I think that's a pretty harsh term. When used by a repressive regime this technology could be used for doing bad things
The problem is that governments have given themselves permission to go in and get any of this data.
Which means it is pretty much inevitable that these shiny toys really are going to be Stasi Tech.. only people have signed up willingly for it, using terms which can be changed at the whim of the company... and the governments will just demand the data.
Sorry, but you really can't sound paranoid enough about just how these technologies are likely to be abused.
Either from greedy corporations looking to make a buck off you, or governments who demand that same data to spy on you when it would be illegal for them to do it.
I've been saying for years all of these devices which want to be connected to the internet were a privacy and security shitstorm just waiting to happen.
That it's being shown as true is far from gratifying.
Corporations don't give a crap about your security or privacy.
Stop rewarding them with your money for some shiny baubles which are doing nothing but spying on you and monitizing everything you do.
One expenditure keeps a newly minted US ally stabilized for at least two months. That at least fulfills concrete interests of the US.
I'm sorry, but what?
All of the justifications to topple Iraq's government in 2003 were fabrications and lies.
Going in there in the first place was misguided, wrong, and pointless.
So don't suddenly act like the expense to stay in there is better than doing something useful.
Toppling the government in Iraq was sheer folly, pushed by an idiot, and justified by things which were provably false at the same time.
The expenses of staying there don't get to be justified as a better deal, because you shouldn't have been in there at all.. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and that was known before America went int there.
So, I propose one big giant drone. It will fly to the locale, and then unleash dozens of smaller drones.
These drones, under the pretense of delivering packages (wink wink), will then scan all residences with FLIR, infrared, and every other technology, including tapping all communications.
The marketing people will take all of that information and do what they need to, and the government will also be provided the information.
Your signature for the package will have a rider on the EULA which says you also authorize the government to tap your phone and your internet connections.
Government will immediately begin any parallel reconstruction tasks needed depending on your political leanings, and the tap on your computers will alerts the copyright assholes if they also need to get involved.
*sigh* Ten years ago, that would sound paranoid... these days, I'm not sure it's paranoid enough.
Look, if I want to build my fucking phone in a kit... well, actually, I don't want to build my phone in a kit, which is my damned point.
So first I need to find an exploit for my phone, hope it works, hope it has no chance of bricking my phone (which no matter what anybody says is non-zero), then I need to download a ROM, then I need to recreate all the functionality I need, and then I need to hope it works. Then I need to do who knows what to keep it running.
Sorry, but no.
I've looked into rooting both my phone, and my tablet... and both of them sound like they're a lot more nuisance than it's worth.
If you're a hobbyist who craves nothing more than endlessly fiddling with your device, maybe it sounds worthwhile. But from what I've been able to tell, it's a lot more than I'm willing to do.
All I want is the damned app which lets me say "no, you can't to that" to remove perms from apps.. I don't want to build a phone from scratch.
No, it's a feedback loop. The exact same thing is happening with copyright.
America (and all of the five eyes) want additional laws and powers. Those laws and powers are currently illegal and unpopular.
So, one of the five eyes gets talked into passing a law which goes much further. And then the rest of them all say "see, we need these powers too".
The exact same thing has been happening with copyright, and spying provisions... they play off one another to expand the powers internationally, and then push to get the same things domestically.
Essentially most western governments now have three magic keys to the kingdom: copyright, terrorism, and child porn.
These three things are being used to march the goalposts further down the field, and the consequences for the rest of our liberties be damned.
The five-eyes are flunkies in advancing the interests of corporations, and conspiring together to give us global fascism and surveillance. The Western democracies are all actively trying to say "fuck you and your rights, this is what we do, this is who we share it with, and if you don't like it fuck off".
Essentially the governments and spy agencies of the five-eyes are larger threats to our liberties than the people they claim to be protecting us from.
And they seem to not give a damn what they do to get there.
They're quick to tell us how this is going to make us more secure, but they've utterly failed to demonstrate how existing laws are inadequate, or that these news laws would have helped at all in anything they've missed.
