Slashdot Mirror
Even After NSA Leaks, Government Still Trusted Over Private Firms
cold fjord writes "Computing reports on a U.K. survey: 'Governments remain the organizations most trusted by the public to handle personal data, despite revelations about surveillance and data collection schemes by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the U.K.'s GCHQ and other governmental organizations around the world. That's according to research by accounting and consultancy firm Ernst & Young, which suggests that more than half of people — 55 per cent — say they're comfortable sharing personal information with central government organizations ... However, consumers are more wary about sharing their data with private companies. Just one-third told Ernst & Young that they're willing to share personal information with financial institutions, while one-quarter are happy to do so when it comes to their energy provider. Only one-fifth of those surveyed said they're comfortable sharing personal data with supermarkets. ... it was web firms that people were most claimed to be wary of sharing information with — fewer than one-in-10 said they were comfortable about sharing data with social networks, such as Facebook or web search engines like Google.'"
Meanwhile, a pair of researchers have assessed the NSA's data gathering scheme and found, unsurprisingly, that it's probably not very cost effective (PDF). "Conceivably, as some maintain, there still exist some exceptionally dim-witted terrorists or would-be terrorists who are oblivious to the fact that their communications are rather less than fully secure. But such supreme knuckle-heads are surely likely to make so many mistakes — like advertising on Facebook or searching there or in chatrooms for co-conspirators — that sophisticated and costly communications data banks are scarcely needed to track them down."
Interestingly enough, the number of people willing to share information with a provider seems to correlate directly with the likelihood that the provider will spam you with "targetted advertising" and "special promotions."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
if it wasn't for them damned profit margins
It's far more likely that they simply don't have a choice. If I could choose between having a private company handle my data eg. Driver's info, Financial info I would choose a private company every time, but you simply don't get the choice.
I would be interested to know that the actual survey was, the questions were most likely loaded, It's quite easy to get the result you want from a well worded survey.
Let me ask the rock tossing, cave dwelling terrorist to take a good look at his Iphone and ask him his opinion on the subject....
He reported back that he has no place to plug it in his aftermarket charger, not even Apple can at get him with fire!
In other news; the Unobtainium['computer_insecurity'] market for government peddled corporate espionage is booming!
The private companies are collecting the data for the government.
Decades of filling minds with hate for everything not Government working as intended. Half the nation cashes Government benny checks at least monthly and the other half have a whole spectrum of bennies factored into their future.
The Powers That Be are patiently waiting for their subjects to get used to the on-going reality of NSA scrutiny. They know that as long as they keep those EBT cards refilled their dependents aren't going to stay angry.
So don't expect much from the "people." They're bought and paid for.
It's about money.
These guys are making money with all that "Surveillance" paranoia.
Simple like that.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
...people know more about what the kardashians are wearing or what miley cyprus is wreaking then what their elected officials are voting on.
it's far from surprising people "trust" their governments...over 50% of them (is the US) pay nothing into the system yet reap untold benefits.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Ostensibly government exists to provide services. It's reasonable that one would have to provide information in the course of receiving these services. But, if a for-profit corporation is asking for personal information, it's almost assured to be part of a scheme to extract money from me.
Or to put it another way, there's only a very small chance government thugs will use my address to knock down my door, but a very large chance a company will use my address to send me spam. So I don't see why the result of the study is surprising.
Before you all flame me, I'm not American, and neither is this study.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
I understand - though I don't approve - why businesses want my data. I am of some value to them. The government? They have zero commercial interest in me. They only want to punish people with what they find out (or think they've pieced together).
Thats some interesting take on everyday legal gov use vs a vast domestic surveillance network. :)
People are happy too or have to interact with "central government organisations, such as HM Revenue & Customs and the NHS"
Kind of hard not to pay your tax, collect a pension, apply for benefits (e.g. help with heating bills), enjoy the benefits of the National Health Service.
Energy provider - again kind of hard not to pay your bill, seek a better rate.
Supermarkets - people do enjoy their rewards, discounts.
Thanks to Snowden and many other whistleblowers like him the UK can now more fully understand how their everyday net usage and other databases can be combined under sigint development.
