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Vint Cerf Thinks Privacy May Be an Anomaly
Nerval's Lobster writes "Vint Cerf, widely considered one of the 'founders of the Internet,' told an audience at the Federal Trade Commission's Internet of Things workshop that privacy could be considered 'an anomaly.' That workshop, held Nov. 19 in Washington, DC, explored (via speeches and panel discussions) how the proliferation of sensors on everything from cars to household devices is fundamentally changing how people live and work—while raising questions of how to best maintain privacy and security in an environment where more and more things are 'watchers.' 'The technology that we use today has far outraced our social intuition, our headlights,' he added. '[There's a] need to develop social conventions that are more respectful of people's privacy.' Current social behaviors, such as instantly posting images from smartphones to social networks, can result in a whole lot of embarrassment—and maybe even penalties, if data and media happens to catch someone in the act of doing something illegal. Cerf currently works at Google as chief Internet evangelist, which would make him uniquely positioned to comment on these sorts of issues even if he hadn't co-created the TCP/IP backbone that supports the modern Web. (Back in April, he told an audience that, if he had to do it all over again, he'd construct the Internet in the mold of Software-Defined Networking — but that's a whole different, tangled discussion.)"
...I can monitor exactly what the people in charge, whether it's government or corporations, do at any point in their life we can start talking. Until then, keep out.
It's the ubiquity of the observer base and indelible record of our actions that make this a new and different problem.
Historically, people have usually had the ability to move to a location where they are in proximity to and observed by like-minded people. The internet brings all people into proximity and therefore we subject to a raft of populations who we we would have historically avoided. This is like being put into prison, where all inmates are able to see all other inmates actions and are under constant watch by authorities. It's demeaning and oppressive. Not much good comes out of it except to keep the inmates segregated and controlled.
The other great difference is that, for the first time in human history, an indelible, incontrovertible record can be and usually is created of all that is observed, especially that which is posted to the internet. It the past, what was observed was always subject to interpretation by the observer, and it was not usually recorded, and even if it was, it was always subject to human bias. If it was not recorded, small transgressions could be forgotten, and forgiven by the small number of potential first-hand observers. Even if recorded, the scope of who would find the record was still limited, and an act of volition was usually required to read it. So the past situation was one of inherent "you could usually leave your mistakes behind", you could grow up and correct your mistakes (because we all make them) and most could be not haunted forever by a single misspoken word or misdeed. It was organic, and inherently forgiving.
The cold, hard, oxide that records most of what is observed now is neither forgiving nor fades with time (if backups don't fail lol,) And that makes the situation different. Small misjudgements are spread to an immense population instantly, and recorded forever. This makes the impact of what used to be small, gargantuan. In short, everything is amplified, judged, and impermeable.
This can be an unpleasant a way to live, is a lot like prison, and is very different from the past.
Sent from my ENIAC
...those that avoid publicly screwing up will end up doing better than those whose mistakes are documented for all to find.
This is not a new problem, it's simply a bigger problem than it used to be as communications have allowed one party to find out about another party more quickly and easily, and our collective narcissism has meant that we're constantly publishing our "accomplishments" for any random person to see, whether they're actually worth noting or not. A lot of people simply do not understand that moments or situations special to them are not special or important to anyone else.
Unfortunately the only way to really curtail this is to tell people that they're not special. To tell them that most people, even likely their friends, do not care about Johnny's part in the school play or Suzie's piano recital, let alone Ricky's first steps or Adrienne's first words. They really don't care about what you had for lunch unless you're eating something that most wouldn't consider food, and they don't care how you looked snockered at that party unless you're showing them something of prurient interest.
Stop oversharing and mind who's watching what you do, or expect to have less opportunity as those in positions of authority choose to turn you down in favor of someone that will embarrass them less.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Really just about anything you do in public is public. That is the way it has been for a long time. What the Internet has done is made the planet a small town.
Smoke a joint at a party? You are doing it in public. This is not new. There was always a chance that someone would tell your boss, wife, or parents you where doing something that they would not approve of. The difference is it is just more likely.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Whether they actually moved or not is not relevant. They usually had the ability to move if they wished, and thus choose their peer group. That is what is important. If they were happy with their peer group then they were happy with it.
Sent from my ENIAC
Really just about anything you do in public is public. That is the way it has been for a long time. What the Internet has done is made the planet a small town.
