You should see it from over here. The scariest thing to me is how few people understand what is happening and why it is bad. When I point out how frequently and blatantly the government is violating civil liberties, most people just look at me like I've suddenly grown a third eye or like my skin turned green or something. Makes me want to shake them while screaming "WAKE UP!!!" but it probably wouldn't do any good, anyway...sigh.
If I am misunderstanding you, please feel free to correct my mistaken assumptions.
Sure, it's a good thing to ask a company to delete profile data, posts, etc. that you have submitted in your user account information. The problem, however, is with search engines. In that case, Google acts as an index to information that is *already somewhere on the Internet.* There's a world of difference between me asking Google to delete a photo that I posted on picasaweb.google.com and asking Google not to index any references to me in their search algorithm. The correct way to deal with web sites that have data about me on the web is to ask them -- not Google or Yahoo or Bing or ${Random_Search_Engine} -- to remove any information about me. I mean think about it for more than half a second...just because Google has agreed not to index me doesn't mean that that information no longer exists on the web. If shadywebsite.com has embarrassing or revealing (ugh!) photos of me, people can still link to that even if Google doesn't list those photos on its search engine. It may be a bit harder to find, but it's still there! I'd rather be able to Google my own name and deal with web sites myself than have Google delete the indexes, but have the data still exist.
And honestly, I have a bit of a problem with forcing a web site to remove information about me just because I don't like what they are saying about me. The example in TFA about the convicted criminals wanting references to their crimes removed is a good example. My wife ran a business where one of her employees was skimming cash payments from the till. The employee was caught and convicted of stealing the money. Since she now has a documented criminal history, future employers will know that this person has a history of theft, and IF they choose to hire her anyway, they can at least keep an eye on her so they don't get ripped off, too. IMHO, that's a good thing -- but that's exactly the kind of "privacy" that this bill will "protect." Guess what, people? Actions have consequences. Sometimes it sucks to have to deal with the consequences of your actions, but sometimes it sucks to have to deal with the consequences of other peoples' actions too.
Also, there's a New Horizons app in the iPhone App store (don't know if there's an Android version).
I didn't see one when I searched market. The only apps that showed up in a search for "New Horizon" was a combination compass/artificial horizon and a banking application.
Well, assuming your numbers and my math are correct (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), I'd say we have something like 9.25*10^21 cubic light years in which to search.
...if the information they give on the "what we know about you" page is an accurate portrayal of what they actually know about people...In my case despite the fact that Google's archives probably have my exact DOB they were off by one major category in age and their listed interests were pretty far off.
Hmmm...I hadn't heard about that feature on Google, so I had to check it out. Seems like they were a bit more accurate with me:
Computers & Electronics - Computer Hardware - Computer Drives & Storage - Hard Drives
Computers & Electronics - Electronics & Electrical
Computers & Electronics - Networking - VPN & Remote Access
Finance - Financial Planning (not sure where they got that from...)
Age: 35-44
Gender: Male
They left off a few other interests that I'm surprised they didn't pick up on like motorcycling, aviation, and astronomy, but hey, what they got was pretty accurate.
It was a couple -- whether married or just boyfriend/girlfriend, I don't recall. The debate here on/., from my reading of it, was that it is stupid post 9/11 to say that you are going to "destroy" a town in the U.S. before coming to visit. The entire debate was pretty ignorant, IMHO, as several English residents explained that the meaning of that phrase in British English slang is considerably different than the way American English interprets it. Sounds reasonable to me, and shipping the couple back to England sounds kind of stupid, IMHO. Makes us Yanks look like a bunch of ignorant dweebs.
Also don't forget the Canadian man of Arabic descent who recently was investigated on terrorism charges after tweeting to his coworkers at a trade fair here in the U.S. to "blow away" the competition. IIRC, his coworkers had a lot of fun trying to get back across the border into Canada after the trade fair because they were known accomplices of a suspected terrorist <facepalm>
"Free speech" must surely mean "as in beer" because it's for sure not "as in libre" anymore.
