Richard Stallman On Facebook's Privacy Scandal: We Need a Law. There's No Reason We Should Let Them Exist if the Price is Knowing Everything About Us (nymag.com)

From a wide-ranging interview of Richard Stallman by New York Magazine: New York Magazine: Why do you think these companies feel justified in collecting that data?

Richard Stallman: Oh, well, I think you can trace it to the general plutocratic neoliberal ideology that has controlled the U.S. for more than two decades. A study established that since 1998 or so, the public opinion in general has no influence on political decisions. They're controlled by the desires of the rich and of special interests connected with whatever issue it is. So the companies that wanted to collect data about people could take advantage of this general misguided ideology to get away with whatever they might have wanted to do. Which happened to be collecting data about people. But I think they shouldn't be allowed to collect data about people.

We need a law. Fuck them -- there's no reason we should let them exist if the price is knowing everything about us. Let them disappear. They're not important -- our human rights are important. No company is so important that its existence justifies setting up a police state. And a police state is what we're heading toward. Most non-free software has malicious functionalities. And they include spying on people, restricting people -- that's called digital restrictions management, back doors, censorship.

Empirically, basically, if a program is not free software, it probably has one of these malicious functionalities. So imagine a driverless car, controlled of course by software, and it will probably be proprietary software, meaning not-free software, not controlled by the users but rather by the company that makes the car, or some other company. Well imagine if that has a back door, which enables somebody to send a command saying, "Ignore what the passenger said, and go there." Imagine what that would do. You can be quite sure that China will use that functionality to drive people toward the places they're going to be disappeared or punished. But can you be sure that the U.S. won't?

Comments

You know what....

[Anonymous Coward]

he is 100% correct. I used to make fun of him in the 90s... but as I get older, I perceive him to be a kind of digital profit in the desert.

Re:You know what....

[Obfuscant]

I perceive him to be a kind of digital profit in the desert.

Stallman is the last person I would perceive to be a capitalist, no matter what climate he operates in. The problem is getting enough electricity to actually do any bit-mining, and then keeping your systems cool in the heat.

I disagree

[SuperKendall]

I think it's insane to say something like Facebook should not exist because they can know everything about us.

The things that they know, ANYONE could know if they did what Facebook did. It's how the web and internet generally works that enables this, not Facebook.

Getting rid of Facebook is treating only the symptom, not the underlying problem... but here's the real issue, do the vast majority of people even want this problem fixed? I do not think they really care. Have you seen Facebook usage graphs recently? There was a dip around all the furor over Facebook but then it went right back up again... what Stallman and other technologists MUST come to grasp is that most people fundamentally do not value privacy much at all, so they are willing to trade it away for nearly anything. You have to start at that point and see how you go about helping people, not playing whack-a-mole with companies that make use of this fundamental aspect of human nature.

Re:I disagree

[Thad Boyd]

but here's the real issue, do the vast majority of people even want this problem fixed? I do not think they really care.

Sure, but "most people don't care" isn't always a reason in favor of, or against, a particular policy desire. That's tyrrany of the majority.

what Stallman and other technologists MUST come to grasp is that most people fundamentally do not value privacy much at all, so they are willing to trade it away for nearly anything. You have to start at that point and see how you go about helping people

If you're saying that what Stallman should be doing is explaining why people should care, he's been doing that for 30 years. Just how successful he's been, and how effective his methods are, are subject to debate, but I certainly think it's occurred to him that he needs to make a case for why people should care about privacy (among other things).

not playing whack-a-mole with companies that make use of this fundamental aspect of human nature.

I don't think he's advocating a Whac-a-Mole approach. He's advocating sweeping legal changes that wouldn't just affect Facebook, they'd affect any company taking a similar approach.

Re:I disagree

[MostAwesomeDude]

SuperKendall disagrees with RMS. Groundbreaking and new. More on this, including video, at 11. But first, our lead story: Should laws prohibit Facebook from carrying out their technically-legal but morally-dubious business strategy? Let's go to Jim with details. Jim?

