Slashdot Mirror
Gauging the Dangers of Surveillance
An anonymous reader writes "We have a sense that surveillance is bad, but we often have a hard time saying exactly why. In an interesting and readable new article in the Harvard Law Review, law professor Neil Richards argues that surveillance is bad for two reasons — because it menaces our intellectual privacy (our right to read and think freely and secretly) and because it gives the watcher power over the watched, creating the risk of blackmail, persuasion, or discrimination. The article is available for free download, and is featured on the Bruce Schneier security blog."
As a practical matter, a lot of this comes under the "genie is out of the bottle" territory. The genie emerged in 1995 and hasn't looked back. It's improved our lives in many ways; in others, I often have a fondness for life as it was before the WWW, Google, and Facebook. At least I wouldn't feel like dozens of private companies are tracking, archiving, and big-data analyzing every move I make in both the physical and online worlds (in the context of what "people whose preferences are similar to yours also looked at..."), while hackers around the world are trying to figure out how to crack my bank accounts.
Doesn't take a digital generation to recognize a fundamental truth. The Panopticon is not a good thing.
This is why Google Glasses will never take off.
These things have been obvious since Orwell or even before, which is well over sixty years ago. What has this site come to?
What makes the difference between an oppresive regime and one that is not regarding surveillance is respect. And is becoming too evident that the government don't have any for the "common" citizens.
The government has shown that they are willing to use lists against people. During WW2, US citizens of Japanese and German descent were taken into internment camps using data from the Census.
Another recent debacle was when a gun owner's list got published in a major newspaper. People had their houses robbed and more firearms entered the hands of criminals.
These lists also cost money to maintain. We're pissing away billions each year on these lists which could instead go towards infrastructure maintenance which is actually vital for our nation's security.
If the government has a magical 100% of information about our daily lives then the most diligently law abiding of us are still probably open to legal difficulties. Have you read all 36,000 pages of the tax code? Have you ever stepped off the curb just a moment after it said, "Don't walk"? Even if you only broke fairly minor laws here and there a overzealous prosecutor could line up the charges and ruin your life. That is if you don't cooperate with his request to do something you didn't want to do.
At this point in our over surveilled society it is still a goodly amount of work to assemble a case against the innocent. But with more and more information being gathered and more and more information processing capability it shouldn't be too long before a few clicks of a button show all your law breaking ways.
This might seem like slightly paranoid thinking and in most sensible parts of the western world government people have better things to do. Yet in various small towns you hear of the Sheriff bringing his police to bare against any opponent. I can imagine what kind of resources might be available to hunt down whistle-blowers, investigative reporters, and the people they care about. Or the police looking to discover who uploaded the next Rodney king video. If they had license plate scanning, facial recognition, cell phone records, and internet records then they are golden.
Then you get the false positives. Recently I read about a couple who had the police kick in their door because they were suspected of running a grow-op because of recent hydroponic purchases. They were law-abiding ex-CIA and were growing tomatos and such.
Now think about the power the American people suddenly had over the government when Watergate happened. Now think about how many resources were applied by the government to find out who leaked what? Think about how many resources were applied to the Pentagon papers? Now give the government access to today's/tomorrow's records and see how long Deep Throat remains secret?
My theory is quite simple. The second amendment needs its own amendment and that should read that the people should have near unlimited access to any government records and that the government should have extremely limited access the people's information. This way power will be in the correct hands for a democracy.
http://buggedplanet.info/
And see Wikileaks spy files. We're all probably rooted by government(s).
We have a sense that surveillance is bad ...
Do We? The glee over Google Glass suggests otherwise. If a Google Glass app can recognize a person via facial recognition, or by their fashion sense, then there is a hell of a lot of surveillance going on. Many seem quite open to the idea of surveillance if they have a camera. Note: the facial/fashion recognition is not running locally on the glasses/camera. Its too demanding to be done locally (for the foreseeable future), users will be sending an image to be processed remotely by google or whoever else is providing the service. It may be recognizing many people but only reporting those on your personal contact list. Seems sort of like 3rd parties checking me into some location. More data for targeted advertising.
