand over data without a warrant?
Yeah. Great.
Most cloud services these days are funded by companies who have ad interests too. Google has the web's largest ad network, Amazon loves to sell things, Microsoft has an ad platform too. Will what you post on MySpace suddenly influence which ad you see when you're watching Fox? Should it?
"Do you think the average consumer even has a clue about this issue?" No. And they don't care, and can't be made to care.
And so can turn over anybody who has physical access to your house. No safety in that.
My friend that works as google gave me a droid G3 phone for christmas. I guess they all got the nexus this year so he was giving me last years present. It doesn't have a SIM card in it, and I don't have it activated on a cell network. I don't really have any intentions on doing so either.
I let my 4 year old daughter play with it. There's a coloring book application called Zebra Paint. Today though I hear the phone talking.
"Hello? Heloo? Emergency 911"
I guess even without a phone plan, you can still use these things for 911?
I politely told the 911 operator what happened. He told me to be careful letting my girl play with it and that was that.
Scary thing though, this thing has GPS. If someone really wanted to track me down they could. Even without a cell phone plan or sim card in the device.
Especially when they don't have to worry about any backlash from their customers as the government will just give them immunity from any suits after the fact.
Its much easier for them to fabricate evidence on a hard drive from your home. At least the cloud keeps them honest about the contents.
I'm just shocked the FTC is seemingly saying that easy access for law enforcement is a good thing.
Sanity in a government agency?! Cats and dogs living together? Mass hysteria?
All hard drives will fail eventually. Flash memory drives are starting to outlast them, but those will fail someday too. CD/DVDs age poorly. Nothing is safe in your house anyway.
So, a cloud with a big RAID where dead drives are replaced with no loss in a nice safe datacenter sounds like a nice option. The problem with that is that clouds are run by companies, and no company lasts forever either. Look at what happened to drive.com.... they were bought by AOL, and then thrown out. Users were given a couple of months to retrieve their data, after which everything was deleted.
Is there any way to write data and then 10 years later get that same data back?
strong encryption means they can't access it no matter where the data is. why are we even talking about this?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
so the net change is that you'll have a harder time telling you've been snooped on
It's also easier to hide things you don't want to be seen. GMail can turn over your emails, but if they're encrypted, even with something simple, it will be harder to make it useful. How many secret messages I have hidden in the pictures I email around or post online? Who has the resources to check every one?
Searches can be masked using TOR and private browsing. Again, not bullet proof, but it doesn't have to be. Just enough to poison the data and make it unreliable. Go buy a pre-paid phone with cash and take the battery out of your regular cell phone at random intervals. You're not trying to create a smoke screen, just sow doubt.
That's if you're worried about it.
Law enforcement may think search data and social media information is some kind of lucky charm, but it's pretty easy to spoil that data, leave false trails and really easy to hide things. If they gain confidence catching stupid people, all the better for those with a little clue.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
A lot less people have (legal) access to my house than Google's servers. Maybe you live in a commune, but I don't!
Developers: We can use your help.
Side note: The article should have mentioned gmail.
Companies change. Look at Sun Microsystems. Suppose Google ends up needing money. What is going to stop them from allowing me / your mother in law / the king of Sweden from paying to dig through all of the data they have related to you? This might not be done directly through Google, but through a "nice, responsible company" which has paid for access to Google's data. If Google makes the data available to other companies, who knows what those entities might do with it?
We need legislation and a way to verify compliance!
Of course, it would be good if the legislation also protected our data from the Department of Homeland Security, but I do not expect lawmakers to be able to do the right thing there anytime soon.
-Todd
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
With our lives stored on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. does today's younger generation even appreciate/want privacy?
Everyone knows who your friends are, what movies you like, that your cereal this morning looked like a smiley-face until your dog knocked it over.
Is our view of privacy outdated?
It sounds like the FCC needs to get educated about security. Do they really think it is easier to crack an SSL session in realtime or hack Google than it is to hack into a (typical mismanaged / malware ridden) Windows box?
;-)
Your data is already in systems all over the world, including financial institutions and government agencies. While the banks aren't easily hackable, many a local and federal system have been shown to be woefully mismanaged and easily hacked. Why is Google so different? OK, I admit it is different. Google probably keeps your data much more safe from hackers than the FCC and other government agencies.