The Declaration of Independence set up a philosophical basis for what the Founders hoped would be a workable Utopia. An AC above however, was right: "Any group can CLAIM certain rights, but, those rights have to be enforceable, otherwise, they are just effectively wishful thinking."
Don't get me wrong. I agree, in principle, with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. However, I have no illusions that, unless I am willing to stand up for those rights, they aren't worth the paper they are written on. That is the reason the Founders saw fit to include the 2nd Amendment (yes, I know that the courts have interpreted that to mean the various states' National Guards; IMHO, that interpretation is willfully ignorant of the situation in which that Amendment was written). Ultimately, your rights derive from the fact that you are willing to fight for them. If enough people are no longer willing to fight for their rights, then they effectively don't exist.
Maybe I'm just being naive, but I kind of think that was the point GPP was making: when faced with a claim, it is good ("healthy") to remain skeptical of the claim until you have had a chance to analyze the data. If the data looks good, then yes, you are right -- you should then agree with the claim. If, however, there are flaws in the data, or the collection methods, the analysis of the data, etc., then it is wise to continue being skeptical.
I don't think that GPP was implying that you should disbelieve all claims regardless of the data.
Their response to the loss of this laptop was dangerously naive, IMHO:
"There is no reason to believe this is anything other than the simple burglary of a laptop, which the local police are investigating," said (VIP) founder CEO Steven Brill. "For it to be more than that, the thief would have to hack into two different passwords and even then would not get what identity thieves want mosta Social Security number and/or credit card information."
Brill was the CEO of the subcontractor that TSA/DHS selected to implement this security program, and I was less than reassured by his assessment of the problem. Yes, you need two passwords to access the data on the laptop. The article was light on technical details, but the first password, I presume, was to log in to the laptop at all. The second password is open to debate, but I would guess it is a password to the application that reads the data on the laptop. Nowhere does the article suggest that the hard drive was encrypted*. As I'm sure everyone reading this post knows, if you have physical access to an unencrypted hard drive, you own the data on it, even if you can't log in to the OS. It's trivial to mount a hard drive from another computer.
*It's possible that the second password was necessary to unencrypt a data partition on the laptop, but if so, you would think that Brill would have mentioned that as an additional reason that the loss of the laptop did not constitute a security breach. He didn't, and therefore, I suspect the hard drive was not encrypted.
I had to read that twice before catching that this was a 6th grade class. First or second grade? Okay, that's kind of cool. But 6th? "No child left behind" indeed.
The problem isn't requiring adequate IT controls -- that, as you stated, is a good thing. It's requiring them by law, which implies that companies will waste millions of dollars (or more) to conduct audits that 1) provide little or no economic benefit to the companies themselves, and 2) consume valuable resources (money, staff) that could have been used on more productive endeavors.
I work for a company that is subject to SoX audits, and some of the things auditors ask for are plain ridiculous. No joke, we have had auditors ask for a screen shot that shows that <random former employee" is not in our LDAP database anymore. Ummm...I could just take a screenshot of the page *before* the one that displays the user account, if I wanted to leave an account enabled (or edit it in Photoshop or run the search with a filter that would exclude the user name, etc., etc.).
Finally, there's the whole "DHS" component, which, being the parent of TSA, doesn't exactly instill confidence that this will be implemented well, even without looking at how SoX has impacted corporations.
Ever hear the phrase "Bread and Circuses?" Give people entertainment so that they stop paying attention to what's going on around them. Target the entertainment to the lowest common denominator so people get out of the habit of thinking. That's a start.
Next, ask yourself, "Who provides the education in this country?" "Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it." I'd wager that if you walked out on the streets today and interviewed a hundred people, you could count on one hand the number of people who could give a rough description of each of the first ten Constitutional amendments. Maybe ten of those hundred people could tell you about the first five. I doubt half of them would know that the Bill of Rights and those ten amendments are the same thing. I suspect you would be hard-pressed to find probably a single person who could tell you what the Magna Carta was, why it was important and in what country it was written. All of these are incredibly important, but almost none of it is taught in school any more. I'll be honest; the only reason I know enough to mention these things is because of my eighth grade history teacher. We touched on these subjects in my high school and college courses, but Mr. Fox was the only teacher who actually thought they were important enough to emphasize them in his class. Most of my high school classmates were so freaking naive that I had arguments with them that ended with them saying something like, "But we're the good guys. Our government would never do that to us" at which point I usually just walked away.
