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.
That's all I have to say. Anonymous
Utilities usually run a credit check on you so giving them fake information doesn’t usually work.
Say we gave everyone by default the copyright to their own personal information, as an intrinsic human right. Then nobody can copy your data without your permission, or else you can sue them. We've already established that personal data is worth money. Well, I don't want people copying that shit and making money off it without showing me any of the profit.
If you want real protection, you're gonna have to change the way records are made and kept public. FB is an easy target (and Slashdot stories in the past few months show how obsessed people are with FB, but not anyone else), but it's not as big of a deal as large aggregating data companies like LexisNexis. And where do they get the bulk of their data? Public records.
Mortgage records, public housing data, court records, public directories, etc. They've got other stuff, of course, but the public stuff are all the things that can really screw with you (compared to your advertising preferences, which is the bulk of what FB, Twitter and others deal in). But anyone interested can do the same as those companies do, with just a visit to the local courthouse or library.
The problem here, however, is that public records are important for everyone. It's good and important to know who owns property. It's good to know who's involved in a court case, who's been sued, and who owns a business. So do we limit this information? Or somehow limit how it's collected? Are there free speech issues involved if individuals are allowed to access public information, but companies can't? Does the answer to that question change when it's the private companies that make the data useful to the public (because otherwise, it's hard to get at, all in one place)?
There are a lot of questions, and the answers are never as easy as "just stop sharing things" or "Make Facebook stop". Living in a large society necessitates having public records easily available, for the sake of all of us. And feeling high and mighty because you don't use Facebook is just fooling yourself. This is a complex issue, and we'll need to decide what we want to give up for the sake of the privacy we think we need/deserve.
"There's a lot of burden being put on individuals to have an understanding and mastery...
There's no choice. It is the only solution.
You cannot depend on governments to guard your privacy. Snowden's disclosures showed the 5 eyes / 11 eyes / whatever group wants to harvest your data just as much as FB and G.
And even you could trust Norway or whatever, what about all the people who don't live in a nice friendly western democracy? What about those living in repressive regimes?
No, we have to protect ourselves, and take back our digital privacy.
And why shouldn't people be expected to understand what they are doing with all of their data? We expect drivers to understand the rules of the road. We expect pilots to understand how to safely operate airplanes. We expect HAM radio operates to abide certain rules to avoid destroying the common medium. Why shouldn't we also expect internet users to act responsibly toward the internet, and stop supporting the worst ideas?
We let anyone flood not the net in the 90's without a shred of comprehension or willingness to learn. We sat by while they made terrible choices, while they made companies like Facebook into international surveillance behemoths, while they spied on we who made better choices by acting as proxies of FB after installing spyware on their own devices.
No... it's long past time to expect better, and for there to be real consequences for those who act poorly, just as we remove driver's licences from people who abuse the public road network and endanger others.
No law can solve this. The solution can only be cultural.
Next question.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
A few years back they were pushing 'mandatory e-file' if you had certain kinds of tax filings. The interesting part? eFile was only available through third party companies, not the IRS itself.
They will just find some other way to violate our privacy by outsourcing it to a third party then legally mandating it. Americans are screwed without a major shift in our legislative priorities.
For a long time I've been saying it: Average Joe forfeited their digital privacy years ago, without realizing it, let alone consenting. Furthermore, "digital privacy" is a contradiction of terms. As soon as your data, any data whatsoever, is posted anywhere online, you lost control over it. Someone being able to read it means someone being able to share it, period.
You can corrupt or falsify your data, but all it takes is one slip.
Have you inadvertently given your phone number to anyone? They might upload it to the cloud (contacts backup), where it can be read and cross-referenced with other data sources, leading to you. Bah, merely getting a phone subscription means your data is not online and WILL be used to make money off it, legally or not.
Have you ordered anything online? Bad idea: your data can now be shared with unknown third parties.
Do you have a static IP address provided by your ISP? Or is your IP address part of a limited pool? Not good: it's saved in logs on ALL websites you visit and can be used to build a comprehensive map of everything you do online.