This is the drooling "we need to give the security people the tools to do their job", while ignoring the legal protections we're supposed to have, and failing to justify these new powers.
And, of course, the government spokesman said how this proposal was met well by the other people in the "five eyes"... of course they're going to love it, they get a share of the fucking take.
We don't give a shit about what a foreign government thinks about our security and information sharing, because they greedily want this shit.
We give a shit about the fact that this is illegal, unnecessary, completely unjustified, and completely lacking in proper checks and balances.
This is a government operating on a "law and order" agenda who doesn't give a fuck about the law.
At a certain point, I simply don't care if it's malice or incompetence.
Because once you're so massively incompetent.. it really doesn't matter.
If they won't fix their incompetence, then treat them as if they're malicious. The results are the same -- they are not trustworthy. Not even a little.
But it's not a secret. You know when you buy one of these your voice is going to be transmitted over the internets for analysis.
Does your average TV owner know this? Is it explicitly marked on the package?
Because until they announced they might be sending your voice to third parties, I'm betting your average consumer had no frickin' idea that was happening.
The only potential violation of privacy here would be the ability for a third party to intercept the unencrypted data on someone
Well, first they broadcast it in the clear, and then they're giving it to a third party to do the work.
Everything about this system, from end to end, is more or less designed to violate your privacy.
Because the "security" is pretty much non-existent.
Corporations need to have huge penalties for implementing "security" like a bunch of lazy chimps. If they aren't, then people should be well informed that the security of their product was, in fact, written by a bunch of lazy, indifferent chimps.
It's sort of unbelievable, though, in some way, that no one stops to think of security and privacy ramifications of these things though. Yet it happens time after time after time.
Laziness. Incompetence. Greed. Lack of penalties.
The lack of penalties pretty much guarantees the other three.
When companies carry actual penalties for doing a terrible job of security, they might try harder. Until then, not a chance.
If all they have to do is say "oh, gee, we're not really sorry" and have no consequences, this will keep happening.
Which is precisely why you should assume any piece of consumer electronics which wants to connect to the internet was pushed out the door by lazy, incompetent, greedy bastards who bear no legal penalty for screwing up on security and privacy.
Because the reality is, that's probably exactly what happened.
Bring in real privacy and data security laws, or just straight up assume the product doesn't give a crap about you.
Honestly, it's hard for the lay-person to keep track, or really understand what this stuff is supposed to be.
It falls out of some math, but periodically someone says some of the assumptions might be a bit dodgy.
We can't see it, we can't measure it, we can't account for it.. but "magically" it accounts for specific ratios we take as accurate.
Many of us are just sitting on the sidelines wondering if it's a thing, or if it's a limitation in our understanding of the universe.
So, please, if you want to defend it... dumb it down for us and don't just throw out a couple of quoted terms. We're not going to suddenly learn the massive amount of abstract maths to truly understand what the hell it's supposed to be.
It has all the hallmarks to a layman as "magic beans", because it's "special particles" which make everything taste minty, but otherwise we know fuck all about it.
It's unexplained magic, defended by math we don't understand, and articulated... well, my smarmy wankers such as yourself who think "galaxy rotation curve" and "bullet cluster" are magical fucking statements which end all discussion.
The reality is, your average person hears dark matter and thinks "this sounds like bullshit, but I have no idea how I would know otherwise".
So, smart ass, in four sentences or less, in terms a layman can understand, and requiring zero mathematics... what the fuck is it?
Because if you can't do that, then don't embarrass yourself further by pretending you know what it is either other than "the magical stuff we don't know what it is but falls out of the maths".
Honestly, it means what Europe was using 20 years ago, and what much of the world has been using for at least 10 years is slowly being adopted by American banks.
In the mid 90's we talked about chip-and-pin cards in a crypto class, and I knew people from France who had them. I've had one in my pocket for at least 10 years.