So, yeah. Dumbing down. It's real, and it's happening. We may know more about technology, and we may know a lot more about Brittney Spears and Lady Gaga than previous generations knew about their celebrities, but this country is dangerously ignorant of its history. And it's starting to bite us in the butt.
Interesting. I wasn't aware that Facebook wouldn't allow the use of encrypted text. I suppose you could still post a screenshot of your encrypted text but that's a rather extreme step, I suppose (assuming Facebook didn't delete the post and/or terminate your account). In any case, thanks for correcting me:)
You've obviously never used Gmail, Yahoo mail, hotmail, etc. Yes, you said "local mail" but I'd just like to point out that there are, in fact, many popular e-mail services that do exactly what you are claiming that people wouldn't accept from an e-mail provider.
It's basic economics. In a nutshell, companies will ask you for everything they can get away with asking you for. People, on the other hand, will give away information when the service they receive in exchange is greater than the perceived cost of giving that information away. Why can "PEPCO, GEICO, WASHGAS, AT&T oblige [you] to reveal this information?" Because you want their services bad enough to be willing to give that information away, perhaps?
These social sites are like inviting a business into your living room to eavesdrop on conversations with your acquaintances.
Precisely, but I don't think that argument leads where you think it does. If I knowingly invite a business into my living room to eavesdrop on my conversations, what possible reason would I have to be surprised when they do exactly that?
THe problem is not exactly the switch...and whomever else they so desire.
I have to agree with you here. My biggest complaint with Facebook is that other people I know may include comments about me, photos of me, etc. on their posts, and unless I keep tabs on Facebook, I have no way of knowing what information about me is being collected. THAT, IMHO, is the biggest privacy issue with Facebook. However...
Sure, a car company might do just that but does a car company record the conversations you have in your car...whomever they so desire?
That's a flawed analogy. I didn't pay five figures to use Facebook; I knew going into the deal that Facebook mined information for targeted advertising in order to make a profit. Did you think that Zuckerberg built Facebook just out of the kindness of his heart? How else is he going to pay for servers and bandwidth and coders to add features to the site and, and, and...? On the other hand, I *did* pay five figures to buy my pickup truck. If Nissan tries to further subsidize the cost of my truck by eavesdropping on conversations while I'm driving, I'll find the best lawyer I can afford to smack them down for it. In other words, I have an expectation of privacy in my truck; I have significantly less expectation of privacy on Facebook. Quite honestly, I'm somewhat shocked that others are shocked when they find out that what they've posted on Facebook isn't exactly confidential.
I also receive a bill every month from my telephone provider. I don't receive one from Google, Facebook, etc. Most sites on the Internet have a business model that is more like AM/FM radio (as opposed to XM or Sirius) than your telephone service.
I understand and expect that what I post on-line may be parsed to direct targeted advertising at me. In return, I get a service for "free" (as in beer). I'm not terribly bent out of shape about that any more than I am bent out of shape that radio stations play ads every couple of songs as I'm driving home <shrug>
If you are really concerned about privacy, however, there is nothing (AFAIK) that would stop you from composing your message, using GPG to encrypt the text, then posting the *encrypted* text on Facebook.
I'm not a huge fan of Facebook for numerous reasons, but IMHO, this whole "oh noes -- Facebook is reading my texts!" alarmism is really rather disingenuous. C'mon -- you're posting comments on a public web site. It's more like talking to your friends in the hallway back in your high school days than a telephone call. If you really expect privacy on Facebook, then you are dangerously naive.
You're entitled to your own views. You are not entitled to force them on the majority.
You know, those of us who are sick of this "security at any cost!!!" crap could say the same thing to you. After all, we have to help foot the bill for it, we have to acquiesce to the "security" searches (in violation of the 4th Amendment, no less). What gives you the right to force your opinion (fear) on me?