Sigint development seems new from around 1994 via Ripa for 'targeted surveillance" now moving on as Tempora and Prism.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/legal-loopholes-gchq-spy-world
We do recall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora ?
The UK is now waking up to the reality of the "five eyes" sharing, along with a few nations who are extra good friends of the US, contractors, ex and former UK staff, ex and former UK contractors, ex and former five eyes staff and contractors...
Thats a lot of people with insight into junk GCHQ/NSA encryption standards, the telco systems and national databases...
So enjoy your http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/25/leaked-memos-gchq-mass-surveillance-secret-snowden
"GCHQ lobbied furiously to keep secret the fact that telecoms firms had gone "well beyond" what they were legally required to do to help intelligence agencies"
"GCHQ feared a legal challenge under the right to privacy in the Human Rights Act if evidence of its surveillance methods became admissible in court."
"GCHQ assisted the Home Office in lining up sympathetic people to help with "press handling"" - nice to have skilled sock puppets - just like we see on slashdot
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
- Would you rather be raped by an African or a Japanese guy?
- I prefer not to be raped!
- That choice is not available.
- Ok, kitte kudasai.
Maybe the NSA isn't focused on capturing terrorists, but instead; manipulating elected officials.
Because the government is not a whore. Yes, they collect data, too. But they don't turn around, spread their legs, and sell it to whoever pays $20 for it.
Government does "government stuff" with your data. Unless they've been followed around by black helicopters or the politician they irrationally hate is in office, most people are indifferent. (But I'd stop short of saying they don't care.)
Private firms make money with your data. Whether it's sending you ads, sharing your search/purchase data with others (we've all looked up something on Amazon, then suddenly started seeing ads for it or similar on other sites,) if not outright selling your name and address. People generally don't like others making money off of their actions without compensation or consent; though they probably gave up that up with they jumped straight to the bottom of the site's TOS and clicked "I agree."
It is there to protect them from us slaves. In effect, it is a private security company. Why would anybody trust that?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The Study was done by sampling "whom" exactly? From TFA I see That's according to research by accounting and consultancy firm Ernst & Young, which suggests that more than half of people - 55 per cent - say they're comfortable sharing personal information with central government organisations, such as HM Revenue & Customs and the NHS. but I see no data on who was polled, what the sample rate was, etc...
99.28% of all statistics are manipulated to present a wanted message, 68.7% of those are made up on the spot, and 0.035% of them are actually correct.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
For as bad as the NSA and GCHQ programs are/were, there is at least some reasonable way to restrict them from damage.
For corporations, there's effectively no limit to the amount of damage they can do.
Yes, government-level info gathering can result in some pretty awful things - prison, in the least, for a limited number of people. A breakdown in trust of government as a whole, however, is probably the worst thing such pervasive intrusion can cause. BUT, we have relatively fast control over this kind of behavior. We (citizens) simply pitch a fit to our representatives, and a loud enough fit (aided hopefully by expose from people like Edward Snowden) gets results rather quickly (weeks or months). The NSA policies and practices are changing, as we speak. In the end, government is responsible to the people, and if enough of society says to change the policy, it gets changed.
Compare that to information gathering and use by a company. It's regulated by? Well, if you're lucky, the government. If not, then by nobody. And there's no oversight at all. They pretty much can do whatever they want with it, and there's virtually nothing the average citizen can do about it, even in large numbers. The company's management controls the data, and they're pretty much completely insulated from outside influence. Not even stockholders have much say here. And there's virtually no penalty for them misusing it. Take the Target debit card leak. It's a very temporary, minor PR problem. They're not on the hook for any damage they cause those people by mishandling their info. And that's a minor case - think of all the places where corporations buy and sell info for no benefit of the individual, profit from it, and usually to the detriment of the individual.
I'm in no way saying that government info gathering is good - we need to keep a close eye on it at all times. However, corporate information gathering and trading is infinitely more damaging to society, especially in unregulated places such as the USA. At least we have a reasonably ability to correct government oversteps - when was the last time you saw a company penalized (or heck, even substantially change its policies) due to mishandling of individual data?
Thanks, but I'll trust a representative government long before I'll trust a private, for-profit entity.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
And similar results in Canada.
Why?
Because they are spying on you, and selling your data to other countries.
Results matter.