Smoke a joint at a party? You are doing it in public. This is not new. There was always a chance that someone would tell your boss, wife, or parents you where doing something that they would not approve of. The difference is it is just more likely.
The difference is culpable deniability; using your example, if someone tells your boss they saw you smoking pot at a party, you can easily deny the charge, as well as turn it back on the person making it ("Don't know what he's talking about, but why was he at a pot-smoking party to begin with, hmmmm?")
As Micheal Phelps found out, a picture some asshole posts online is a lot harder to deny.
That's not even mentioning the can of worms that things like internet access in the home and automotive telemetric monitoring equipment create.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
So if I told you, we're doing an intelligence reform, and we are creating a new industry standard in management and security. You might be interested. However if I told you I'm proposing a new system where I can see everything you do as the superior and you can't see anything I do, it would sound a bit more like what I'm proposing is to install cameras around the office, cameras you can't see.
The idea really is making management impersonal, manage everything like a facebook page, click a button to fire employee x. That's really what has happened here in the last decade, it has nothing to do with privacy being an illusion. If I covered my house in led, privacy wouldn't be an illusion. All that suggests is that people are uninformed as to how many people are able to take away your privacy, which is a very real thing.
In the good old days if I went to a home video store and asked to buy other people's home movies, chances are the owner would call the police on me. Today it's business, and it's wrong. But at least here we are talking about it. It's pretty clear to me however.
Historically, folks who didn't fit in were banished or just moved to another society on their own.
In the new society or home, they didn't have the Internet to see who those people were. They could come in with a clean slate.
In the movie After Porn Ends, a porn star (Asia) moves to Utah and tries to start a new life. When asked about here name, she gave it. The person looked her up on the Internet. Well, watch the movie to see what happened - it wasn't that bad - to me, anyway. (It's on Netflix streaming)
But really, if one wants to change their life - to reinvent themselves or whatever - how can you do it when there's this permanent record following you around?
NOW there is a permanent record of everything you do and redemption is no longer available.
I think a lot of people use the term "privacy" to mean "without a persistent source of worldwide evidence showing irrefutable proof otherwise".
The guy at your party has to pit his word against mine. He has to know my boss, wife, or parents to be able to tell them, and even then I still have the ability for that to be forgotten about, and can go back to living my life. Contrast that with the picture someone snapped of the hypothetical me that insta-uploaded itself to facebook, all privacy settings turned off. Or the 'viral' video that becomes an internet meme hobbling my odds of getting a job, because I'm "the (whatever) guy from the video".
The societal issue here is that we're all a little too happy to self-righteously crucify the guy who has a picture of him smoking a substance of dubious nature online, and then go over to fuck the BSDM mistress while the wife is out of town... at least, until those pictures leak, and then the guy who does coke off the bathroom sink at work is crucifying you, and the circle-jerk continues.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
It's not impossible to build these devices for security. The problem is that we can't take out the battery and all of these apps trying to report every activity to a cloud somewhere. We had camera phones before, and it worked just fine. Until the information sales went totally out of control and it became common practice for even your wallpaper to upload your pictures, along with the NSA where the Internet became centralized. We need laws which strictly warn users what information is being sold on the market and exactly which company knows what about the person. The problem is people quietly collecting our information. Can you tell me everything Google knows about you? Which companies shared that information? Until this trend reached law enforcement nobody cared, but now it's an issue.
I don't care or have any interest in the private fact of the others, a long as there facts is not in the public interest.
If we now need to protect our privacy, this is because some wants it. Who are there and for what purpose ?
or only the rich will have privacy. They can afford to live in gated communities, on big plots where even their rich neighbors would have to go out of their way to catch a glimpse of what they're doing. They can afford to shun insurance that records their driving. One particular rich guy was famous for not having license plates and just paying the fines. The rich don't show up on passenger lists if they don't want to.
Begging the question that it is substantially more likely. As the volume of data increases, the signal to noise ratio decreases. Lots of data is being generated that no one is looking at. As the volume increases, it becomes that much harder to search despite the fact that something 'incriminating' is more likely to be in there to find. The practical outcome of this, I think, is that most indiscretions will still go unnoticed, but if someone is really looking for something to bust your ass, they'll find it. So some behavior modification is likely, but less than most people suppose. Furthermore, pro-privacy technology is likely to keep pace with surveillance, along with following best practices. Like if you're up to no good, turn off your cell phone. Disable 3rd party cookies in your browser. Block ads.
