Yes, but if they have a target they can analyze the data with respect to that target. If you get on their radar they can pull up & analyze everything they have on you. And it's cheap to store massive amounts of data. What it comes down to is the government will have supreme power over anybody they don't like... which is not a good thing.
One proposed solution I've heard to this (other than not dragnetting everything) is to "escrow" the data with the courts or other appropriate oversight body. The key is that the oversight body must have as rights assurance and correct procedure as its primary goals. So the dragnet could be total, but intelligence and law enforcement officials wouldn't actually be able to use the data unless they had specific, lawful reasons to do so.
As a practical matter, if the data is encrypted at rest the oversight body needn't actually take responsibility for storing the data, just for holding the decryption keys.
Using Occams razor, there are enough skilled people in the community to know if there is any malicious code maintained by Google and that its not possible that all of them are in on the conspiracy (the more people in a conspiracy the less secret it is, the whole "information wants to be free" thing).
That's a valid point. Another to consider is that Google's culture and the type of people that Google hires accomplish the same thing, even more so than Apple or Microsoft, though honestly the same dynamic occurs there. If your focus is on hiring the brightest and you don't much care if they're particularly housebroken, you'd better not have any deep secrets you want kept. For that matter, the (semi-serious) joke inside Google is that if you're doing anything nefarious you'd better keep it secret from Sergey as well, because he's not particularly housebroken.
People complain that google wants to sell ads and collect some personal information (to sell presumably)
Actually, Google doesn't sell personal information. Google just uses it to target ads, and if you don't want to be targeted you can opt out.
The really funny thing is that this conversation about it being hard to trust Google is in response to an article disclosing that Google has fulfilled its promises and, indeed, been trustworthy.
While what you say is true, it misses the most important point, which is that Mr. Levison is not even allowed to tell us why he has to shut down. The problem isn't surveillance, the problem is secrecy about surveillance that prevents it from being properly discussed and evaluated.
When my kid gets diarrhea the first thing I did was went online to lookup what the causes could be, what the home remedies (if any) were, at what point I should be concerned enough to schedule a doctor visit (or an ER visit for that matter). If a doctor visit is necessary I can then look up what doctors are nearby and accepting patients, or schedule an appointment with our existing doctor, or check wait and travel times to an emergency center.
+1
Properly-applied knowledge is the way to mitigate suffering. Indeed, properly-applied knowledge is the way the first world got to where it is, with a general high level of health, safety and comfort. It's the way malaria got cured as well. One way of applying knowledge is to bring in outside resources with the expertise, equipment and labor to solve the problems. That's what Gates is doing to fight malaria, and it's a very good thing. Another way is to provide people with knowledge and allow them to build/acquire the equipment and provide the labor to solve the problems. That's what the Internet can do, and it's a very good thing.
In the long run, teaching a man to fish is a more sustainable way to fix his hungry belly. In the short term, giving him a fish sandwich solves the current problem much faster. Both are appropriate.
Amber Alert seems like a really good idea, until you look at it closely. The root problem is false positives. Not false reports of sightings of abducted children, those can be weeded through pretty effectively. False Amber Alerts.
The basic concept behind the system is that since many abducted children are killed in the first three hours, it's necessary to get the alert out there fast. But, it's also really important that there not be a flood of Amber alerts issued about kids who just wandered off to a friend's house or something, so the process of verifying that a particular case meets all of the criteria for issuing an alert pretty much guarantees that by the time the alert is issued it's too late for kids who were victims of the most frightening form of child abduction, the sort for which the alert system was created.
Research backs this logic up. Multiple studies have been done, and none have demonstrated that Amber alerts do much at all that's useful. They're most effective at finding family abduction cases, but those almost never harm the kids and almost always get resolved anyway, without the alert.
All of the actual research papers I can find are paywalled, but here's a Boston Globe article that discusses the results of one of the earliest studies. Several more have reaffirmed and even strengthened the findings of the first.
So, it really doesn't matter much if the alert delivery system is broken. The alert issuance system is fundamentally and likely irreparably flawed.
I think this is a good thing... it's much better, at least, than "6 strikes".