Jim: Thanks Linda. Facebook would like us to ask whether they should be forgiven in exchange for improving their stewardship of our personal data. However, should we trust Facebook to reform themselves, or should we legislate instead to force Facebook to act? That's the main question here.

Linda: Sounds complex, Jim. What are the main arguments in favor of legislation?

Jim: Well, Linda, in our current state, not only can businesses store enormous amounts of personally-identifying information, or "PII", without any accountability, but they can also sell those databases to other businesses, as Facebook does, or they can become targets for hackers, like anybody from Target to Equifax to the Nova Scotian government.

Linda: Sounds dangerous, Jim. Can the government protect us?

Jim: Not likely, Linda. The government can store PII too, and while our current government doesn't use PII against citizens very often, only using it to gerrymander and influence voting patterns, other governments around the world use PII to violate human rights. These protestors in favor of legislation argue that we can bind the government's use of PII, so that no organization, GO or NGO, can build up a database like this.

Linda: I don't know, Jim; I like my Facebook account.

Jim: So do I, Linda. Whatever we do from here, though, we can't deny that Facebook has changed our lives, and our lives now depend on changing Facebook. Back to you.

Re:I disagree

[hazardPPP]

but here's the real issue, do the vast majority of people even want this problem fixed? I do not think they really care.

It's not that people do not care - they do not understand. Ask people a straightforward privacy question, like for example, "would you want a 24 hr live video stream of your bedroom broadcast onto to the internet for everyone to see?" - and most people would recoil at the thought and give you a resounding "Hell no!" as an answer. That's because that's a simple scenario to imagine, and people get it and understand the repercussions instantly.

The type of data gathering Facebook, Google, et al. do and the type of things they do with that data is way too abstract and complicated for people to grasp instantly. It's difficult to understand the possible (and existing) repercussions. In some ways, it is all (still) too subtle - until there is some major scandal (bigger than this political campaign stuff - something like phones snapping randomly pictures of people while on the toiler and posting them to all social networks, I mean, something that shocking and obvious and deeply embarassing to almost everyone), this will remain so.

People understand the way other people affect their privacy - that is why they freak out if they think their phone is listening in on to their conversations, or secretly taking pictures or videos. That's like other people peeping on them, and it also feels like the device is gathering information they didn't allow it to gather. On the other hand, the way computer algorithms affect their privacy, that's too complex and abstract. It's hard to instantly get the consequences of an algorithm mining your photos, mining your social media posts, and crossreferencing that with your movement (since it's tracking your location) to infer information about you - information that you probably did not want to share. People usually think - well, I posted all those pictures on facebook, so who cares if other people see them? I posted some stuff on Twitter, it was meant for other people to see, so what? They don't generally get meta-data, cross-referencing, and inference...because for humans to do that, you need to be a private eye and devote your entire day to making the connections, it's hard work - just to figure out that for one person. To do it human-style, Facebook would need as many employees as it has users (almost). Computers analyze the data much more quickly. People are generally not aware of that.

Re:I disagree

[NicknameUnavailable]

The things that they know, ANYONE could know if they did what Facebook did. It's how the web and internet generally works that enables this, not Facebook.

Silicon Valley isn't the web, they are the corruption of the web. Step outside your bubble, shill.

Re:I disagree

[bgarcia]

I think it's insane to say something like Facebook should not exist because they can know everything about us.

The things that they know, ANYONE could know if they did what Facebook did.

What Mr. Stallman is saying is that we should enact laws against collecting all of this personal information. And if the result of those laws is that companies like Facebook go out of business because they can no longer be profitable without that capability, then they should be allowed to fail and no longer exist.

sexy stallman benis

[Anonymous Coward]

He isn't mad. Far from it.

He's just right, and that ticks off many people who don't want to "get" it. Watch now all those infantile asshats poking fun at him to detract from what matters.

Telling the truth and standing by it ain't always easy. And he's not... always diplomatic, mind you :-)

Re:Richard Stallman is a clueless communist

[Richard Stalin]

They will continue doing things we hate unless we make the things we hate illegal.