Eeeeexactly! Privacy is not this difficult concept to explain, it's simply "things I don't want to communicate", and I do believe that to be a right and just a basic function of sanity in a society with laws.
for adultery as they were in the North-American Puritan settlements of the 17th century with an "A" on their chest or bosom, or with a "BC" for Bad Character as they were in Canadian military prisons?
Sent from my ENIAC
Serfs did not, and there are other exceptions, but I posit that these are but motes in the eye of the vastness of the history of human civilization.
Sent from my ENIAC
That reminds me of a skit from Whitest Kids U' Know where some executive comes to a business meeting dragging along a bed to which both he and a hooker are chained because he lost the key.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
So without the internet someone just mails pictures to your boss. You're in public so the act never was private. Let's just move from pot to crack. You smoke crack at a party. You know that it is illegal so you know that you could get into trouble by doing it. This is not a new idea or event.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
even with the advent of the party line. Humans, apparently are subject to a voracious propensity for voyeurism.
Sent from my ENIAC
Scott McNealy (oops, I meant Vint Cerf) is saying that if his pet technology causes problems, then there is nothing wrong with the tech, and people's expectations should change. I call that bad engineering (and politics). In the 19th and early 20th century the choking smoke from everything from locomotives to smelters was just the "price of progress". Similarly, there used to be a cold calculation that every $1M in construction would result in one construction worker's death. Can't be avoided. Bull. Those problems were the result of bad engineering and bad politics, as improvements since have demonstrated. Claiming that "privacy is an anomaly" and society should change to support the Internet is just a half-assed excuse. This man has clearly run out of new ideas, and is just resting on his laurels.
it's the nearness, not the ability to determine how accurate or encompassing the information is. But I'm glad you pointed that out, since it make the situation worse because it distorts and skews the viewer's perspective.
Sent from my ENIAC
We are living in the transition time where some people have private lives and some are more public
If current trends continue, everybody will have embarrassing pictures on the internet and nobody will care
Anytime someone makes this argument I read it as: "Other people's privacy is an anomaly and should be abolished, my privacy should be secured."
If you believe you do not think this way, you are lying to yourself.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
So without the internet someone just mails pictures to your boss.
That could be considered libel, defamation, and/or blackmail if they're making a demand in exchange for not sending the pictures. In other words, you would have legal recourse against a person who tried to ruin you in such a way. ... which is treated completely differently than Joe Moron uploading pictures of Underage Drug Party XI to his facebook page, presumably because Joe Moron isn't intentionally trying to screw anyone's life up.
You're in public so the act never was private.
So, having guests automagically transforms a private residence into a public place? I doubt you'll find much legal precedent to back that assertion.
Side note: If that's your philosophy (non-residents in the house makes the house a public place), remind me to never invite you over.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I thought he made some interesting points: sgcollins on privacy
| Whether it's a negative or a positive depends on what you're doing
It doesn't. It depends entirely on what is done with the information. If having such information causes no harm, then observation is benign. But information is power, and given the number of innocent people who have been executed in federal prisons, we need to acknowledge the potential for abuse of power and create safeguards for individuals. The ones who are most at risks are the weak, the poor, and those unable to defend themselves. We need to acknowledge the dangers and that history has repeatedly shown that absolute power corrupts absolutely. J. Edgar Hoover used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders, and to collect evidence using illegal methods. Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten sitting Presidents.
| The solution isn't to ban the distribution ...
Agreed, but I present no solutions, only pointing out that Vint Cerf's postulation is specious.
Sent from my ENIAC
It depends on what you're doing? Maybe what your doing is simply exercising your right to free speech:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/11/20/2218252/bp-hired-company-to-troll-users-who-left-critical-comments
Sent from my ENIAC
I know privacy is a serious issue, but I have to relate something funny that happened to me last week.
I was in the checkout line at the supermarket, and the first thing the checkout clerk said to me was, "I need your date of birth".
I thought to myself, Hmmph! What the hell do they need my date of birth for? So I said, "No you don't."
"Yes I do," she said.
"What do you need my date of birth for!" I said, my voice rising.
"It won't let me go on unless you give me your date of birth," she said, meekly.
"You guys always want too much information. You don't need my date of birth," I argued.
"Can't you just give me a hint?" she said. She was actually being quite sweet about it. I gave her a year and she punched in a date.