Is it an added risk? Yes. Is it something that people should be up in arms about? Of course not. I won't advance a theory on where this bull comes from, lest I be modded down by those who don't like it, but use your imagination
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Google reserves their right to suspend services for any reason in most of their terms and they do exercise this right by suspending people for life from the use of their services. Becoming dependant on Google's services, or being dependant on a market they dominate, leads to a large penalty and damage when services are suspended. Google will suspend services based on their suspicion alone, and clearly use data collected to make decisions. Their investigations are held in secret, based on secret information, giving the victim no chance to defend it, and this is not fair treatment. It has become so bad that employers are asking job applicants if they have ever been suspended from Google services to avoid the risk that Google will suspend the employers services. Clearly something needs to be done, but what can they really do?
The average consumer cares about nothing more than having their immediate wants gratified. Notice I didn't say *needs*. And they are not willing to put in the effort to understand the consequences of their actions, either due to unintentional or willful ignorance.
This is not every consumer, but the average one.
There is no other possible way that I can explain American Idol. ;)
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
This article reminds me of a Blog Post from last year where the Pretty-Well-Regarded Hosting Company rimuhosting.com, gained root access (broke in) to a customers Virtual Machine when the customer explicitly stated that he would not give them root access.
A long discussion ensued where people said such silly comments suggesting that you should not expect privacy for a $20 server. If you get no privacy for $20, what kind of privacy should you expect from Google's Free Cloud...?
...in an alimony suit with a woman that I'd never met. The case was quickly dismissed, but the attorney did some dirty subpoenas and essentially tore my dignity to shreds in front of several people. It's reaaaalllly funny to people who look at your search history, your emails, and your CC purchases with no context and absolutely no justification.
I USE ANONOMYZING PROXIES NOW.
So I guess my question on the ad portion of this topic is do you guys really care? I would rather see ads for products I'm interested in than things I'm not. On Hulu if it would let me choose between Best Buy and Tampax ads I'm gonna choose Best Buy every time. So I don't really mind that. The thing is that there is obviously a line somewhere along the way. For me that point was when I had emails about church meetings (I'm a Mormon and not ashamed of it) and the ads were for sites attacking my religion. For me that personally crossed a line but I really don't mind seeing ads for sports or tech instead of makeup and pads. Thoughts?
Backup your important data.
Encrypt your sensitive data.
These two steps are as important and effective with the cloud as they are with any other form of storage.
Morpheus, God of Dreams.
Data on a hard drive in your house can be as accessible over the Internet as data in the cloud, assuming that the hard drive is hooked up to a computer that's connected to the Internet. The only difference is, "'Data is now sitting on servers outside of your control". That has nothing to do with "the cloud". Any hosted service has the same weakness.
Yes, sure, if you store all your data on a single company's server, then that means people only need to get access to that company's servers in order to get all of your data. Maybe people don't understand that, but it shouldn't be news to anyone here.
Finally, yes, Google is in a scary position right now. Not only might they have access to your search results, but if you use Gmail then they have your email and if you use Google Docs then they have your documents. Right now, Google has a lot of access to a lot of data, which is exactly why people think their "don't be evil" mantra is so important. If Google chooses to abuse their position, they could cause a lot of problems.
So ultimately, this isn't an issue of "the cloud". It's an issue of how companies (or particular companies) are allowed to use personal data, and whether they're providing sufficient privacy protection to their customers. Warning people is fine, but I kind of have to wonder what the law says. Is the law protecting us as well as it should? If not, if citizens aren't protected well enough, then maybe we should be looking into that instead of just warning people.
Where people who have no important, much less critical data, don't know much about computers, but are constantly told about the dangers of this and that.
They are afraid to store their data (you know their recipie book spreadsheet, etc.) in "the cloud" because of course Google employees will read it on their lunch break. The same people are afraid to use their credit card online, even with Amazon or other big SSL encrypted sites. They hear stories of danger, but they don't have online common sense to know what's safe, and what's not, so they abstain entirely. Too much "The sky is falling" isn't helpful to those kinds of people.