The moment you connect tot he Internet is the moment you're screwed. Your digital data can be exhumed years after being generated. There are methods which can mitigate the issue but then again, all it takes is ONE slip, e.g. forgetting to start VPN or clicking a malformed URL by mistake, etc.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
We've lived in this world since we learned to speak. People could always tell other about you, spreading gossip and rumours — some accurate, some libellous. Government agencies, private detectives, and organizations like the Inquisition have also kept files on people.
The "new" thing here is that computers are used, which provides for actual accuracy of the information and vastly expands the scale...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
One of the foundations of contract law has always been that a valid agreement requires a "meeting of the minds" - that both parties essentially agree upon and desire the outcomes specified in the contract. Somehow this got thrown out the window with the "click agree to continue" mode of doing business. I'm not going to knock long lists of terms and conditions - from a technical, legal standpoint they are often necessary to protect both sides and allow business to be conducted in a reasonable manner, and there are plenty of instances they are honest and straightforward parts of the bargain.
That being said, there are also many instances companies are sneaking in stuff that has nothing to do with the other party's conception of the agreement. Courts have been upholding this bullshit, and they should not. Virtually every case where privacy issues become problematic involve these situations.
My suggestion would be to have three or four "standard forms" for Internet agreements that are reasonably easy to understand (the idea modeled very loosely on the Creative Commons concept - straightforward options, with icons indicating what is included / excluded). I would start with "free as in beer," "pay with money," "pay with ad viewing," and "pay with your life data." These can contain the overwhelming majority of the "boilerplate" and be explained fairly easily. This leaves the exceptions, which in most cases should be short enough for a person to deal with. If you can't start with this and have a humanly manageable agreement, then your product or service is probably sketchy as fuck and people should stay away.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
People may have read it, but did not learn from it. Now you pay the price.
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.
There are people working toward systems that works properly, it just takes more effort and it doesn't make money for a centralized company. See Hubzilla. Another problem is that there is not a billion-dollar promotional campaign behind things that don't allow exploitation of the users. They have to be developed from the edges in basically by definition. The federated identity-aware web is slowly and steadily coming together, but it is happening in projects like hubzilla, ostatus, mastodon, owncloud, etc that the main stream media just ignores because they aren't being pushed by those trying to create get-rich-quick schemes by cheating people.
They included language in an agreement that had anyone who agreed to use their email service grant permission to contact their friends with ads. Unlawful in Canada, and now withdrawn... in Canada.
davecb@spamcop.net
Remember when the term "Global Village" was all the rage? With all the talk about the benefits that a global village would bring, people forgot that there are parts of living in a village that suck. One of those is that there is no place to hide. Everyone knows your business.
So, welcome to the global village.
Keep in mind almost every App in the market place is designed for 1 reason and 1 reason only. To provide a perceived value so that you use it and get more and more tied in. Facebook, Google, Bing, Twitter, Instagram and the rest of the social media/search sitesApps in the ecosystem are the same.
;)
The reason they provide these apps/tools and sites is to collect as much of your personal information as they can so they can sell it and market ads at you for the highest bidder.
That is how capitalism works,.also keep in mind these are businesses, they do not care about you, except in the value of selling your personal information/making money on you. If something happens, their goal is not to help make you whole, it is not to get sued.
Welcome to the real world.
Just my 2 cents
Maybe.
My electric company and internet provider did a credit check.
I hate fat people.
... back when LinkedIn started up, when people created accounts they were asked to grant LinkedIn access to their address book.
If you said yes, aside from stealing all your contacts' info, LinkedIn would send spam email to all your contacts (in your name) asking you to sign up.
I might be very good at managing my digital privacy, but I can't prevent other people from adding my phone number, contact info, etc. to their phones (which will then get stolen/taken by other apps).
It works both ways, though. Once, after a job-interview, I looked up the prospective boss — and found, he was once arrested during a meeting in defence of Free Speech. Made me want to work for him — and for the company, that employed people like him in positions of authority...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I think we could figure out a way to state that a piece of data that describes a person (can be tied back to an individual) is the property of that person. And each piece of data is worth a minimum of $1. This is property -- not copyright so there is no "fair use".
The one exception would be public records such as titles, etc. The authorized body would be allowed to store that data with no payment to the owner. e.g. the county court house can record the deeds, mortgage, etc about your house. But they can not give it away.