Essentially American banks move at glacial speed, and are taking up what is now fairly old technology.
the proposal could authorize remote searches on the data of millions of Americans simultaneouslyâ"particularly those who share a network or routerâ"and cautioned it rested on shaky legal footing
1) Of course it is 2) That's the frickin' point
See, the people advocating unlimited surveillance couldn't possibly be stupid enough to not know this.
They just don't give a fuck.
This is "Yarg! We need security by any means, and if we shit on your rights, too fucking bad, because we're the good guys".
These clowns might actually believe they're "doing this for the greater good" -- but so does every fascist and dictator who decides they will do it anyway and we'll thank them later.
Unfortunately, since these people have sworn to uphold the Constitution, I think they should be hanged or shot. Because whatever they think they're protecting, they're doing more damage to our liberties than they are solving problems. In fact, they've become the problem.
Once they get over their illusion they're doing it for our own good, then the fun really begins, and the fascism really goes into effect.
Law enforcement have basically said "fuck the law, the law is what we say it is". And they feel entitled to do anything they want to. Which means law enforcement is more or less deeming themselves in charge of everything.
This is absolute garbage. The most powerful claim is so generalized that it can be interpreted to cover anything the owner wishes.
This is the inherent problem with patents.
They're written that way by design, and the US Patent Office doesn't evaluate them for being weak patents, they just confirm the check cleared.
Patents stopped being about innovation decades ago, and now they're about playing a game of semantics to make it sound like you've invented something, when in fact you're describing something which has been done before, or is fairly obvious.'
Patents are a bloody joke, simply because they are so vague and open ended... and so many of them boil down to "a system and methodology for doing something we've all done before, but with a computer/cell phone".
Patents aren't about innovation and invention, they're about corporate rent seeking in the vast majority of cases.
And, I'm afraid I don't have sympathy for companies who engage in patent lawsuits when they lose one. It's not like they're victims here... they're just getting screwed in the same game they try to screw other people in.
Don't worry, governments will make sure the biggest company who contributes the most wins... just like they always do.
Don't be absurd... America is largely about exporting IP laws these days... you know, bullying other countries into signing treaties designed to enshrine guaranteeing profits of multinational corporations in the laws of as many countries as possible.
Apparently, America's foreign policy has mostly been co-opted by corporations, and now America just does what they're told.
America used to stand for Democracy, Liberty, and Freedom. Now it's Copyright, Patents, corporate Rent Seeking, Surveillance, and a little arms sales on the side.
You might almost say that America's principal export is the Global Oligarchy with a side of totalitarianism. Because, really, that's what it is.
It appears to patent any holder ("a head-mounted device") of any portable device worn on one's head that's providing a "display".
So, you know all those pictures of the guys with cell phones taped to their head?
This is pretty much the same idea.
Seriously, I don't think this is patentable. Well, I'm sure it is, because the patent office are just rubber stamping stuff.
The portable electronic device may for example be physically and/or operatively coupled and decoupled with the head-mounted device. In some embodiments, the two devices may be considered temporarily integrated.
So, it may or may not change how it functions.. they may or may not be integrated... essentially the "invention" is a display mounted in front of your face which might do something extra... or it might not, but in the future we could make it really cool so we're really just patenting the concept as a placeholder.
Yup, the USPTO are a bunch of chimps signing off on anything as long as the check cleared.
Describing a helmet mounted HUD which slaves to a piece of portable electronics isn't an "invention"... it's an example of stuff we've seen in sci-fi.
And should you ever commit a crime we will be able to retroactively find the evidence for your trial. If you really piss us off we'll edit the video record and call it parallel reconstruction.
In a few years, the pre-cog program will come online, but the surveillance is here to stay.
Oh god, if anybody I know ever straps their iphone in front of their face with some dorky looking headgear... the mocking shall be swift and relentless.
Suddenly I'm picturing the dock-tacular iPhone HUD consisting of three iPhones, and I might pee myself laughing at the thought of it.