We all know that Google and other companies are not going to typically rifle through your documents because:
a. You aren't that important - why you?
b. You are one person among billions of accounts - why you?
c. None of the sites trying to sell cloud services will risk their reputation over something so petty. Google is selling gmail and google docs to thousands of large enterprise customers already. Do you think they are going to risk revenue so easily? No, of course not. That's nothing to do with "being evil" or not, it's simple economics - they need people to trust them, which means they need to be trustworth in general.
No parents? No kids? No significant other? Oh yeah, I understand, You're on Slashdot.
That is exactly right.
I'm astonished how many people just don't realize this.
Its soooo damn easy, to google,gmail, voice, maps, phone, etc... who cares? Until you have to pay for access to your own info-sets, you won't know how much you value your privacy.
We are so screwed Google surpassed 1984 in a blink of an eye. Only google's data can protect us from ourselves!
Only a subpoena is needed to get a company to hand over data its called "subpoena duces tecum" basically it orders a person give physical evidence to the ordering court or face punishment. Subpoena's are not the same as warrants, and because they are akin to a testimony they are very easy to have issued, and you do not need to be notified because they are often related to the authorities building a case against you, as opposed to something like a warrant, where YOUR physical property is searched. Read the TOS, a company is within its rights to hand this over to the authorities.
neorush
is easier to execute on localhost.localdomain than on Googe's machines.
Before you mention forensic data recovery, consider the less-oft used option to the rm command: --sledgehammer. This can be run on your home-box, whereas it is much harder to do to Google's servers strategically placed in EMP-Hardened underground bomb-shelters.
Power is nothing without control.
~Hal
Do people here really use Gmail? Really?
I kind of thought I was old school, maybe I need to edumicate some of you youngsters.
After, of course, you get off my lawn.
Simple: Don't keep anything important anywhere you can't control 100%.
+1 : willing to tell the uncomfortable truth.
Who modded this down?
If I have 10 kids and an SO, that's 11 people. Still fewer than the number of Google employees running around their data centers.
Actually, even if they have access to the terminal, they may not have access to the data if you have separate logins... of course, I tried something like this with my ex, once; it didn't work out real well. Separate computers turned out to be easier.
Of course, this only works if you're running a real OS. If you use Misro$oft Win/DOS, well, best of luck.
Even if your SO insists on having access to your user account and password, unless she's *NIX savvy you can always bury stuff in /usr/local/bin/whatever_arcane_sounding_subdirectory, make root the owner, and set permissions to rwx------.
If you're really worried, put the data on a separate partition, and use /etc/fstab to keep it from mounting, make an alias from the mount command to a shellscript that quietly wipes that partition, and overwrites it with garbage, unless you mount it with the correct alternate command...
Yeah, guess I'm a little paranoid.
~Hal
If you're worried about your privacy, don't forget to rm -rf /home/[username]/.macromedia everytime you logout.
Really, most people don't realize how much information is IN the cloud. For example, my mom was very surprised to discover that her email redownloaded after she deleted it from her computer.
Finally, yes, Google is in a scary position right now. Not only might they have access to your search results, but if you use Gmail then they have your email and if you use Google Docs then they have your documents. Right now, Google has a lot of access to a lot of data, which is exactly why people think their "don't be evil" mantra is so important. If Google chooses to abuse their position, they could cause a lot of problems.
Which is why running programs like TrackMeNot and SquiggleSR (Firefox extensions) is good. They won't help with your mail or docs, but they'll muddy your search history pretty thoroughly. I figure my LAN does a couple hundred thousand more-or-less random searches per year. Somewhere in that haystack are my few hundred real searches. Well, assuming I don't use a proxy or another search engine for those.
Along the way, I started to count the drop-dead-gorgeous, movie-star caliber girls I passed on the sidewalk, and lost count somewhere around 25. At the restaurant, I saw a woman who was dining with some of her friends, she looked like a cross between Sarah Michelle Gellar and Neve Campbell. I caught myself thinking "screw California, I wish they all could be Salt Lake City... girls!"
I think the attacks on Mormonism (if that's the term) are mainly by guys, and rooted in jealousy, and I can't say I'm surprised. Even toyed with the idea of converting myself. If I'd known that by converting, I'd be allowed not one, but several of these stunning cuties, I would have done it on the spot!
Yeah, people use it. It's a web email service from the biggest, baddest web provider out there. Why wouldn't they?
I don't have a gmail account, for the same reason as you. But not everyone is meta-thinking this.