Yes, we need a law

[jenningsthecat]

Unfortunately, we no longer have the power to get them created. That power now belongs to the rich, who have purchased the legislators. They create the laws that benefit them, and block the laws that would benefit us. I'm pretty sure the only thing that will change this is revolution - and that is becoming both increasingly less likely, (via bread-and-circuses, propaganda, and various other forms of Kool-Aid), and increasingly less possible, (via mass surveillance and, appropriately enough, Facebook). Not to mention that in a revolution, pretty much everyone loses big time, at least in the short term...

Re:I disagree-Majority wins.

[Thad Boyd]

Majority want Gay and Lesbian rights as well as allowing Marijuana and few are fighting against that.

Yes -- now.

As recently as a few years ago, this was not the case; a majority were against those things.

So, are gay rights and marijuana decriminalization right because the majority wants them -- or were they always right, even when the majority didn't want them?

wiretapping non users

[Stan92057]

I am not a member,user of FB then why the hell should they data mine me others because our relatives put a picture up that happen to have me in them? I never agreed to FB terms and they don't have a right to spy on me at all. IMO what they are doing is wiretapping on mega scales..Someone should be in jail for wiretapping non users......

Re:even more complex

[Mashiki]

Except he's right in this case. This isn't a chasing after the item that caused the issue like what you mean with guns and knives eliminating murder. This is a case where a group/individual/company is acting in a way that's negative on society as a whole. Don't forget it was just a few years ago that media, psychologists, governments and so on were pushing the "if you don't have social media, you're a rapist/pedophile/terrorist/etc." The violation of privacy can be solved by law, by requiring clear and concise requirements. In the US you already see this with health information. Nearly all western countries have a broad privacy protection law of some kind, the US is the odd one out.

Keep in mind that privacy rights have not kept pace with changing technology. The base is already there, fixing the existing law will solve the problem.

Re:Richard Stallman is a clueless communist

[NicknameUnavailable]

"Pass a law to solve a problem" is the refrain of the incompetent.

You couldn't be more right, we need to repeal the laws which forbid us from hunting marketing, sales, PR, and generally corrupt people for sport. Deregulate murder and this issue would be gone within a year.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[gnick]

Nobody forces you to use Facebook.

"Force" is a funny word, but a lot of people with Facebook profiles never asked for them. Facebook has unwilling users.

Nobody forces you to put every intimate detail about your personal life on Facebook.

Again, "force" is a funny word. But not everything Facebook collects is consciously volunteered.

How much do you pay to use Facebook?

Just my soul. Market value on souls these days is pretty poor anyway. Used to be you trade one for a chance at a golden fiddle.

Re:I disagree-Majority wins.

[Thad Boyd]

You can't really say this.

I believe I just did.

Until there is another secret vote, which won't happen because SCOTUS ruled the way they did, it is impossible to know if the majority is in favor or not.

You're mistaken. It's impossible to know the amount of public support for gay marriage with absolute certainty, but we can state with a very high degree of certainty that it's above 50%.

The last set of national polls were useless in determining the thinking of the electorate.

No, they weren't. Nate Silver:

Another myth is that Trump’s victory represented some sort of catastrophic failure for the polls. Trump outperformed his national polls by only 1 to 2 percentage points in losing the popular vote to Clinton, making them slightly closer to the mark than they were in 2012. Meanwhile, he beat his polls by only 2 to 3 percentage points in the average swing state. Certainly, there were individual pollsters that had some explaining to do, especially in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Trump beat his polls by a larger amount. But the result was not some sort of massive outlier; on the contrary, the polls were pretty much as accurate as they’d been, on average, since 1968.

While most 2016 polls were off, they were within the margin of error. They were off by less than 4 points.

Current polling consistently shows support of gay marriage above 60%. Now, statistics is not an exact science -- the actual number could be a few points below that. 59%, 58%, 57%...sure. But under 50%? No. These are multiple reliable polling agencies. It's entirely possible that they're all off by 2-3 points, as the 2016 election showed us. But the odds that they're all off by more than ten points (and, in some cases, as many as 15) are so low as to be effectively impossible.