Am I insane? An MPAA shill?
Neither. Well, definitely not the latter and I don't think I'm the former, either. Let me explain.
Although they're saying this isn't a replacement for "6 strikes", it is. Because this warning would presumably pop up before you downloaded the infringing content, so you would choose not to do it, meaning you'll never accrue any strikes. Now, I'm assuming this popup will come up in exactly the same circumstances that you'd get tagged with a strike, which effectively makes this a "strike alert". Sure the popup will point you to legal avenues, but its real value is in pointing out when you're downloading infringing content in a way that will be visible to Comcast.
The obvious solution for pirates: If you get a popup, find another source that doesn't trigger the popup, and download it from there. Find a sharing site that uses SSL, or use an SSL proxy, or TOR, or... whatever. Some mechanism that isn't or can't be monitored by Comcast, and is therefore safe from strikes.
Effectively, this allows Comcast to placate the content industry, "See, look how hard we're working to protect your content!", while at the same time removing the risk that they'll have to cut off paying customers who accumulate too many strikes.
As for the "Oh, noes, they're watching my connection!" bit, meh. They can do that all they want without notifying people with a popup. In my opinion as a professional security engineer, that's another GOOD thing about this. It will occasionally remind people that anything you do online that isn't encrypted is visible to your ISP and to whoever else happens to lie upon the path between your browser and the endpoint. It doesn't decrease security or privacy, it reminds you that you are operating in a context where you don't have much, if any, security or privacy. Knowing is better than not knowing.
So... yay for Comcast! I hope all the other ISPs jump on board.
I'm too busy taking the piss out of the argument "wanna bet?
Unsuccessfully. What you've so far demonstrated is that you don't actually have enough faith in your argument to put money on it. Which is what I thought, and what I wanted to establish. Well, that and I was hoping to take enough of your money to buy a second- or third- generation Glass in 2016.
When there exists people that actually will push to have the "dangerous" substance of DHMO banned, I'm not sure if "ignoring it" is the wisest decision.
What, you think they might actually get it banned?
You don't have any idea what I believe. You posted an rather extremist rant of your own, so I tweaked your nose, and you responded with flames. I suspect we couldn't really have a conversation, but it's not because of me.
Ah... I had never realized that the sum total of society was represented by that which is funded by the central government's forcible confiscation of private goods.
Ehh, you're missing the point. Besides, stanlyb was talking about an absolute ratio, not mass or volume.
"Absolute ratio"? Umm, there's nothing any more absolute about atom count than there is about mass, or volume (though volume is kind of squishy when it comes to molecules).
"Wizard's First Rule: people are stupid." Richard and Kahlan frowned even more. "People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.
"Because of Wizards First Rule, the old wizards created Confessors, and Seekers, as a means of helping find the truth, when the truth is important enough. Darken Rahl knows the Wizard's Rules. He is using the first one. People need an enemy to feel a sense of purpose. It's easy to lead people when they have a sense of purpose. Sense of purpose is more important by far than the truth. In fact, truth has no bearing in this. Darken Rahl is providing them with an enemy, other than himself, a sense of purpose. People are stupid; they want to believe, so they do."
So, arguably, the Wizard's First Rule is "People are stupid", though the rest of it makes clear that what Zedd actually meant is "People are credulous".
Okay... how about $1500? We need to have an endpoint, how about end of 2015? Terms: If Google is displaying ads on Glass on or before December 31st, 2015, I'll pay you. If not, you'll pay me. In the meantime, we'll have to find some escrow service to hold the money. Any suggestions?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but if they have a target they can analyze the data with respect to that target. If you get on their radar they can pull up & analyze everything they have on you. And it's cheap to store massive amounts of data. What it comes down to is the government will have supreme power over anybody they don't like... which is not a good thing.
One proposed solution I've heard to this (other than not dragnetting everything) is to "escrow" the data with the courts or other appropriate oversight body. The key is that the oversight body must have as rights assurance and correct procedure as its primary goals. So the dragnet could be total, but intelligence and law enforcement officials wouldn't actually be able to use the data unless they had specific, lawful reasons to do so.