You would have to mock strangers for wearing what I'm visualizing.:-P
Documents are stored on a shared server in some sort of hierarchy, but there are all kinds of problems, e.g. multiple copies get saved with slightly-different names because people are afraid of overwriting the old version 'just in case' and nobody can figure out which is the latest version, or which got sent out to a client, etc.
This is a sure sign that you're wife's company is basically doing it wrong.
There have been enterprise content management applications on the market for a few decades. They solve the problem of managing your documents, with versions, and hierarchies.
If you're manually doing this stuff in shared folders... your company is using outdated methods. Unless you're a really young company, or only have a handful of people, most companies have grown out of this literally years ago.
If your business people are doing their own version control, this is a huge business risk, and it will bite you in the ass one day.
Seriously, 1995 called, they want their document management back.
It has to be more than simply having a privacy policy... because then all it will say is "you have no privacy, suckers".
You also can't put "intentional" as part of it... because then all they have to do is say "whoops, we were incompetent".
Essentially put real and meaningful limits on what a company can do with your data, and real and severe penalties for failing to do it.
No weasel room of playing semantics to assign blame... you got a data breach, you are non-compliant.
And, most importantly, don't let the fucking lobbyists write it so that it's watered down and full of exemptions like they do now -- too often industry just writes something which absolves them of any and all blame, and removes all enforcement.
Stop allowing corporations to just say "not our fault" or "we're not responsible for being malicious or incompetent".
It's bloody well time to stop acting like what is good for corporations is good for the rest of us.
Of course it's not new... but every day we see further examples how consumer electronics are pushed out with gaping security holes.
Until corporations bear some penalty for doing security incompetently, this will continue.
But what has to happen is actually holding corporations accountable for stuff like that... instead of a click-through license which say "we make no promises our product doesn't suck or that we're not lying to you".
Oddly, people seem opposed to corporations being accountable for their actions.
That's because governments are all being bribed and co-opted by corporations, who wield more power than humans do. Because the modern concept of corporations is horribly broken.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that governments have given themselves permission to go in and get any of this data.
Which means it is pretty much inevitable that these shiny toys really are going to be Stasi Tech .. only people have signed up willingly for it, using terms which can be changed at the whim of the company ... and the governments will just demand the data.
Sorry, but you really can't sound paranoid enough about just how these technologies are likely to be abused.
Either from greedy corporations looking to make a buck off you, or governments who demand that same data to spy on you when it would be illegal for them to do it.
I've been saying for years all of these devices which want to be connected to the internet were a privacy and security shitstorm just waiting to happen.
That it's being shown as true is far from gratifying.
Corporations don't give a crap about your security or privacy.
Stop rewarding them with your money for some shiny baubles which are doing nothing but spying on you and monitizing everything you do.
I'm sorry, but what?
All of the justifications to topple Iraq's government in 2003 were fabrications and lies.
Going in there in the first place was misguided, wrong, and pointless.
So don't suddenly act like the expense to stay in there is better than doing something useful.
Toppling the government in Iraq was sheer folly, pushed by an idiot, and justified by things which were provably false at the same time.
The expenses of staying there don't get to be justified as a better deal, because you shouldn't have been in there at all .. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and that was known before America went int there.
Nah, it's more like the "domestic parcel delivery catapult" judging by what most packages look like.
No drones, just pure ballistic flight.
A truck? Really?
Bloody amateurs.
So, I propose one big giant drone. It will fly to the locale, and then unleash dozens of smaller drones.
These drones, under the pretense of delivering packages (wink wink), will then scan all residences with FLIR, infrared, and every other technology, including tapping all communications.
The marketing people will take all of that information and do what they need to, and the government will also be provided the information.
Your signature for the package will have a rider on the EULA which says you also authorize the government to tap your phone and your internet connections.
Government will immediately begin any parallel reconstruction tasks needed depending on your political leanings, and the tap on your computers will alerts the copyright assholes if they also need to get involved.