You didn't think government was the only threat to privacy did you?
I know it is a bit of a cliche around here. But it really is a lot like the book 1984 if you think about it.
Seriously. Think about it.
Cameras are almost everywhere but your house. I know for me, cameras start just a few short steps outside of my door.
Cameras on the street, in every store. Then on the internet, they track you with cookies, flash cookies that can't normally be deleted. ISPs often have deals with the government to just route all their traffic through the government.
Companies like Google and Facebook largely make their money by spying on users and selling the information.
The governments seem to introduce another bill almost every month to increase their ability to spy on the citizens even more than they already did.
Just the other day there was a story here saying the FBI is crying because their spying on gmail users wasn't "in real time".
And I think it might have been in the same story, the FBI was also complaining that they were having a hard time monitoring all the chatting in online little games like "Words with Friends". Because "criminal conversations sometimes happen there."
Well they do everywhere else, too. Including face to face. Do we need a government agent to monitor face to face conversations too? Just in-case someone says something criminal?
It's really all way too much for me.
Knowing about this stuff from slashdot and elsewhere, now using the "normal" internet, feels like I'm being watched all the time.
And I am. Even if it's "just" an automated system that archives things for later possible viewing.
I feel strongly that all of this has a huge chilling effect on free speech for a lot people. And that we should be working on getting much of this rolled back.
But anyway, in the meantime, I do have a few partial solutions:
I have started using startpage.com for my searches. It's the Google results without the spying. They claim to not even save your ip.
And I use lavabit.com for email. It was started as a response to Gmail's horrible privacy (lack of it) policies. It also claims to keep the tracking and monitoring of users to a minimum. And not archiving your mail for possibly forever after it's deleted, as Google does.
Lastly, I use a good no logging VPN for a lot of my browsing because I just prefer the freer feeling of it compared to the "bunch-of-surveillance-cameras" feel that the regular internet has for me.
Call me paranoid, or whatever, for not enjoying being spied upon non-stop. I know most of the other sheep don't care. But myself, I feel uncomfortable with it. And I opt out of it whenever I am able.
Posting from behind my no-logging VPN. :)
... when the watcher does more than just watch.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
When the government even claims they need to spy on all the chat in "Words with Friends", because there might be "criminal conversations happening there", it's really time to rethink!
All that could be talking about...Santa!
"... we often have a hard time saying exactly why."
???
Who is this "we"? I have never had even the slightest problem articulating why ubiquitous surveillance is bad. Very bad.
You often hear stories of people not getting a job, because a recruiter saw some incriminating posts on Facebook or Twitter or whatever. Is this a legitimate use of publicly available information, or is it a breach of person's privacy? Facebook is for some a mental dump, where they can vent their frustrations or indulge in guilty pleasures. Should a recruiter have the right to dismiss the candidate based on their posts on Facebook or Twitter?
While everyone is concerned with the GOVERNMENT abusing their power in watching and collecting information on us. They forget about the CORPORATIONS they are willing handing all this information over too. Corporation are collecting and turning over the information to the highest bidder.
The surveillance society is another example of the asymmetry between governments (as well as the interests for which governments act as proxy) and individuals.
I could stomach the government looking over my shoulder all the time if I could have equal visibility of the government's activities.
You don't see billionaires caring when people read about the horrid things they do every day. Why? Because they're economically secure. I'd like to see less talk about information and privacy bugaboos and more talk about the rising cost of basic necessities (food, shelter, health care). It's all well and good to get distracted by scary men watching you, but in case nobody's noticed real wages haven't rose in 30 years, and the 6 ppl that run Walmart have more money than 40% of America COMBINED.
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then the owners of Target can have more wealth than 140 million people. Sorry, but you sort of missed my point, which is that wealth inequity and the lack of economic security are much bigger issues than privacy. Put another way, do peasants in Africa care about privacy?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Facebook is for some a mental dump, where they can vent their frustrations or indulge in guilty pleasures.
That would be REALLY dumb. Facebook is for posting things you want to share with everyone you know, and everyone they know. If you send out your "brain dumps" and "guilty pleasures" to everyone in town, well that's just stupid.