You know Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, right? (FOXNews) Has this stopped anyone from telling you to "go to my Myspace?"
Sure. My home Internet stinks so I can't easily run my own mail server. Once I'm using a hosted solution, Gmail is about as good a solution as any. What's the problem?
As a matter of fact, people have told me to go to MySpace. And they also tell me to get in touch with them on Facebook.
I decline.
But, I have to say that it's interesting and informative that Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox(Faux?)News also owns MySpace. Really, when does one get rich ENOUGH? Seriously, it just boggles my mind that some people can not ever fulfill their greed.
This is really the biggest problem with the whole system right now. An active citizenry is required to make any democratic or pseudo-democratic system function properly, and a consumer is the precise opposite of an active citizen.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
He has reviewed cloud backup and other services, yet never mentioned the legal differences between cloud based service storage and storage on your own in-house machine. That indicates that it's not interesting to his audience, which is telling. NPR recently did an article on how the domain holder of your email service is noticed by your potential job interviewer. Their comparison was between Yahoo! and of course AOL on one side (you're a LUser), and GMail on the other. Guess whose privacy actually suffers the most. This is definitely not understood.
Storing your data in the, "Cloud", is the IT equivalent to putting your most prized valuables in the local Greyhound bus locker. I also don't see much difference in using a Cloud service and folks who create, send, and store sensitive email via hotmail or gmail and then act surprised or upset when there is breach.
IMHO
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Benjamin Franklin"
http://blogs.nerve.com/scanner/2009/12/23/guy-posts-his-sisters-hookup-list-to-facebook-and-tags-all-the-guys/
To put sensitive data in something as nebulous as a cloud, you deserve whatever you get. I wouldn't put financial or other personal data in there willingly. Once you open Pandora's box by giving away your data you can't close it. Public is public. Private is private. The chance of a hacker targeting joe cable modem vs "the cloud" is so tiny I'll take my chances protecting my data myself any day. Besides, once your data is there, you have no guarantees whatsoever. You're at their mercy because they already have your data. You think they will scrub your data securely if you ask? Heck no, and even if they did, what about the backup tapes... Yeah, sure we'll secure erase just your stuff from the 30 sets of backups we keep. No problem.
Buy a SheevaPlug. It's a headless Linux PC that consumes less than five watts and is about the size of an electronic ankle bracelet.
I run Lighttpd, MySQL, SVN, and Samba on mine. If I weren't so lazy I'd set it up as a mail server. I would post its URL here to test it, but, naaah.
At least the cloud keeps them honest about the contents.
Please do elaborate? This is an interesting viewpoint.
It's the reverse for me and I live in a safe neighbourhood with few visitors. If google have that much access to your personal data/effects in your house then you are responsible. The same as I am responsible for locking my own door, I am responsible for securing my own data. I don't subscribe to the theory that Google is watching my every move, I'm willing to bet Google doesn't even know who I am and that Eric, Larry and Sergei don't give a shit about what I search for. If you want your personal data to be secure then don't put it on line, don't sign up to Facebook with your real name and DOB, don't give your mobile phone number to a marketing site asking for it.
Your security is your responsibility. If you're that paranoid about Google, use a proxy or just don't use google and by some tin foil as Googles satellite can read your mind right through the roof (what, you didn't know the GeoEye launch was a cover up for Googles Gspy mind reading satellite).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Misro$oft Win/DOS
Whaahahahahahaa, oh my, I haven't laughed like this since the last time I heard that joke, about 1995 it was.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
relax. as long as you're not a marijuana-smoking jihadist, you have nothing to worry about. good people never go to prison!
Please stop stalking me, bro.
A hard drive in your house is just as accessible as data in the cloud
Last I checked, a hard drive in my house is controlled by me and I decide on what security I put around it. If I stuff up, it's my stuff up. I have no such control over anything in "the cloud".
The whole buzz phrase just needs to die. "The cloud" is nothing other than short term rental and loan space on 3rd party machines.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
A company that has it's data "in the cloud" is quite likelly exposed to the laws in other jurisditions/countries. Wherever the data is hosted, the local law enforcement authorities, based on the local laws can get a warrant to get that data out. This even if said company does not do business there.
Plenty of opportunities for the competition to file a lawsuit in the appropriate place and get valuable trade information during the "discovery process".