*sigh* Ten years ago, that would sound paranoid ... these days, I'm not sure it's paranoid enough.
Look, if I want to build my fucking phone in a kit ... well, actually, I don't want to build my phone in a kit, which is my damned point.
So first I need to find an exploit for my phone, hope it works, hope it has no chance of bricking my phone (which no matter what anybody says is non-zero), then I need to download a ROM, then I need to recreate all the functionality I need, and then I need to hope it works. Then I need to do who knows what to keep it running.
Sorry, but no.
I've looked into rooting both my phone, and my tablet ... and both of them sound like they're a lot more nuisance than it's worth.
If you're a hobbyist who craves nothing more than endlessly fiddling with your device, maybe it sounds worthwhile. But from what I've been able to tell, it's a lot more than I'm willing to do.
All I want is the damned app which lets me say "no, you can't to that" to remove perms from apps .. I don't want to build a phone from scratch.
No, it's a feedback loop. The exact same thing is happening with copyright.
America (and all of the five eyes) want additional laws and powers. Those laws and powers are currently illegal and unpopular.
So, one of the five eyes gets talked into passing a law which goes much further. And then the rest of them all say "see, we need these powers too".
The exact same thing has been happening with copyright, and spying provisions ... they play off one another to expand the powers internationally, and then push to get the same things domestically.
Essentially most western governments now have three magic keys to the kingdom: copyright, terrorism, and child porn.
These three things are being used to march the goalposts further down the field, and the consequences for the rest of our liberties be damned.
The five-eyes are flunkies in advancing the interests of corporations, and conspiring together to give us global fascism and surveillance. The Western democracies are all actively trying to say "fuck you and your rights, this is what we do, this is who we share it with, and if you don't like it fuck off".
Essentially the governments and spy agencies of the five-eyes are larger threats to our liberties than the people they claim to be protecting us from.
And they seem to not give a damn what they do to get there.
They're quick to tell us how this is going to make us more secure, but they've utterly failed to demonstrate how existing laws are inadequate, or that these news laws would have helped at all in anything they've missed.
This is the drooling "we need to give the security people the tools to do their job", while ignoring the legal protections we're supposed to have, and failing to justify these new powers.
And, of course, the government spokesman said how this proposal was met well by the other people in the "five eyes" ... of course they're going to love it, they get a share of the fucking take.
We don't give a shit about what a foreign government thinks about our security and information sharing, because they greedily want this shit.
We give a shit about the fact that this is illegal, unnecessary, completely unjustified, and completely lacking in proper checks and balances.
This is a government operating on a "law and order" agenda who doesn't give a fuck about the law.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
At a certain point, I simply don't care if it's malice or incompetence.
Because once you're so massively incompetent .. it really doesn't matter.
If they won't fix their incompetence, then treat them as if they're malicious. The results are the same -- they are not trustworthy. Not even a little.
Why is it so damned easy for malware to get root access, and so damned annoying for me to get it?
And, quite honestly, by how annoying and intrusive AVG was becoming when I got away from it ... do we have another source which confirms this?
I'm just not sure I trust them to be quite honest.
Does your average TV owner know this? Is it explicitly marked on the package?
Because until they announced they might be sending your voice to third parties, I'm betting your average consumer had no frickin' idea that was happening.
Well, first they broadcast it in the clear, and then they're giving it to a third party to do the work.
Everything about this system, from end to end, is more or less designed to violate your privacy.
Because the "security" is pretty much non-existent.
Corporations need to have huge penalties for implementing "security" like a bunch of lazy chimps. If they aren't, then people should be well informed that the security of their product was, in fact, written by a bunch of lazy, indifferent chimps.
Laziness. Incompetence. Greed. Lack of penalties.
The lack of penalties pretty much guarantees the other three.
When companies carry actual penalties for doing a terrible job of security, they might try harder. Until then, not a chance.
If all they have to do is say "oh, gee, we're not really sorry" and have no consequences, this will keep happening.