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You should see it from over here. The scariest thing to me is how few people understand what is happening and why it is bad. When I point out how frequently and blatantly the government is violating civil liberties, most people just look at me like I've suddenly grown a third eye or like my skin turned green or something. Makes me want to shake them while screaming "WAKE UP!!!" but it probably wouldn't do any good, anyway...sigh.
If I am misunderstanding you, please feel free to correct my mistaken assumptions.
Sure, it's a good thing to ask a company to delete profile data, posts, etc. that you have submitted in your user account information. The problem, however, is with search engines. In that case, Google acts as an index to information that is *already somewhere on the Internet.* There's a world of difference between me asking Google to delete a photo that I posted on picasaweb.google.com and asking Google not to index any references to me in their search algorithm. The correct way to deal with web sites that have data about me on the web is to ask them -- not Google or Yahoo or Bing or ${Random_Search_Engine} -- to remove any information about me. I mean think about it for more than half a second...just because Google has agreed not to index me doesn't mean that that information no longer exists on the web. If shadywebsite.com has embarrassing or revealing (ugh!) photos of me, people can still link to that even if Google doesn't list those photos on its search engine. It may be a bit harder to find, but it's still there! I'd rather be able to Google my own name and deal with web sites myself than have Google delete the indexes, but have the data still exist.
And honestly, I have a bit of a problem with forcing a web site to remove information about me just because I don't like what they are saying about me. The example in TFA about the convicted criminals wanting references to their crimes removed is a good example. My wife ran a business where one of her employees was skimming cash payments from the till. The employee was caught and convicted of stealing the money. Since she now has a documented criminal history, future employers will know that this person has a history of theft, and IF they choose to hire her anyway, they can at least keep an eye on her so they don't get ripped off, too. IMHO, that's a good thing -- but that's exactly the kind of "privacy" that this bill will "protect." Guess what, people? Actions have consequences. Sometimes it sucks to have to deal with the consequences of your actions, but sometimes it sucks to have to deal with the consequences of other peoples' actions too.
Also, there's a New Horizons app in the iPhone App store (don't know if there's an Android version).
I didn't see one when I searched market. The only apps that showed up in a search for "New Horizon" was a combination compass/artificial horizon and a banking application.
Well, assuming your numbers and my math are correct (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), I'd say we have something like 9.25*10^21 cubic light years in which to search.
...if the information they give on the "what we know about you" page is an accurate portrayal of what they actually know about people...In my case despite the fact that Google's archives probably have my exact DOB they were off by one major category in age and their listed interests were pretty far off.
Hmmm...I hadn't heard about that feature on Google, so I had to check it out. Seems like they were a bit more accurate with me:
They left off a few other interests that I'm surprised they didn't pick up on like motorcycling, aviation, and astronomy, but hey, what they got was pretty accurate.
It was a couple -- whether married or just boyfriend/girlfriend, I don't recall. The debate here on /., from my reading of it, was that it is stupid post 9/11 to say that you are going to "destroy" a town in the U.S. before coming to visit. The entire debate was pretty ignorant, IMHO, as several English residents explained that the meaning of that phrase in British English slang is considerably different than the way American English interprets it. Sounds reasonable to me, and shipping the couple back to England sounds kind of stupid, IMHO. Makes us Yanks look like a bunch of ignorant dweebs.
Also don't forget the Canadian man of Arabic descent who recently was investigated on terrorism charges after tweeting to his coworkers at a trade fair here in the U.S. to "blow away" the competition. IIRC, his coworkers had a lot of fun trying to get back across the border into Canada after the trade fair because they were known accomplices of a suspected terrorist <facepalm>
"Free speech" must surely mean "as in beer" because it's for sure not "as in libre" anymore.
The Declaration of Independence set up a philosophical basis for what the Founders hoped would be a workable Utopia. An AC above however, was right: "Any group can CLAIM certain rights, but, those rights have to be enforceable, otherwise, they are just effectively wishful thinking."