Bigger companies even have to worry about foreign intelligence services: there are plenty of know cases of intelligence services helping their country's companies with industrial espionage and if a company's data ends up in in a location within the reach of the intelligence services of a nation where a competing company has a strong influence, that data will likelly be quietly passed onwards to them.
At least when people willingly store something on the cloud, it's their choice.
I was shocked to find out that my school required children to transmit and archive high school academic papers on to servers with known security issues.
Getting other parents to understand the stupidity was a real challenge.
"Your school is forcing your child to transmit (in an unsecure fashion) and store their private school work PERMANENTLY to a service that will archive it, and has fundamental security issues. Forever. With terms that say that the company licensed to use your paper for their business purposes (i.e. sell it). And you don't see an issue with that?"
My stance: If the principal and teachers are willing to upload their high school papers onto these servers with security issues for all to see, then I'll consider letting my child make their own choice in the matter.
well the thing about google's 'dont be evil' mantra is that they can tout it all they want....if the govt/law enforcement, wants the data, they have to give it
they can jump around and say its not us, but in the end they know more about you then you do
they know where you are, what you like, what you want, what you know, what you dont know, who you're talking to, and at what time...among other things
they have this massive store of information about almost everyone (assuming they corrolate usernames with ip addresses, which they say they dont do, but who knows if they will in the future)
there was a case in brasil where google was applauded for standing up to the government and saying 'no we wont provide information to you'....and that failed....but google was still applauded
google can be that big brother we never had in 84
That part about the "warrant" makes all the difference in the world.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Web hosting is becoming so cheap its unbelievable.
So the only thing that is missing is a decent web application that is as easy to install as say Wordpress and allows you to privately host your e-mail, documents, calender etc on some hosting provider in the middle of nowhere.
The Google App suite (Mail/Docs/Calender) is nice and polished, but this does not mean it cannot be duplicated by an OS solution or even a company selling its own solution.
You could even implement client side (Javascript) decryption and encrypt everything on the hosting provider.
And yes I would buy something like this.
All the benefits of online access to my documents, but hosted on my own little part of the internet ; behind my ADSL line, in Texas or deep down somewhere in Russia.
I'd rather see the title "FTC's concern that consumers don't understand the implications of buying DRM-infected data and hardware."
Greed? You do understand that by investing in companies, they're providing a lot more for other people than if they would just sit on their money and buying jets and cruises and spending it all on themself.
Your security is your responsibility. If you're that paranoid about Google, use a proxy or just don't use google
I have a problem with this kind of approach to privacy. It creates an issue in that there is no basic set of standards. A person should at least have the knowledge that if they give X data to a company, that the company may only use it in a predetermined manner UNLESS the company specifically asks for your permission to use it in other ways.
With our current approach, you literally have each entity following their own policy which they may not even uphold (I'm not aware of any real legal ramifications for violations of your own voluntary policy) So every entity you ever deal with will have a set of rules which you are supposed to investigate, send to a lawyer and then base your decision on that? Oh and that policy may include several hundred to thousand sub policies with their 'affiliates'.
The issue is that due to the complete lack of a base standard it isn't possible to make the responsible decisions that you want people to make. The only option at that point is simply not to participate and that is obviously a non-option.
A set of VERY CLEAR standards, established by the FTC and with very clear and precise consequences for violations would serve to promote use of these services, and end this literal no-privacy policy.
A law or policy without consequences for violation of that law or policy isn't worth a damn.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Amazing. You're actually defending greed.
What other causes do you support? Rape? Murder?
Greed? You do understand that by investing in companies, they're providing a lot more for other people than if they would just sit on their money and buying jets and cruises and spending it all on themself.
I don't know, speaking as someone formerly of the aerospace industry, I really would have liked him to buy a few more jets. I'm sure that several thousand of my former coworkers would as well.
What is investing other than buying a product whose return is measured in dollars rather than utils?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
So would you rather have them spend all their money on themself instead of spending it on start-ups and things you and people can actually use? Sure, they might get a good pay out of it, but thats how investing works. And in this case it works for everyones benefit.
Are they really providing more? When they buy jets, cruises, and all that someone has to build and provide those services. When they invest, they are looking to get a return on their money so they will look for the cheapest labor to do the task, hound their investment to get the best return and generally screw the consumer as long as the money keeps rolling in.