Which is precisely why you should assume any piece of consumer electronics which wants to connect to the internet was pushed out the door by lazy, incompetent, greedy bastards who bear no legal penalty for screwing up on security and privacy.
Because the reality is, that's probably exactly what happened.
Bring in real privacy and data security laws, or just straight up assume the product doesn't give a crap about you.
Yeah, as I expected ... a google of your precious fucking bullet cluster tells me it may or may not support the notion of dark matter.
But it isn't 100% cut and dry, and there are differing interpretations.
So if all you have is "yarg, teh bullet clusters" ... well, I'm afraid you're just acting like a child.
Use your big boy words, articulate something ... we're interested, but we're not taking you on face value because you act like a loudmouth ass.
Honestly, it's hard for the lay-person to keep track, or really understand what this stuff is supposed to be.
It falls out of some math, but periodically someone says some of the assumptions might be a bit dodgy.
We can't see it, we can't measure it, we can't account for it .. but "magically" it accounts for specific ratios we take as accurate.
Many of us are just sitting on the sidelines wondering if it's a thing, or if it's a limitation in our understanding of the universe.
So, please, if you want to defend it ... dumb it down for us and don't just throw out a couple of quoted terms. We're not going to suddenly learn the massive amount of abstract maths to truly understand what the hell it's supposed to be.
It has all the hallmarks to a layman as "magic beans", because it's "special particles" which make everything taste minty, but otherwise we know fuck all about it.
It's unexplained magic, defended by math we don't understand, and articulated ... well, my smarmy wankers such as yourself who think "galaxy rotation curve" and "bullet cluster" are magical fucking statements which end all discussion.
The reality is, your average person hears dark matter and thinks "this sounds like bullshit, but I have no idea how I would know otherwise".
So, smart ass, in four sentences or less, in terms a layman can understand, and requiring zero mathematics ... what the fuck is it?
Because if you can't do that, then don't embarrass yourself further by pretending you know what it is either other than "the magical stuff we don't know what it is but falls out of the maths".
Honestly, it means what Europe was using 20 years ago, and what much of the world has been using for at least 10 years is slowly being adopted by American banks.
In the mid 90's we talked about chip-and-pin cards in a crypto class, and I knew people from France who had them. I've had one in my pocket for at least 10 years.
Essentially American banks move at glacial speed, and are taking up what is now fairly old technology.
Why American banks move so slowly? I can't say.
1) Of course it is
2) That's the frickin' point
See, the people advocating unlimited surveillance couldn't possibly be stupid enough to not know this.
They just don't give a fuck.
This is "Yarg! We need security by any means, and if we shit on your rights, too fucking bad, because we're the good guys".
These clowns might actually believe they're "doing this for the greater good" -- but so does every fascist and dictator who decides they will do it anyway and we'll thank them later.
Unfortunately, since these people have sworn to uphold the Constitution, I think they should be hanged or shot. Because whatever they think they're protecting, they're doing more damage to our liberties than they are solving problems. In fact, they've become the problem.
Once they get over their illusion they're doing it for our own good, then the fun really begins, and the fascism really goes into effect.
Law enforcement have basically said "fuck the law, the law is what we say it is". And they feel entitled to do anything they want to. Which means law enforcement is more or less deeming themselves in charge of everything.
This is the inherent problem with patents.
They're written that way by design, and the US Patent Office doesn't evaluate them for being weak patents, they just confirm the check cleared.
Patents stopped being about innovation decades ago, and now they're about playing a game of semantics to make it sound like you've invented something, when in fact you're describing something which has been done before, or is fairly obvious.'
Patents are a bloody joke, simply because they are so vague and open ended ... and so many of them boil down to "a system and methodology for doing something we've all done before, but with a computer/cell phone".
Patents aren't about innovation and invention, they're about corporate rent seeking in the vast majority of cases.
And, I'm afraid I don't have sympathy for companies who engage in patent lawsuits when they lose one. It's not like they're victims here ... they're just getting screwed in the same game they try to screw other people in.