By the measure used in your Walton statistic, someone with $1 and no credit card debt or car loan is wealthier than 25% of country. There's a lesson there. A large portion of the country has negative wealth, meaning they owe more than they have. Virtually all get there the same way. To have negative net worth - buy stuff you can't pay for. The wealthy, by your definition, are simply those who spend lesss than they make, people who save. You can whine, or you can learn something from that fact.
As a maximum-security ex-con, with over fifiteen (15+) years of pro se litigation experience in federal civil-rights actions and some criminal case work, I and others like me, high-security prisoners, expected surveillance even where it was illegal, such as in conversations with attorneys, or in legal correspondence with attorneys. It is amazing to me that Americans have given up their right to private communications with their attorneys, but under current terrorism laws, that is the rule, not the exception.
However, the right was always just a fiction whenever the state had the physical means to listen in (I will not bore you with the stories). Human beings will not resist the opportunity to spy, especially as to matters affecting their interests -- its just human -- and you should expect it and behave accordingly.
The question was about a recruiter seeing things you posted on Facebook. If you post your diary on the web for all to read, don't be suprised if someone reads it.
....leads to them becoming unreliable. Enventually people being surveilled figure out that they basically have unlimited freedom to change the value of the information that the party watching them receives, simply by modifying their behavior into deceptive patterns. I'm surprise the genus crowd here at slashdot hasn't fucking figured this out yet.
Surely if you're worried about being seen doing illegal things, you keep the illegal things private or don't do them at all?
But Facebook and other blogging services have a "private" setting. Private, as in "me only". If they're getting access to that at all, it's in an inappropriate fashion, either bribing1dw buying access to the data from Facebook, or blackmailing employees or potential employees into sharing account credentials in such a fashion as to risk being banned by Facebook forevermore.
If you misunderstood that public means public, well, that's bad, but some very bad things are also happening in this arena.
There is a third reason not mentioned, but can be seen in places and societies that were subject to inter-generational surveillance, such as Ceausescu's Romania. People adopt by learning to be deceptive in their entire lives, for wearing false face becomes essential for anything you do that stands out might be perceived as a threat, and anyone else might get you in trouble. All personal relationships, families, friends, marriage, work, become managed through such deception as a basic survival skill. It is the very destruction of a society as a whole at ALL levels over time.
An article that finally gets it! If I spy on you, I can steal, muck or kill you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451
Ask all the people who have been foreclosed in the last six years if they wish they had paid off their mortgage. The possible exception would be if you DID invest it in something SAFE that paid 8%, so that money was there for you when you need it. Most people who say "could invest that money and earn 8%" COULD, but don't. Instead, they buy a slightly nicer TV and eat out more often with the money. COULD invest means nothing when you actually buy overpriced restaurant steaks with the money.
Even if you did invest it, you probably know that risk is interchangeable with return. An investment that is expected to return 8% is going to be riskier than one that's expected to return 5%, for example. Paying off the mortgage is risk free. You KNOW you'll get that 5% return by not paying the interest, vs. you HOPE to make 8%.
Or I suppose you think those running the megacorps didn't take out debt to finance their startup
That is correct. Megacorps primarily sell equity, not debt. The very smallest businesses sometimes take on debt, and MOST fail and are unable to pay back the debt.
or that those very corporations don't issue billions in bonds total to raise capital for expansion
They sometimes use bonds to invest in new buildings, aircraft, or other major capital. As with investing in a home, that's a zero or positive wealth exchange, not spending. They hand someone $1M and in exchange get a $1M building. Before and after, they have something worth $1M, which will continue to be worth $1M or more. (In fact, they only make the deal if they can invest $1M into a building that is expected be worth more than $1M)..
or to cover operating costs during temporary shortfalls?
Not often, those are junk bonds. A company that is borrowing to cover operating costs is a company headed into the ground, meaning they have to pay high rates due to the risk. That interest puts them into a worse position, so if they need another round the rate will be even higher. More often, if they need cash for operating expenses, they sell off business units or assets because when revenue is unable to meet expenses that's unsustainable.
(I assume we don't need to get into 24 hour liquidity transactions and such).