Do Google and Facebook Threaten Our 'Ambient Privacy'? (idlewords.com) 97
This week Pinboard founder Maciej Ceglowski (also a web developer and social critic) asked readers of his blog to consider an emerging threat to ambient privacy.
He defines it as "the understanding that there is value in having our everyday interactions with one another remain outside the reach of monitoring, and that the small details of our daily lives should pass by unremembered." Until recently, ambient privacy was a simple fact of life. Recording something for posterity required making special arrangements, and most of our shared experience of the past was filtered through the attenuating haze of human memory. Even police states like East Germany, where one in seven citizens was an informer, were not able to keep tabs on their entire population. Today computers have given us that power. Authoritarian states like China and Saudi Arabia are using this newfound capacity as a tool of social control. Here in the United States, we're using it to show ads. But the infrastructure of total surveillance is everywhere the same, and everywhere being deployed at scale....
Because our laws frame privacy as an individual right, we don't have a mechanism for deciding whether we want to live in a surveillance society. Congress has remained silent on the matter, with both parties content to watch Silicon Valley make up its own rules. The large tech companies point to our willing use of their services as proof that people don't really care about their privacy. But this is like arguing that inmates are happy to be in jail because they use the prison library. Confronted with the reality of a monitored world, people make the rational decision to make the best of it.
That is not consent...
Our discourse around privacy needs to expand to address foundational questions about the role of automation: To what extent is living in a surveillance-saturated world compatible with pluralism and democracy? What are the consequences of raising a generation of children whose every action feeds into a corporate database? What does it mean to be manipulated from an early age by machine learning algorithms that adaptively learn to shape our behavior? That is not the conversation Facebook or Google want us to have. Their totalizing vision is of a world with no ambient privacy and strong data protections, dominated by the few companies that can manage to hoard information at a planetary scale. They correctly see the new round of privacy laws as a weapon to deploy against smaller rivals, further consolidating their control over the algorithmic panopticon.
He defines it as "the understanding that there is value in having our everyday interactions with one another remain outside the reach of monitoring, and that the small details of our daily lives should pass by unremembered." Until recently, ambient privacy was a simple fact of life. Recording something for posterity required making special arrangements, and most of our shared experience of the past was filtered through the attenuating haze of human memory. Even police states like East Germany, where one in seven citizens was an informer, were not able to keep tabs on their entire population. Today computers have given us that power. Authoritarian states like China and Saudi Arabia are using this newfound capacity as a tool of social control. Here in the United States, we're using it to show ads. But the infrastructure of total surveillance is everywhere the same, and everywhere being deployed at scale....
Because our laws frame privacy as an individual right, we don't have a mechanism for deciding whether we want to live in a surveillance society. Congress has remained silent on the matter, with both parties content to watch Silicon Valley make up its own rules. The large tech companies point to our willing use of their services as proof that people don't really care about their privacy. But this is like arguing that inmates are happy to be in jail because they use the prison library. Confronted with the reality of a monitored world, people make the rational decision to make the best of it.
That is not consent...
Our discourse around privacy needs to expand to address foundational questions about the role of automation: To what extent is living in a surveillance-saturated world compatible with pluralism and democracy? What are the consequences of raising a generation of children whose every action feeds into a corporate database? What does it mean to be manipulated from an early age by machine learning algorithms that adaptively learn to shape our behavior? That is not the conversation Facebook or Google want us to have. Their totalizing vision is of a world with no ambient privacy and strong data protections, dominated by the few companies that can manage to hoard information at a planetary scale. They correctly see the new round of privacy laws as a weapon to deploy against smaller rivals, further consolidating their control over the algorithmic panopticon.
Isn't it up to us to decide? (Score:1)
I think people have the power to decide or in other words flip the privacy switch if we want privacy. Nobody forces you to remain on the grid all the time. But people seem addicted to always connected, feeling they may miss something or get out of the loop so to speak. I gave up on Facebook and Google long time ago, realizing it wasn't worth being in the always connected group. If your not getting enough privacy its your responsibility to make the needed changes to make that happen.
Re:Isn't it up to us to decide? (Score:5, Interesting)
In a way, it similar to tobacco: to smoke or not to smoke is an individual decision, but ...)
1) whether or not a person smokes also influences people around them (second hand smoke, cigarette butts on the floor, peer "advertising"/pressure,
2) a person that smokes brings in extra money for tobacco corporations, which use this money to exert influence (e.g. buy/bury studies about how smoking is harmful)
3) a person that smokes costs extra money to society (there is the extra tax income from smoking, but on the other hand you have everything from lost productivity to child birth defects to money that isn't spent on non-harmful things)
In a similar way, individuals feeding data to Google/Facebook do not only affect themselves. Private data aggregation, and use of this aggregated data, has effects for the entire society. Google and Facebook lobbying affects all of society.
Like the article says, we already have various laws for the protection of individual privacy. However, these technological evolutions are rendering those protections moot, and perhaps privacy should indeed also be considered at the level of society rather than only at the level of individuals. It's similar to how various tobacco-related laws are also made with society's overarching interests at heart. It doesn't mean individuals no longer have the right or the responsibility to decide for themselves whether they will smoke or not, but they try to reduce the harmful effects to others and to society at large (by attempting to reduce the number of smokers etc).
Re: Isn't it up to us to decide? (Score:1)
Unless your job is running on a treadmill I fail to see how smoking lowers productivity.