Don't worry, governments will make sure the biggest company who contributes the most wins ... just like they always do.
And, really, a huge amount of that 99% are saying "as long as we're safe we don't give a crap what you do and who you do it to".
Pretending this isn't happening with the approval of the rest of America is a lie.
Maybe not all Americans, but enough to say that American's can't just say it's the 1% doing it.
Don't be absurd ... America is largely about exporting IP laws these days ... you know, bullying other countries into signing treaties designed to enshrine guaranteeing profits of multinational corporations in the laws of as many countries as possible.
Apparently, America's foreign policy has mostly been co-opted by corporations, and now America just does what they're told.
America used to stand for Democracy, Liberty, and Freedom. Now it's Copyright, Patents, corporate Rent Seeking, Surveillance, and a little arms sales on the side.
You might almost say that America's principal export is the Global Oligarchy with a side of totalitarianism. Because, really, that's what it is.
So, you know all those pictures of the guys with cell phones taped to their head?
This is pretty much the same idea.
Seriously, I don't think this is patentable. Well, I'm sure it is, because the patent office are just rubber stamping stuff.
So, it may or may not change how it functions .. they may or may not be integrated ... essentially the "invention" is a display mounted in front of your face which might do something extra ... or it might not, but in the future we could make it really cool so we're really just patenting the concept as a placeholder.
Yup, the USPTO are a bunch of chimps signing off on anything as long as the check cleared.
Describing a helmet mounted HUD which slaves to a piece of portable electronics isn't an "invention" ... it's an example of stuff we've seen in sci-fi.
Why, all of them, of course.
And should you ever commit a crime we will be able to retroactively find the evidence for your trial. If you really piss us off we'll edit the video record and call it parallel reconstruction.
In a few years, the pre-cog program will come online, but the surveillance is here to stay.
Now stop picking your nose, citizen.
Dorks .... iiiiinnnnn .... spaaaaaaccce!!!
Oh god, if anybody I know ever straps their iphone in front of their face with some dorky looking headgear ... the mocking shall be swift and relentless.
Suddenly I'm picturing the dock-tacular iPhone HUD consisting of three iPhones, and I might pee myself laughing at the thought of it.
You would have to mock strangers for wearing what I'm visualizing. :-P
This is a sure sign that you're wife's company is basically doing it wrong.
There have been enterprise content management applications on the market for a few decades. They solve the problem of managing your documents, with versions, and hierarchies.
If you're manually doing this stuff in shared folders ... your company is using outdated methods. Unless you're a really young company, or only have a handful of people, most companies have grown out of this literally years ago.
If your business people are doing their own version control, this is a huge business risk, and it will bite you in the ass one day.
Seriously, 1995 called, they want their document management back.
It has to be more than simply having a privacy policy ... because then all it will say is "you have no privacy, suckers".
You also can't put "intentional" as part of it ... because then all they have to do is say "whoops, we were incompetent".
Essentially put real and meaningful limits on what a company can do with your data, and real and severe penalties for failing to do it.
No weasel room of playing semantics to assign blame ... you got a data breach, you are non-compliant.
And, most importantly, don't let the fucking lobbyists write it so that it's watered down and full of exemptions like they do now -- too often industry just writes something which absolves them of any and all blame, and removes all enforcement.
Stop allowing corporations to just say "not our fault" or "we're not responsible for being malicious or incompetent".
It's bloody well time to stop acting like what is good for corporations is good for the rest of us.
Of course it's not new ... but every day we see further examples how consumer electronics are pushed out with gaping security holes.
Until corporations bear some penalty for doing security incompetently, this will continue.
But what has to happen is actually holding corporations accountable for stuff like that ... instead of a click-through license which say "we make no promises our product doesn't suck or that we're not lying to you".
Oddly, people seem opposed to corporations being accountable for their actions.
That's because governments are all being bribed and co-opted by corporations, who wield more power than humans do. Because the modern concept of corporations is horribly broken.