If they were to spend that money on a new jet every few years, now you have thousands upon thousands of jobs wherein people create goods and are paid for their time and skill.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Spending money on themselves requires that someone provide the service or good they are spending money on... they get the luxury of a new jet and the ability to make more money to buy that yacht and the jet and yacht manufacturers can hire more people to make said goods.
Explain to me where one option is better than the other. On one hand you are directly creating jobs by spending money. On the other, you are dumping cash into a business that may fail and supporting the notion that with enough politics you too can get a venture capitalist to waste money on a product that people may not want to buy.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Without investers and venture capitalists there wouldn't really be such a good way for start-ups to get some leverage. You need the economics of scale, especially on internet now a days, otherwise you're stuck with really amateurish stuff and probably lose money.
Investors are of course looking for a money in return for their investments, but without them in the game there wouldn't be youtube, google, myspace, facebook, or almost any other big site. It's the necessary evil, but it works for everyones benefit.
Erm... I think TrueCrypt would be more secure with less effort. IMHO.
Those who have telepathy have no need to RTFA.
I didn't say I was having trouble setting up a server. My Internet stinks.
Slashdotters! The parent post marks a monumental event! PopeRatzo has successfully passed data through a temporal-tunneling HTTP proxy from pre-9/11 America! Congratulations PopeRatzo, and WELCOME TO THE WEB OF TOMORROW!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'd like to see someone trying to microwave data held in a cloud...
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
Not really, if they took your hard drive and wrote seekrit_bomb_plans.txt to your main partition, you could easily prove it wasn't you by comparing the date it was taken with the date the file was created. Any tampering would be fairly easy to detect - in fact, early filesystems were designed that way, so that the edit date would make it easy to track down who was using the system at the time, in case people had ideas about tampering.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
I do believe he was actually criticizing people who are driven by a desire for accumulating money itself, rather than a desire to accumulate money that they will spend on their enjoyment (i.e.: a Scrooge McDuck)
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
How about the FTC just convinces the rest of the Government that we really need to change the third party doctrine to keep up with the growing use of the cloud? Oh wait, that would mean that law enforcement investigators would once again have to do real investigating instead of having their work handed to them on a silver platter without even needing a warrant.
Currently, to snoop on your data, LEOs must first obtain a search warrant or subpeona.
A private company, OTOH, is only bound by the TOS. For example, (at one time) your gmail account can be disabled for "objectionable" or "illegal" content. Which means that if law enforcement so much as informs Google that a given user is doing something illegal, or claims they are doing something "objectionable", Google is well within their rights to permanently disable the account. As it is within their TOS, there is no legal recourse for the account holder. As it was not done by government, there are no constitutional rights issues.
Imagine for a moment that you've worked hard gaining a political following for a particular cause. After making hundreds of contacts, suddenly, your gmail access vanishes for "objectionable content" - someone complained you were racist, sexist, or, well, it doesn't matter, because Google owns the servers and doesn't even have to investigate the truth of the complaint. Now you've been effectively disappeared from all of your political contacts, and, even if you do have a backup copy of their contact information, you're going to have to re-establish trust with them once again.
The powers that be cannot put someone in jail for exercising their free speech rights. They can, however, ask their hosting provider to make them disappear, and in most cases, the hosting provider will comply without so much as whimper. Almost every TOS allows disconnection or discontinuation of service for almost arbitrary reasons.
And what are you going to do about it?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
My response was mainly to the people who are shouting "OMG teh Googles it stealing my personal datas" but I hear what you are saying. The thing is that many nations, such as many European nations or Australia (where I live) already have laws to govern the correct use of this data, we call it the Privacy Act. This act has been updated to take into account the internet and online storage.
The big problem is that there are no international accords for privacy, we need one similar to those for air travel or arms shipments where all nations agree on standards for privacy. Unfortunately the only power that gives half a crap about it's constituents privacy is Europe and this is being slowly eroded away (both internally and externally).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The ruling class protects its own.
I'd bet the majority of people don't really understand that their data isn't on their machine. Most people don't even know where their data really is when it is on their machine. Expecting them to be responsible for data security is wishful thinking.
