Slashdot Mirror
Are We Living in a World Where You Can't Opt Out of Data Sharing? (fivethirtyeight.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader Mr_Blank quotes the senior science writer at FiveThirtyEight on a new type of privacy violation:
It's what happens when one person's voluntary disclosure of personal information exposes the personal information of others who had no say in the matter. Your choices didn't cause the breach. Your choices can't prevent it, either. Welcome to a world where you can't opt out of sharing, even if you didn't opt in... We all saw this in action in the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal. The "privacy of the commons" is how the 270,000 Facebook users who actually downloaded the "thisisyourdigitallife" app turned into as many as 87 million users whose data ended up in the hands of a political marketing firm.
Much of the narrative surrounding that scandal has focused on what individuals should be doing to protect themselves. But that idea that privacy is all about your individual decisions is part of the problem, said Julie Cohen, a technology and law professor at Georgetown University. "There's a lot of burden being put on individuals to have an understanding and mastery of something that's so complex that it would be impossible for them to do what they need to do," she said...
[E]xperts say these examples show that we need to think about online privacy less as a personal issue and more as a systemic one. Our digital commons is set up to encourage companies and governments to violate your privacy. If you live in a swamp and an alligator attacks you, do you blame yourself for being a slow swimmer? Or do you blame the swamp for forcing you to hang out with alligators? There isn't yet a clear answer for what the U.S. should do. Almost all of our privacy law and policy is framed around the idea of privacy as a personal choice, Cohen said. The result: very little regulation addressing what data can be collected, how it should be protected, or what can be done with it.
Much of the narrative surrounding that scandal has focused on what individuals should be doing to protect themselves. But that idea that privacy is all about your individual decisions is part of the problem, said Julie Cohen, a technology and law professor at Georgetown University. "There's a lot of burden being put on individuals to have an understanding and mastery of something that's so complex that it would be impossible for them to do what they need to do," she said...
[E]xperts say these examples show that we need to think about online privacy less as a personal issue and more as a systemic one. Our digital commons is set up to encourage companies and governments to violate your privacy. If you live in a swamp and an alligator attacks you, do you blame yourself for being a slow swimmer? Or do you blame the swamp for forcing you to hang out with alligators? There isn't yet a clear answer for what the U.S. should do. Almost all of our privacy law and policy is framed around the idea of privacy as a personal choice, Cohen said. The result: very little regulation addressing what data can be collected, how it should be protected, or what can be done with it.
And how is that going to stop Google from reading half the emails I ever send, because although I have nothing to do with them, many people I communicate with are using Google mail services behind other domains and I have no way to even know it's happening? Should I just not send email any more?
How about phone calls? Any friend, family member or work colleague with my phone number in their phone has potentially uploaded it to the likes of Facebook, again without my knowledge or consent. Should I give up on using the phone as well?
None of this is actually new, of course. The Cambridge Analytica mess may have increased public awareness, but getting people to spy on each other has always been the thing that made the data-hoarding social networks most effective (and most dangerous), and plenty of us have been criticising it for a long time.
The recent change is that we're starting to see privacy laws, such as the GDPR in the EU, that either require active consent from the actual data subject or some sort of legitimate interests argument that is specifically balanced against the rights of data subjects, and if the data hoarders can't make that happen (which presumably they won't be able to in almost all cases of shadow profiles and the like) then this sort of collection-by-proxy is effectively going to be illegal.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If you live in a swamp and an alligator attacks you, do you blame yourself for being a slow swimmer? Or do you blame the swamp for forcing you to hang out with alligators?
Yes, I often ponder this as I'm being attacked by alligators in the swamp I live in. /sarcasm
General writing protip: the whole point of an analogy is to relate a situation that's difficult to understand to a more COMMON scenario. I'm more confused by this bizarre analogy, while I understand the actual issue of digital privacy just fine.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Do I have to limit the amount of semen I deposit into your colon when fucking your ass?
All I can say is Thank Goodness your semen is going into an orifice in which reproduction is an unlikely outcome.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
And feeling high and mighty because you don't use Facebook is just fooling yourself.
Absolutely. I've never used Facebook, but enough of my friends and family do that I'm sure that they've got an extensive profile on me and there's nothing that I can do about it. Yes, I suppose that I could join, request that my data be removed then terminate my account, but I have no reason to think that they're going to delete anything that they had before I joined.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
But laws like GDPR do. Glad I live in Europe.
Good for you. I agree that the GDPR offers more protection of individuals than US laws do.
Too bad the US government is a massive pile of shit that cares more about fear mongering and big business than it does the people.
Gee thanks. Perhaps US lawmakers have been a bit reluctant to legislate the digital world to death the past 10 years? It's not all Dirty Donald's doing, ok? And perhaps being regulation-happy means the EU must get it right once in a while? Is that worth it? Well, you decide.
And err, whatever happened to "Old World courtesy"?