It was at that point that I realized that the first item to be checked out was a case of beer. Their system wouldn't allow it to be purchased without adding the date of birth. I sheepishly apologized for giving her a hard time. What I thought was an invasion of privacy was a reasonable request for valid ID. Except she wasn't a very bright woman, and instead of asking me for my ID, and then punching in the date of birth, she just asked me for the relevant information.
I think my initial reaction was indicative of our sensitivity to privacy issues these days.
Proverbs 21:19
Anomaly or not, privacy is a very valuable if not inherent social norm. It is to be revered and protected.
ANYONE who thinks otherwise needs to STFU!
I respect Vint Cerf's massive contributions to the Internet and the digital age we now live in.
That said, the guy works for Google. Anything he says with regards to privacy needs to be taken with a giant grain of salt. Privacy being considered something outside the norm is very much in Google's best interests... but not in yours or mine.
#DeleteChrome
So basically if a girl shows her boyfriend her boobies and he covertly snaps a photo and posts it on the Internet linked to her name for all to see it's the same thing? After all if you showed one, you showed the world right? Or someone accidentally walked in on her because she forgot to lock the door or she had a wardrobe malfunction or whatever, same thing right? One accidental exposure to one person and you're just supposed to accept it being posted all over the Internet? And I guess you think it's perfectly okay if the sex toy store to tell everyone what you bought, after all they know so why not the world? You're creating a completely ridiculous standard of privacy where the only thing that's private are secrets, which don't need any protection because nobody knows about them. You reduce the "right to privacy" to "right to try keeping a secret, and if you fail tough luck".
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I posit that cheetos are like serfs, captive in their Frito bags. Free the cheetos!
Sent from my ENIAC
Maybe the rest of the human rights are anomalies too. Cant we start stripping them from the people that affirms that privacy should not need to be respected?
"That could be considered libel, defamation, and/or blackmail if they're making a demand in exchange for not sending the pictures" If you make no demand and it is true it is not libel or defamation because it is true.
Well if you have people over are you in private? If you are at someone else's home are you in private? You are at the mercy of judgment of others at that point so yes you are in public. A party is a classic example because their will be people you do not know and should not trust them. That is just the reality of the situation. If you are with people that are not your close family or close trusted friends you are in public.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
How to use those very same watchers to get you.
I mean, if we want to protect kids from these intrusions, should we send them summer camp for spies? Establishing False identities the first week. Using proxies and establishing a list of nearby open wifi routers the second week. Is the perfect Christmas gift for your kids now a burn phone with a scrambler?
Remember son, never use the same route back home twice in a week; vary your patterns!
[There's a] need to develop social conventions that are more respectful of people's privacy.
Why is there a need? "Need" is a very strong word, that really goes along with things like food, water and shelter. No one "needs' privacy in the same way as the most basic elements of survival.
But even at a higher level, to claim people "need" privacy is obviously false, because if people needed privacy they wold not continually make choices that involved less privacy. If people "need" privacy Facebook would not even be a thing, Google bankrupt.
Instead realize that people will happily give up privacy, so the only thing left is to figure out how to make that as beneficial as possible to them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People evolved to live in each others' laps. Gossip served where dictatorial and incompetent piles of programs laws regulations attack ads and lawsuits now reign. Not to mention Uninformed Security or the Department of Homeland Insecurity.
Record everything. And junk the idea that anyone has but two obligations: restrict themselves to mutually voluntary transactions and refrain from injury or threat to the lives, liberties, or properties of others. There should be no public law morals or opinion, beyond mutual guidelines to facilitate exchange, such as how long a meter is or how pure the water we receive or pass on ought to be.
See, now that's what PTO is for.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
For a high-ranking Google employee to make such comments is downright stupid; it's not an argument he's going to win, and it's not an argument Google has to win either.
It's also wrong. How and what information we share is a combination of both how information works and choices we make as individuals and society. There are many choices that are ineffective or logically impossible; much of the so-called "data protection" in the EU falls into that category. But there are privacy choices that we can make and enforce. For example, we can impose restrictions on which private information is admissible as evidence, we can require large search engines to filter some easily identifiable information (like credit card numbers), and we already have penalties for defamation.
Just because he works for Google, it does not mean that his views represent Google views or that he is saying what his employer wants him to say. At his age and with his history he probably could not care less what his employer wants.
All the other apes exhibit behaviors whereby some degree of secrecy is important to them. Nietzsche talked about privacy at length as a human need -- Living for oneself rather than the other.