Don't get me wrong. I agree, in principle, with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. However, I have no illusions that, unless I am willing to stand up for those rights, they aren't worth the paper they are written on. That is the reason the Founders saw fit to include the 2nd Amendment (yes, I know that the courts have interpreted that to mean the various states' National Guards; IMHO, that interpretation is willfully ignorant of the situation in which that Amendment was written). Ultimately, your rights derive from the fact that you are willing to fight for them. If enough people are no longer willing to fight for their rights, then they effectively don't exist.
Stop it. You're making sense. That kind of thing isn't allowed here ;)
Maybe I'm just being naive, but I kind of think that was the point GPP was making: when faced with a claim, it is good ("healthy") to remain skeptical of the claim until you have had a chance to analyze the data. If the data looks good, then yes, you are right -- you should then agree with the claim. If, however, there are flaws in the data, or the collection methods, the analysis of the data, etc., then it is wise to continue being skeptical.
I don't think that GPP was implying that you should disbelieve all claims regardless of the data.
I rather suspect that Leno edits the results to make it more entertaining to watch. But your point still stands, unfortunately.
Their response to the loss of this laptop was dangerously naive, IMHO:
Brill was the CEO of the subcontractor that TSA/DHS selected to implement this security program, and I was less than reassured by his assessment of the problem. Yes, you need two passwords to access the data on the laptop. The article was light on technical details, but the first password, I presume, was to log in to the laptop at all. The second password is open to debate, but I would guess it is a password to the application that reads the data on the laptop. Nowhere does the article suggest that the hard drive was encrypted*. As I'm sure everyone reading this post knows, if you have physical access to an unencrypted hard drive, you own the data on it, even if you can't log in to the OS. It's trivial to mount a hard drive from another computer.
*It's possible that the second password was necessary to unencrypt a data partition on the laptop, but if so, you would think that Brill would have mentioned that as an additional reason that the loss of the laptop did not constitute a security breach. He didn't, and therefore, I suspect the hard drive was not encrypted.
I don't know about other Americans, but I see the world in 16 million shades of grey...
I had to read that twice before catching that this was a 6th grade class. First or second grade? Okay, that's kind of cool. But 6th? "No child left behind" indeed.
One word for you: "SoX."
The problem isn't requiring adequate IT controls -- that, as you stated, is a good thing. It's requiring them by law, which implies that companies will waste millions of dollars (or more) to conduct audits that 1) provide little or no economic benefit to the companies themselves, and 2) consume valuable resources (money, staff) that could have been used on more productive endeavors.
I work for a company that is subject to SoX audits, and some of the things auditors ask for are plain ridiculous. No joke, we have had auditors ask for a screen shot that shows that <random former employee" is not in our LDAP database anymore. Ummm...I could just take a screenshot of the page *before* the one that displays the user account, if I wanted to leave an account enabled (or edit it in Photoshop or run the search with a filter that would exclude the user name, etc., etc.).
Finally, there's the whole "DHS" component, which, being the parent of TSA, doesn't exactly instill confidence that this will be implemented well, even without looking at how SoX has impacted corporations.
Ever hear the phrase "Bread and Circuses?" Give people entertainment so that they stop paying attention to what's going on around them. Target the entertainment to the lowest common denominator so people get out of the habit of thinking. That's a start.
Next, ask yourself, "Who provides the education in this country?" "Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it." I'd wager that if you walked out on the streets today and interviewed a hundred people, you could count on one hand the number of people who could give a rough description of each of the first ten Constitutional amendments. Maybe ten of those hundred people could tell you about the first five. I doubt half of them would know that the Bill of Rights and those ten amendments are the same thing. I suspect you would be hard-pressed to find probably a single person who could tell you what the Magna Carta was, why it was important and in what country it was written. All of these are incredibly important, but almost none of it is taught in school any more. I'll be honest; the only reason I know enough to mention these things is because of my eighth grade history teacher. We touched on these subjects in my high school and college courses, but Mr. Fox was the only teacher who actually thought they were important enough to emphasize them in his class. Most of my high school classmates were so freaking naive that I had arguments with them that ended with them saying something like, "But we're the good guys. Our government would never do that to us" at which point I usually just walked away.