Hint: Try getting rid of oil instead.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Reasonable people don't believe that Angela Merkel is a terrorist. Instead talking about terrorism, it's more important to talk about how the NSA spying benifits us during trade negotiations.
Technically, I suppose it doesn't benifit all of "us"... Oh well. Sucks to be you I guess.
This cannot be good.
Americans do NOT generally trust corporations more than government; Americans tend to trust free markets, competition, and entrepreneurs more than government.
In a marketplace, competition will, generally, drive the bad actors to fail and reward the good actors. Government, operating without competition, feels no pressure to perform and tends instead to respond to the demands of the politically-connected. Unfortunately, many parts of the formerly-free-market economy have been so regulated and manipulated by government for so many decades (like the healthcare sector) that the free market looks bad and seems to provide the ammunition its critics need to replace it with something worse: big government (which made the markets bad in the first place).
Big corporations are no better than big government - and for the same reason: Lots of power concentrated in the hands of a few fallible/corruptible people. The big differences between them are [a] big business cannot legally jail you or kill you if it turns on you like big government can, and [b] if you have a problem with a business you can appeal to government, but if you have a problem with government you are stuck.
I think that western governments are simply not capable of long term concealment of information from the voting public. Things that they aren't supposed to do will eventually get leaked if for no other reason than the fact that what they are doing is everybody's business, and so everybody is going to always keep trying to find out.
Private corporations,on the other hand, are another matter... any given one simply will not have the same vast numbers of people trying to constantly find out whatever it is that they may be concealing from people, so I think in the end, it's more likely that unscrupulous practices are more likely to be carried out undetected by said organizations, even though it is also much more likely that, if they are caught, the consequences for them could be quite severe.
So it's less about trusting the government more than private firms than it is that the government is just that much more likely to get caught at doing something they aren't supposed to... at least in the long run.
I trust the NSA. I CERTAINLY trust the ordinary people who work there. What I don't trust today are the actions of a small set of players within that organization who have proven themselves to be liars. What I don't trust going forward are the structural safeguards which must stand against the actions of future, unknown people who will come to work there or command those who work there.
It's not about feelings of trust. It's about the ability to trust but verify.
... Is a relative term. I can distrust You but still trust You more than the next Person.
So far the only group I've seen drive by my house, take pictures of me without my consent, then post them on a public medium is Google, not the government. And that is why I will never speak to someone wearing Google Glass but I will tolerate CCTV cameras on street corners, because I'm fairly confident the footage from those CCTV cameras isn't going to end up on a public medium anyone can access.
Take the average number of people killed in the US per year by terrorism. Call this A.
Take the average number of people killed in the US per year by road traffic accidents. Call this B.
Take the budget devoted to road safety and divide by B to get the yearly budget per RTA victim.
Take this budget per RTA victim and multiply by A. This is what should be spent on counter terrorism. Thousands {Millions?) of times less than the current value. Spending more than this formula arrives at is somehow legitimising the idea that the death of a terrorism victim is more tragic than a RTA victim. If the averages change over time then of course the budgets can change. But this ratio should always be maintained.
Private companies are collecting the data for PROFIT. It just turns out that governments are clients (even forced disclosures are generally compensated...some very, very well). Government has a much more limited scope. 99.99999% of the time they're just looking for "bad guys," and the other 0.00001%* of the time some corrupt official is trying to profit off of it or you accidentally look like a "bad guy". The odds are still in your favor if the government is the one doing the collecting.
*note: this is a guess, but it's based on a random supposition that - in the last year - the governments we are discussing (US, UK, EU) have targeted less than 700 completely innocent people in any given year using the NSAs (or UK or EU equiv.) surveillance dragnets. If you have a list longer than that, then the percentage may be higher. Note that, in a typical year, the odds of winning $1,000,000 or more in the Powerball lottery with a single ticket purchased in each drawing is 0.0002%, so even if I'm off in my estimate by an order of magnitude, you still have a much better chance of becoming a Powerball millionaire than being accidentally (or intentionally, but falsely) targetted by the government. I can guarantee that Google, Verizon, and Facebook will sell any data you give them, 100% chance.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This is hardly surprising. Government is supposed (please note the "supposed") to act for the general interest, which should (please note the "should") be aligned with citizen interest. Private companies work for their owner's interests, which are much less likely to align with the user's interests.