However, I am a cyberneticist. I have studied the actual mathematic principals and implications of emergent behaviors with and without privacy. In short: Privacy is the default state because lack of awareness of other entities is the default state. You can actually keep to yourself and be alone, and thus private. There is no default direct hive-mind among humans; Cultures themselves are such creatures, but cultures are born and die; They are not guaranteed to exist even if their components do. This distinction is very important to understanding where you exist (i.e. what degree of awareness and influence you have) in our universe.
Cultures emerge from your collective behavior, but you exist at a different scale than they depending on what you value as 'self'. Other families of the mind can eat you and yours alive. I draw no line defining my 'self' and thus expand to become the universe itself and think in self-less terms, personally -- Yes, speaking on behalf of the universe here, from one of its many viewpoints anyway. Just like decisions battle within your own head over a course of action to take or not, the cells that form a culture also wage wars of ideas within themselves. Cultures sometimes lash out at each other too using their --your-- bodies. From my vantage point I see awareness of nature increasing and ideologic evolution accelerating as the universe comes to know ourself more intimately and its reflection upon cognition itself becomes pregnant with new life...
Privacy can be seen as the degree of awareness one subsection of ourself, the universe, has over another of its parts. Isolation is a gradient between such regions. What you call entities are merely distinctions between higher levels of isolation / awareness. Since humans think and operate at this simplistic and individualistic scale privacy is very important for their freedom. The less privacy an entity has the more easily its actions and will can be oppressed. Consider two entities: The one entity has a much smaller mind than the other, and thus not only has less awareness, but is incapable of the degree of awareness the larger minded entity can obtain. This is already an unfair match, but at least the smaller minded entity can think in private, and if an awareness barrier is in place in can act in private as well.
Now lets say the larger entity gains the ability to be aware of more things the other entity does. This gives the larger entity with more resources capability to influence, or prevent actions of the lesser entity. It has greater influence in our universe in general. The greater awareness will also allow the greater mind to infer more precise information about what is directly unaware of about the lesser entity. Thus the privacy of an entity can vanish long before others become aware of things it deems private.
In the extreme case where the greater entity becomes aware of all interactions and thoughts of the lesser, it can accurately predict every action in any scenario that the lesser entity will choose. Thus absolute oppression and suppression can be performed. Not only that, but with that degree of awareness the lesser entity's free-will can be removed: The greater entity can arrange situations to precisely guide the action of the lesser entity. We see exactly this scenario play out in various scales between lesser people and their greater cultures -- Or even between cultures themselves, or two people; Between animal and man and also man and machine as well. See the prior article about the practice of shills, or the PRISM debacle, and people unable to influence governments because corporate entities have more awareness and influence.
Privacy is a scalar measure of awareness among two or more entities. It changes depending on what entities are being compared. It is far more complex tha
But he's unlikely to be there unless there's some overlap of views.
God: An invisible friend for grown-ups.
I held this opinion too until I realized the extent of government surveillance. All that you said is fine until you add in that element. Ubiquitous surveillance by a controlling authority changes everything, because we are all massed together by their dragnet, against our will. In prison, not every prisoner comes into contact with every other prisoner, but they are grouped together by the controlling authority which watches them all. That is the analogy I presented. Increase the size of the prison and you have the appearance of freedom, but the elements of it still correspond one-for-one.
Sent from my ENIAC
"That could be considered libel, defamation, and/or blackmail if they're making a demand in exchange for not sending the pictures" If you make no demand and it is true it is not libel or defamation because it is true.
You very much can be sued for libel and defamation, even if what you said is 100% true and verifiable.
Granted, the person suing you probably won't even take it to court, but nothing stops them from forcing you to spend time and money defending your own words.
I know this from personal experience.
Well if you have people over are you in private? If you are at someone else's home are you in private? You are at the mercy of judgment of others at that point so yes you are in public.
Ah, I see the problem - you're not thinking about those terms in the legal sense, which is the only sense that matters in issues of law. Sure, when I have someone over, it's not as private as when I'm sitting on the shitter by myself, but don't think for one second the addition of a guest legally (and magically) transforms my private residence into a public place. For starters, if said guest violates my house rules, I can make them leave, unlike a place that is legally classified as public.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
True but when you are at a friends house you are in public. You do not have a legal expectation of privacy. But as you said you do not have the same expectation of privacy when you have a guest over and even less if you have a party. In legal terms you are in a private residence but you are not in private. There is no law saying that must keep what you see and hear when you are a guest private. AKA you have no legal protection from revelation from a guest.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.