Possession of data that has not been paid for is treated the same as possession of stolen property.
Aggregate data that can be tied back to a person is still considered personal data even if each single piece of data can not be tied back to a particular person.
"tied back" is if it is possible for a piece of data to be deduced to be about a particular individual. The argument of "possible" would be done by the court system.
Personal data would be treated much like a material item when it comes to such things are guardianship, etc.
The ownership would start at conception and would survive death.
This is more or less off the cuff. The point is that if personal data was taken to be the same as personal property and viewed in that light, with laws set so each piece of personal data has a minimum value, then the way it is handled would suddenly change completely.
Another thing I would add is some way to make it that unnamed third parties can never receive any personal data. I don't want to allow something like a license where part of the license is for me to "willingly" give the other party permission to sell or distribute my personal data to third parties.
Anyhow, the point here is to not figure out all the precise language but I'd like to see people start thinking along those lines -- that the data about me is my personal property. There are a lot of details to work out.
Big companies have been slurpng up your data for decades. You have not always agreed to it or even been aware of it. Credit bureaus sound familiar?
Twitter, Facebook.
That removes a lot of the tracking.
Use a browser that can stop the ad, social media and malware requests.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
from collecting data. Rather it's to put out a lot of data about yourself that is false. Then when the system becomes gummed up with false data, it will have no value and companies will stop collecting it.
"We need laws to stop this data being collected in the first place"
- R. Stallman
The consumer finance industry is absurdly rife with pervasive data transparency contrary to the knowledge and wishes of the people that generate the data.
Finance industry in general is pretty bad with this... they're trying to do the same thing to medical data... just enter everything into a big database somewhere that you opted to share your data through in some giant EULA or whatever and if you say no then you're basically treated like you're Amish.
Its everywhere.
Its the state of things at the moment. If you think your data isn't out there then you're confused.
The best we can do is fill in false information where practical and use anonymizing tech. But that doesn't make you invisible to the government or the banks... and they share with everyone and know more information about you then most people would guess.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
None of my social media accounts link to my real life. None of them. I tell my friends that theirs should not either and I do not accept "friend requests" and I tell them why not to do that either.
All you have to do is not use your real life information when signing up for services. Same goes for utilities.
I've used www.fakenamegenerator.com for many years now, mostly on Rooted Android devices.
I'll reroll the info till I get something close to home.
This would be used on servers and such, no money involved.
Worrying about whether someone else's disclosure exposes you is a waste of time. There is no privacy left, and the only way to safely live in peace is to never disclose anything to anyone. Once it is out of your mouth, it will be scraped up into the great data bank in the sky, where it will live forever. Historians and researchers in 300 years will be able to determine the precise day when you had a hemorrhoid operation, a tooth filled, or you purchased a new coffee pot. We will never need to speculate about things like George Washington's false teeth with our contemporaries, because we will be able to retrieve the precise model, the date they were fitted, and the amount of sales tax paid when they were purchased. Fortunately, we have a benevolent government that will only use this information to help us.
Scott said this 10-15 years ago? He said we have no privacy. Get over it.
Disinformation doesn't mean doodley, even if you come out of a Tor node exit. They characterized your browser long ago, and by probing your browser's state, they know who you are.
You surfed enough to different places to get a capture that shows your activities. They get your logon name, because you didn't use plugins that tell your browser than you're doing a cleartext post from within an otherwise https site. They look and cross-ref that ID, because you're lazy like everyone else.
They know who you are. It just takes some trivial digging.
You can do all of the sophomoric gigglies you want, but don't kid yourself. They know who you are, and can detect the signal from your noise no matter how clever you think you are.
It's not a game to the people that want to know, and while they themselves are sometimes not very clever, they have acres of spinning disks and too much cpu power to not eventually win.
This is the dismaying part. There are tricks to provide real, no-shit anonymity on the Internet, but they're short term, and like a burner phone, have to be thrown away. It just makes the trail harder to follow. Sooner or later, if they want you, they'll correlate enough interesting data to make a good guess. This isn't paranoia, this is a living for a small group of people. They like to win. Information has always had value, and until yours is worth something, be carefree.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.