Further, current polls on public opinion of gay marriage are consistent with two things: increasing acceptance of gay marriage over time, and historical instances where public opinion on civil rights issues changed following court decisions.

Re:Still voluntary

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Sure it is - if you (A) don't use the internet, or (B) always using private browsing mode how would Facebook be tracking anything about you?

Your picture is taken with a group of friends, one of whom posts the picture (and list of people in it) to Facebook (which includes GPS and timestamp). And since they already got your contact info from your friends phone book, they can correlate that data point to others they have on you from other sources.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[nukenerd]

Nobody forces you to use Facebook.

You need to catch up with some news :-

https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

Facebook is treating people as users even if they have never joined it. Actually it is not news, we knew this already, but sounds like it might be news to you.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[fish_in_the_c]

Some things facebook collects without my permission:

My name and the name of my family members when someone puts a photo up and labels it with names.
The location and time the photo was taken. Also, it has a collection of people who share the same photo and a list of
the things those people like and don't like , their political interests and where they live.
By making connections between the people and data-mining the photo's with my name, you can certainly find out things like,
locations of been, political events, people I associate with and love.

Everything needed, to stalk, harass or attempt to co-erase me into something you I otherwise might be unwilling to do.

( of coarse that was all Ok, when the think tanks that supported Obama were using it, now everyone is up in a tizzy because a group that helped the republics used it). Works both ways. If you keep and gather the data , someone will get it and use it.

I think a right to be forgotten law is more then overdue in the good old USA. Of coarse one things I've always wondered about that is how much data do you need to keep on someone so that you know you should not collect data on them :)

Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF.

[jbn-o]

Not only are your values perverted (another poster rightly points out that you can't take it with you) what's left behind is a bad way to treat people—proprietary software is rightly identified as user-subjugating by rms. Technical achievement and business deals come and go, but treating people ethically sticks with people for a long time and sets a great example for how we can run a society that we can live with.

In fact, Steve Jobs (while heading up NeXT) was the first commercial copyright infringer of GCC, then known as the GNU C Compiler later the GNU Compiler Collection when it compiled a lot more languages than just C. NeXT needed a compiler, GCC did the job, and NeXT wrote Objective-C support for GCC then chose to distribute only object code for NeXT's GCC variant. This was a clear violation of the GNU GPL v2 (the relevant GCC license at the time) as there was no complete corresponding source code on offer or copy distributed alongside the binaries. Someone from the FSF (I'm not sure who, Eben Moglen perhaps?) had a talk with NeXT and after some discussions (which I'm guessing were quite unpleasant for Jobs and NeXT's lawyers to hear) NeXT ended up doing what they should have done from the start: shipping complete corresponding source code to their variant of GCC with the GCC binaries. The copy I saw was in a box of Extended Density (2.88MB) floppy disks.

Brad Kuhn, former FSF Executive Director current President and Distinguished Technologist at the Software Freedom Conservancy, has told this story before and he (probably rightly) speculates this is what drove Apple to become the irrational GPL-hater they are today: NeXT got caught treating their users badly, violating GCC's license, and subverting a license designed to let them do what they needed while also treating the users justly. This is why Apple is moving toward a non-copylefted compiler (which Kuhn speculates they'll someday stop contributing to when it becomes good enough for them to use without caring about contributing back). This is why Apple switched away from the (I'm told better functioning) Samba to some proprietary SMB implementation for MacOS X. I'm told some other GPL-covered software on MacOS X remains out of date; if that's so, this is probably why. And it's telling that Apple is no rush to replace CUPS as they did Samba and GCC—Apple bought Easy Software (which wrote CUPS) thus making Apple CUPS' copyright holder so Apple went from being a GPL licensee to being a GPL licensor. This also helps illustrate why Apple's view of the GPL is irrational: GPL-covered programs were perfectly good for them throughout NeXT and Apple's early days with MacOS X, and the GPL is apparently remains a fine license when licensing to others. But share and share alike is apparently not the way they want to treat their users for plenty of other software they distribute.