The issues here are "supposed" and "should". Obviously people do not consider yet their government as oppressive. The question is what can we do if a government turns oppressive, once we let it have those great oppression tools.
People do not have enough information to make informed points of view. People assume because something can be done means that it is being done. People also assume the worst and that there is rampant abuse of these systems.
Congress, the Department of Justice, the White House, and the FISC court have known about these programs for years. Procedures and checks and balances are in place to make sure things are not abused. Congress approved them and has supported them.
If you don't like what is going on vote for change. If you are not going to put your vote where your mouth stop talking about it and move on.
In the perhaps foolish hope that some of you are not content in your ignorance, I recommend reading the Federalist Paper 51: http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/20/union-to-sue-construction-firms-blacklisting-allegations
Undercover police had children with activists
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/20/undercover-police-children-activists
"Derry interrogation centre hidden from torture inquiry"
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/derry-interrogation-centre-hidden-from-torture-inquiry-1.1486059
The results of UK public, private, police, military, signals intelligence work can make for interesting reading over the years. In the past you had to take part in protests, be seen or be informed on. In a more digital age a lot more sections of the UK gov and private sector are been invited to look over files and submit reports or will have expanded information 'logging' powers. Recall what powers the UK gov wanted see used on the internet?
"Changes to council surveillance powers"
http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/66244.article
A lot of councils, government departments and various quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation) where to get new telco related powers
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Just goes to show how effective the propaganda we are fed from birth is. We can't change the values that we were taught as right or wrong, and the government has programmed us to be little cheerleaders from cradle to grave. At least when a private corp screws us we have SOME legal recourse, when the government decides to fuck you, might as well bend over- unless you are very rich.
Everything above is my opinion....YMMV
I trust Google not to deploy corporate SecTeams to shoot me in the head. I don't trust the government not to deploy paramilitary police to shoot me in the head.
I trust the government not to send me spam. I'm pretty confident Google will sell my data to anyone for a a ha'pence a bit.
When the government can force a company to release data or just steal it clandestinely, cut out the middle man and just hand it over to them.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Even the newsclowns admit it.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-most-americans-dont-trust-government/
Pew figured out 80% have no faith.
Im guessing there is a higher number out there, uninfected with cranial rectumitis. Maybe so , maybe not. Either way, Im not surprised.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
That's because targeted ads are failures. You research and then buy a pair of shoes online and they spam you with shoe ads for the next month when you are no longer interested.
Even worse, Dell bombarded me with ads and 'coupons' for another laptop within a month of my buying one. The 'standard' user of a laptop replaces it roughly every 3 years. While there are certainly shoes that last longer, most of my purchases are for athletic types that last me roughly three months*.
*As running/exercise shoes. After that they're demoted to daily wear, then lawnmowing duty. Though lately they haven't been even getting that as I've taken to wearing my older/retired work boots. Safer.
I don't read AC A human right
I've found that the world makes a lot more sense when you stop thinking about governments as being "special", instead treating them as just another "corporation" (for lack of a better word).
Now, they are unusual corporations - usually not-for-profit, governed by the shareholders (citizens) with no publicly traded shares, and having secured a monopoly in a given region for many business sectors. Oh, and they aren't bound by normal business rules, but by different international laws. But in all respects, it acts like any corporation would given those conditions.
I warn about BOTH big government AND big business. The individual may be easily trampled by either, though only government can legally take all your stuff, tell you how to live, or even kill you.
Free markets do, indeed, generally punish bad actors when all the actors are small enough that there is competition. Governments are generally only "punished" by going to war and losing the war (getting lots of their people killed along the way). Oh, and I'd have thought it obvious that "bad" in this context is NOT a moral judgement, but rather a judgement of efficiency and customers satisfaction. The problem is that there is either going to be total lawless anarchy OR some system. No system is perfect, but given a choice I prefer markets with limited regulation and oversight by small government, over a massive all-powerful unchecked government. Remember that governments submit to their people only to the extent they choose to, and most in history have not. We in the west have long lived with generally tolerable governments, but most of these have gradually grown and increasingly become insulated from oversight by their people (see: NSA, IRS, etc). Even public outrage at this point does little to reign-in the bad behavior - a trend that shows no sign of reversing.