I'd go farther than standards. There should laws and heavy regulation of what hosting companies can do with personal data. Unfortunately, politicians fit in that majority group of people I mentioned and don't have a clue when it comes to technology.
There are roughly that many people at Google who have access to unsanitized data. And all that access is heavily, heavily logged. Translation: It would take Google wanting to spy on you, not just a highly placed disgruntled employee.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
its about the end product not about the process of creating it!
Actually, it DOES make it easier to access your data. First, a cloud services provider might willingly hand over your data without demanding a warrant at all, even if you would never agree to it yourself. They might also honor a request to keep quiet about it. It's certainly happened before and will likely happen again.
Second, it improves the chances for law enforcement to illegally access your data without getting caught. We'd all like to think police never break the law, but there's way too much evidence to the contrary.
Finally, It's easy to rationalize "cheating a little" on the scope of an unrelated warrant "while we're here", but breaking and entering to get your data would be more obviously over the line, especially since you'll likely know it happened.
Misro$oft Win/DOS
Whaahahahahahaa, oh my, I haven't laughed like this since the last time I heard that joke, about 1995 it was.
Sorry, if it wasn't, glad you got a chuckle. I don't think you heard the "Misro$oft" part, I take personal credit for that variation of their name, and think it's funny and clever, if I do say so myself. A combination connoting the Miserable Software they produce. I just checked Google, there's no references to it there. There is a listing for "Micro$oft", (with a "c" instead of an "s",) which the Urban Dictionary defines as "A derogotitory (sic) term for microsoft's (sic) EVIL practice of EARNING MONEY!"
Sure... if the word "EARNING" can be stretched to include income resulting from fraud or outright theft. ;-b (THAT, BTW, I can tell was sarcasm.)
Anyway, if it was sarcasm, I must tell you that underneath Misro$oft's Win/DOS, is still old, crappy, cludgey barfware. There is nothing quite like a working alternative, seeing you how things CAN be with an OS, to show you how wretched the current solution truly is.
I know this is going to end up -6, Troll, but... Misro$oft's bread-and-butter is in having applications which are dependent upon their OS, and making sure their OS never works well enough, in any one of about a dozen ways, to enable users to disregard updates.
A common misconception is that M$ programmers are at odds with malware authors, and the discoverers/publishers of exploits, and that simply isn't the case. Malware constantly popping up which attacks M$-OS-running computers doesn't hurt their bottom line, in fact, quite the opposite. I think it's obvious that they use this phenomenon as an anti-piracy tool. M$'s true enemy (ironically) is software pirates, who DO hurt their bottom line.
You see, Misro$oft makes software that has problems deliberately, so that first, you can't safely use it without automatic updates (which you CAN'T GET if M$'s servers can't verify your copy is legit, leaving you exposed to malware if you are running a pirated version) and second, so that you need to upgrade when they tell you to, ensuring more revenue for themselves.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if M$ was the source of a lot of the malware themselves. Who else knows the holes in their own software better?
Anyway, why not try Linux instead, and see how good software CAN be when the effort is to try to get the code as close as possible to right, THE FIRST TIME?
Speaking of earlier versions of Win/DOS, though, a friend tried to convince me, (I think it was around when 98 or ME came out,) that M$ had finally come out with a reasonably stable OS that didn't crash much, and could go for DAYS without needing to be rebooted.
I replied to this poor, deluded fool that M$'s bread and butter was in making crap, which is why they will NEVER make something that works, it would be an absolute disaster for their evil business model of fleecing customers. I finished by pointing out that even if they HAD done it, woopedy-fucking-doo, after like, over ten years of development, and billions of dollars down the shitter, M$ FINALLY made something that works. Color me unimpressed.
The future will bear out my words here today, regardless of what any moderators think - if you don't believe, just wait. When Misro$oft Win/DOS 8 comes out in about 3 or 4 years, and they announce they will not update Win/DOS 7 anymore, and that henceforth, the license for the new OS will stipulate that you pay per hour of computer use, every year, in order for Win/DOS 8 to continue working, and oh, by the way, you can't, for one reason or another use 7 anymore, you'll know why I, and so many others like me, bailed for Linux (or others) just as soon as we were able. For me, it was when Fedora 11 autodetected hardware that I had to TELL Vista was there explicitly, and I found that (using the Live-CD) everything... just... WORKED, without my having to struggle or