As a practical matter, if the data is encrypted at rest the oversight body needn't actually take responsibility for storing the data, just for holding the decryption keys.
Using Occams razor, there are enough skilled people in the community to know if there is any malicious code maintained by Google and that its not possible that all of them are in on the conspiracy (the more people in a conspiracy the less secret it is, the whole "information wants to be free" thing).
That's a valid point. Another to consider is that Google's culture and the type of people that Google hires accomplish the same thing, even more so than Apple or Microsoft, though honestly the same dynamic occurs there. If your focus is on hiring the brightest and you don't much care if they're particularly housebroken, you'd better not have any deep secrets you want kept. For that matter, the (semi-serious) joke inside Google is that if you're doing anything nefarious you'd better keep it secret from Sergey as well, because he's not particularly housebroken.
People complain that google wants to sell ads and collect some personal information (to sell presumably)
Actually, Google doesn't sell personal information. Google just uses it to target ads, and if you don't want to be targeted you can opt out.
LOL
Nothing short of perfection is acceptable. Well, go buy that other tablet that satisfies all of your requirements then.
PJ is a paid Samsung PR blogger.
That should be modded Funny, not Troll.
Trusting Google is a hard thing to do.
The really funny thing is that this conversation about it being hard to trust Google is in response to an article disclosing that Google has fulfilled its promises and, indeed, been trustworthy.
Hookers supposedly got their name from General Hooker in the Civil War, who maintained a brothel for his troops.
They weren't called that because of his brothel. They acquired that name years earlier, as "Hooker's Ladies", because Hooker always had them around.
While what you say is true, it misses the most important point, which is that Mr. Levison is not even allowed to tell us why he has to shut down. The problem isn't surveillance, the problem is secrecy about surveillance that prevents it from being properly discussed and evaluated.
When my kid gets diarrhea the first thing I did was went online to lookup what the causes could be, what the home remedies (if any) were, at what point I should be concerned enough to schedule a doctor visit (or an ER visit for that matter). If a doctor visit is necessary I can then look up what doctors are nearby and accepting patients, or schedule an appointment with our existing doctor, or check wait and travel times to an emergency center.
+1
Properly-applied knowledge is the way to mitigate suffering. Indeed, properly-applied knowledge is the way the first world got to where it is, with a general high level of health, safety and comfort. It's the way malaria got cured as well. One way of applying knowledge is to bring in outside resources with the expertise, equipment and labor to solve the problems. That's what Gates is doing to fight malaria, and it's a very good thing. Another way is to provide people with knowledge and allow them to build/acquire the equipment and provide the labor to solve the problems. That's what the Internet can do, and it's a very good thing.
In the long run, teaching a man to fish is a more sustainable way to fix his hungry belly. In the short term, giving him a fish sandwich solves the current problem much faster. Both are appropriate.
Amber Alert seems like a really good idea, until you look at it closely. The root problem is false positives. Not false reports of sightings of abducted children, those can be weeded through pretty effectively. False Amber Alerts.
The basic concept behind the system is that since many abducted children are killed in the first three hours, it's necessary to get the alert out there fast. But, it's also really important that there not be a flood of Amber alerts issued about kids who just wandered off to a friend's house or something, so the process of verifying that a particular case meets all of the criteria for issuing an alert pretty much guarantees that by the time the alert is issued it's too late for kids who were victims of the most frightening form of child abduction, the sort for which the alert system was created.
Research backs this logic up. Multiple studies have been done, and none have demonstrated that Amber alerts do much at all that's useful. They're most effective at finding family abduction cases, but those almost never harm the kids and almost always get resolved anyway, without the alert.
All of the actual research papers I can find are paywalled, but here's a Boston Globe article that discusses the results of one of the earliest studies. Several more have reaffirmed and even strengthened the findings of the first.
So, it really doesn't matter much if the alert delivery system is broken. The alert issuance system is fundamentally and likely irreparably flawed.
I think this is a good thing... it's much better, at least, than "6 strikes".
Am I insane? An MPAA shill?
Neither. Well, definitely not the latter and I don't think I'm the former, either. Let me explain.