While governments have more power, they also have many more constraints on how they use those powers. Which is ironic, since the government writes the rules for themselves while corporations do not.
(Note: I'm talking about governments in nations that respect civil liberties, which includes the UK and the US in spite of recent revelations. While the type of spying going on is certainly disturbing, it is nothing compared to governments that routinely intimidate, imprison, or even execute their opposition.
Governments around the world have killed millions of their own people, not to mention those of other countries. US government puts more people in cages than any country, ever. Most are in for doing something with no victim, except perhaps themselves. They are not guilty of force or fraud or any direct harm to anyone. The US government runs GITMO, and tries to say torture is ok. There are Executive Orders from the president that enable detaining anyone, in principle, without due process of any kind and indefinitely. Government, when it goes south, just borrows more money or prints it or takes it from the citizens and they have no choice but to pay or be thrown in a cage. The have racked up such a bill that it would take at least two generations to pay it off. And for what? So they can spy on everything we say, all that we do, every where we go in physical world and online treating us like we are all potential terrorists or innocent until proven guilty or troublesome cattle? Is that what the people trust?
Business on the other hand can do none of these things.
So WTF would any sane person trust governments more than businesses?
This survey asked people how comfortable they are with sharing their personal info with governments. The NSA is collecting data that people didn't agree to share with the government. The survey results don't indicate anything about how people feel about the NSA spying programs.
But such supreme knuckle-heads are surely likely to make so many mistakes — like advertising on Facebook or searching there or in chatrooms for co-conspirators — that sophisticated and costly communications data banks are scarcely needed to track them down
The Boston Marathon duo were supreme knuckle-heads and the NSA still did not discover them. So even the knuckleheads aren't found with their surveillance.
One want's me to
Grow a bigger pecker by selling me hard-on pills.
Make deals with the Prince of Nigeria
Collect my UK Coca-Cola lotto winnings.
Recover my Runescape,World of Warcraft, Diablo 3 account.
Fix my hacked bank account.
Which leads to pissed off replies which probably makes the the other side think I'm a goddamn terrorist...
The other wants to decide
If I'm a terrorist by
and
Decide if I'm a terrorist by
and
Decide if I'm a terrorist by
Which will lead to "oh hell no get that thing away from my pee hole you sick S.O.B!
This one lacks specificity.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I dearly miss the days when BBSes and USENET were the "social media" platforms of choice. Even the squeal of the MODEM is a fond memory though I learned to silence it to prevent my computer use late at night from waking my parents.
Is it wrong than as an adult I enjoy watching "Fairly Odd Parents"?
These government agencies already have our incomes and financial details from banks and investment brokerages and registered charities so why can't they send us an electronic pre-completed income tax form each year for our review, and if necessary modification, which would simplify tax-filer compliance and reduce errors in the process.
At least the government is ostensibly accountable to the people.
In that case, they're sort of, kind of, maybe a little bit better than private firms.
If one trusted the government prior to the revelations provided by the NSA leaks, why would they not still trust the government? Think about it, we provide the information to the government, the government therefore has access to this data and presumably are the only ones who can view it. the NSA is the government... i would expect that government agencies can view data i provide to a different agency... therefore, knowing that the NSA is logging you changes nothing.
the only significant difference is now, we know that if you put data on another carrier, the NSA will still see it... so regardless of location, your data is going to be viewed by the government.
most of the population, 95%, had never heard of Edward Snowden and wondered what on earth he had to do with trusting the government.
One trumps the other. Other than that "the market" (corps' financial incentive not to violate privacy) is just to slow at fixing such problems.
Not that there is any reason to think the government can be trusted blindly, but corporations even less so.
As a veteran of the internet, I preferred the internet before they let on so many nutters. If the government is concerned about certain individuals and they are of the type we don't want on the internet then i say surveillance on the scale the uk, and us government are carrying out is justified. Afterall who wants another 9 11? I don't do you?
Not surprised surveillance isn't cost effective is law enforcement ever effective, its to protect not to undermine civil rights.
Unlike Private Firms, Govt can print dollars.
Casteism