So, yeah. Dumbing down. It's real, and it's happening. We may know more about technology, and we may know a lot more about Brittney Spears and Lady Gaga than previous generations knew about their celebrities, but this country is dangerously ignorant of its history. And it's starting to bite us in the butt.
That thought *did* occur to me.
Interesting. I wasn't aware that Facebook wouldn't allow the use of encrypted text. I suppose you could still post a screenshot of your encrypted text but that's a rather extreme step, I suppose (assuming Facebook didn't delete the post and/or terminate your account). In any case, thanks for correcting me :)
You've obviously never used Gmail, Yahoo mail, hotmail, etc. Yes, you said "local mail" but I'd just like to point out that there are, in fact, many popular e-mail services that do exactly what you are claiming that people wouldn't accept from an e-mail provider.
It's basic economics. In a nutshell, companies will ask you for everything they can get away with asking you for. People, on the other hand, will give away information when the service they receive in exchange is greater than the perceived cost of giving that information away. Why can "PEPCO, GEICO, WASHGAS, AT&T oblige [you] to reveal this information?" Because you want their services bad enough to be willing to give that information away, perhaps?
These social sites are like inviting a business into your living room to eavesdrop on conversations with your acquaintances.
Precisely, but I don't think that argument leads where you think it does. If I knowingly invite a business into my living room to eavesdrop on my conversations, what possible reason would I have to be surprised when they do exactly that?
THe problem is not exactly the switch...and whomever else they so desire.
I have to agree with you here. My biggest complaint with Facebook is that other people I know may include comments about me, photos of me, etc. on their posts, and unless I keep tabs on Facebook, I have no way of knowing what information about me is being collected. THAT, IMHO, is the biggest privacy issue with Facebook. However...
Sure, a car company might do just that but does a car company record the conversations you have in your car...whomever they so desire?
That's a flawed analogy. I didn't pay five figures to use Facebook; I knew going into the deal that Facebook mined information for targeted advertising in order to make a profit. Did you think that Zuckerberg built Facebook just out of the kindness of his heart? How else is he going to pay for servers and bandwidth and coders to add features to the site and, and, and...? On the other hand, I *did* pay five figures to buy my pickup truck. If Nissan tries to further subsidize the cost of my truck by eavesdropping on conversations while I'm driving, I'll find the best lawyer I can afford to smack them down for it. In other words, I have an expectation of privacy in my truck; I have significantly less expectation of privacy on Facebook. Quite honestly, I'm somewhat shocked that others are shocked when they find out that what they've posted on Facebook isn't exactly confidential.
I also receive a bill every month from my telephone provider. I don't receive one from Google, Facebook, etc. Most sites on the Internet have a business model that is more like AM/FM radio (as opposed to XM or Sirius) than your telephone service.
I understand and expect that what I post on-line may be parsed to direct targeted advertising at me. In return, I get a service for "free" (as in beer). I'm not terribly bent out of shape about that any more than I am bent out of shape that radio stations play ads every couple of songs as I'm driving home <shrug>
If you are really concerned about privacy, however, there is nothing (AFAIK) that would stop you from composing your message, using GPG to encrypt the text, then posting the *encrypted* text on Facebook.
I'm not a huge fan of Facebook for numerous reasons, but IMHO, this whole "oh noes -- Facebook is reading my texts!" alarmism is really rather disingenuous. C'mon -- you're posting comments on a public web site. It's more like talking to your friends in the hallway back in your high school days than a telephone call. If you really expect privacy on Facebook, then you are dangerously naive.
Who, exactly, are you still afraid of? In his State of the Union speech, Obama claimed that Osama bin Laden no longer threatens the U.S. (natch) and al Qaeda's leaders have been defeated. How much money are we spending to protect the Super Bowl from an enemy that our Commander in Chief claims has already been defeated?!?!
You're entitled to your own views. You are not entitled to force them on the majority.
You know, those of us who are sick of this "security at any cost!!!" crap could say the same thing to you. After all, we have to help foot the bill for it, we have to acquiesce to the "security" searches (in violation of the 4th Amendment, no less). What gives you the right to force your opinion (fear) on me?