Although they're saying this isn't a replacement for "6 strikes", it is. Because this warning would presumably pop up before you downloaded the infringing content, so you would choose not to do it, meaning you'll never accrue any strikes. Now, I'm assuming this popup will come up in exactly the same circumstances that you'd get tagged with a strike, which effectively makes this a "strike alert". Sure the popup will point you to legal avenues, but its real value is in pointing out when you're downloading infringing content in a way that will be visible to Comcast.
The obvious solution for pirates: If you get a popup, find another source that doesn't trigger the popup, and download it from there. Find a sharing site that uses SSL, or use an SSL proxy, or TOR, or... whatever. Some mechanism that isn't or can't be monitored by Comcast, and is therefore safe from strikes.
Effectively, this allows Comcast to placate the content industry, "See, look how hard we're working to protect your content!", while at the same time removing the risk that they'll have to cut off paying customers who accumulate too many strikes.
As for the "Oh, noes, they're watching my connection!" bit, meh. They can do that all they want without notifying people with a popup. In my opinion as a professional security engineer, that's another GOOD thing about this. It will occasionally remind people that anything you do online that isn't encrypted is visible to your ISP and to whoever else happens to lie upon the path between your browser and the endpoint. It doesn't decrease security or privacy, it reminds you that you are operating in a context where you don't have much, if any, security or privacy. Knowing is better than not knowing.
So... yay for Comcast! I hope all the other ISPs jump on board.
I'm too busy taking the piss out of the argument "wanna bet?
Unsuccessfully. What you've so far demonstrated is that you don't actually have enough faith in your argument to put money on it. Which is what I thought, and what I wanted to establish. Well, that and I was hoping to take enough of your money to buy a second- or third- generation Glass in 2016.
When there exists people that actually will push to have the "dangerous" substance of DHMO banned, I'm not sure if "ignoring it" is the wisest decision.
What, you think they might actually get it banned?
Not going to give me a chance to take your money?
You don't have any idea what I believe. You posted an rather extremist rant of your own, so I tweaked your nose, and you responded with flames. I suspect we couldn't really have a conversation, but it's not because of me.
BTW, if you'd like to drop the bombast and the insults, I'll drop the sarcasm and we can have an adult conversation. Or not, your choice.
My, what a powerfully convincing style of argumentation you have.
Ah... I had never realized that the sum total of society was represented by that which is funded by the central government's forcible confiscation of private goods.
I am enlightened.
Off in the distance, almost out of sight now, is the point that you are missing.
I didn't miss it. I ignored it. It was boring.
+1!
Only $1500? What about $1,000,000?
Okay. I can't escrow the full amount, though.
Ehh, you're missing the point. Besides, stanlyb was talking about an absolute ratio, not mass or volume.
"Absolute ratio"? Umm, there's nothing any more absolute about atom count than there is about mass, or volume (though volume is kind of squishy when it comes to molecules).
Nah, they'll only be free to continue for the next year or two. By which time they won't have any reason to import iPhone 4s and iPad 2s anyway.
I write too fast. Two times more than.... in the water :D
But it's not. In fact hydrogen makes up only slightly more than one-ninth of a water molecule.
The quote:
"Wizard's First Rule: people are stupid." Richard and Kahlan frowned even more. "People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.
"Because of Wizards First Rule, the old wizards created Confessors, and Seekers, as a means of helping find the truth, when the truth is important enough. Darken Rahl knows the Wizard's Rules. He is using the first one. People need an enemy to feel a sense of purpose. It's easy to lead people when they have a sense of purpose. Sense of purpose is more important by far than the truth. In fact, truth has no bearing in this. Darken Rahl is providing them with an enemy, other than himself, a sense of purpose. People are stupid; they want to believe, so they do."
So, arguably, the Wizard's First Rule is "People are stupid", though the rest of it makes clear that what Zedd actually meant is "People are credulous".
Okay... how about $1500? We need to have an endpoint, how about end of 2015? Terms: If Google is displaying ads on Glass on or before December 31st, 2015, I'll pay you. If not, you'll pay me. In the meantime, we'll have to find some escrow service to hold the money. Any suggestions?