Re: Isn't it up to us to decide? (Score:1)
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Your analogy doesn't really map to this situation. Google and Facebook do not face a prohibition analogous to the one against smoking in shared public spaces,
My argument, and that of the article's writer, is exactly that perhaps we should look into laws to contain their harmful effects at a societal level (rather than only at the individual level, and hoping that will also take care of the societal level). For the longest time, tobacco companies and smoking in general did not face any legal restrictions either.
and they have significantly more political clout than a smoker sneaking out for a ciggy butt.
Facebook/Google are the tobacco companies in this analogy. Individual smokers would be their users.
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3) a person that smokes costs extra money to society (there is the extra tax income from smoking, but on the other hand you have everything from lost productivity to child birth defects to money that isn't spent on non-harmful things)
I have been led to believe that smokers are a net positive, in that they pay taxes but die before they can realize the post-retirement services their taxes were intended to pay for.
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The long history of humanity has been one of one group "pushing" on the other to get what they want. You have the right to privacy, the current technological state means that another group(facebook, google, et.al) see the lack of privacy as something to be monetized. In general one of two things happen, either people revolt against it, or in the last 400 years here in the west petition the government to do so on their behalf. Problem of course is that governments are very close to being the landed owners
Autocomplete (Score:1)
This is actually the most insightful thing I've read on /. in ages. I'm glad I still visit this site.
Now, what to do? Even if we don't use Google services or Facebook on our connected devices, the simple fact that we use the Google Keyboard on Android means that all of our private life is already logged, analysed and used for some undisclosed purposes.
I recently discovered my phone's autocomplete would give me word suggestions depending on which app I was inputting text in. I have a Jabber app on my phone t
To paraphrase Ben Franklin on the subject (Score:4, Insightful)
Those who would give up essential privacy, to purchase a little temporary convenience, deserve neither...
If you really think your choice to use Google or Facebook is akin to a prisoner's choice of where to sleep at night, you've got bigger problems than privacy.
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It's hyperbole. It isn't to that point yet, but...
Google and Facebook are necessary tools for participating in modern society, and they are effectively monopolies. The same way the prison library doesn't face competition: you can't boycott the prison library and just go to another one.
Re: To paraphrase Ben Franklin on the subject (Score:1)
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Google and Facebook are necessary tools for participating in modern society,
They may be necessary for *you* but I can assure you -- along with droves of others -- that they are unequivocally *not* necessary. Especially Facebook.
Perhaps one needs to define "modern society" before making generalizations about what is necessary.
Stop making "modern society" excuses for Facebook and Google. If you want to post the minutia of your life all over Facebook, fine, but don't use "modern society" to justify your decision.
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Privacy thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)
>"Congress has remained silent on the matter, with both parties content to watch Silicon Valley make up its own rules."
One problem is that a lot of what could be privacy laws has to do with freedom- how much should the government interfere with what private parties agree to do? It is a touchy and complicated topic. Plus, the government has a huge incentive to NOT have privacy for its citizens- it makes it oh so much easier for law enforcement and to control what people do.
>"The large tech companies point to our willing use of their services as proof that people don't really care about their privacy."
There are three big problems 1) The average person can't keep up with technology, just doesn't realize how much information about them is being collected, and how potentially dangerous it is. 2) Then there are those who do understand, but are willing to give their privacy away in the name of "safety." They continue to think "if I am doing nothing wrong..." and 3) Those who do or don't understand, but are willing to give away privacy in the name of "convenience."
I think people are slowing starting to understand the threats. But each subsequent generation is accepting of what they were brought up with as the "norm", so it is hard for them to even comprehend privacy or freedom. Combined with and exacerbated by the breakdown of the family and morality, more people are doing "the right thing" only when they think they are being watched.
>"To what extent is living in a surveillance-saturated world compatible with pluralism and democracy?"
That is a good question. Because there can really be no freedom without privacy. Privacy acts as a HUGE check on the power of government AND big business. Privacy makes many types of laws, regulations, and rules unenforceable. A perfect example is cash and what is happening as we move away from it.
Another great example is the huge resistance to any type of "universal background checks" on gun sales, because it leads to a de-facto national gun registry. That loss of privacy would almost guarantee tons of additional "gun control" interference that primarily punishes the good/law-abiding people.
Re: Privacy thoughts (Score:2)
Re: Privacy thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Why is privacy a necessary requirement for freedom?"
Because information is power. The more information government and business has about you, the more they can manipulate you, discriminate against you, and persecute you. Lack of privacy also makes it far easier for government to pass laws and enforce such laws- laws that otherwise we wouldn't bother with because of inherently being unenforceable. Privacy limits power others have over you. It also allows you to make mistakes and correct them, without things haunting you permanently and forever.
Privacy underpins the freedoms of expression, association, assembly, and action, which are essential for a free, democratic society. Lack of privacy also chills any research into controversial topics. Dissent and whistleblowing become much harder as privacy is eroded. Constant surveillance, analysis, and storage your movements leads to "associative" assumptions- that just because you go somewhere or do something, you have some bad intent.
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Re: Privacy thoughts (Score:1)
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>"I don't think any given individual would claim they are being actively manipulated."
You are probably right. In reality, most of the time, there is no manipulation. Or if there is any, it is not great. Of course, it is also possible that individual just doesn't know. It is likely to get much worse in the years to come, though.
>"I spend less time in traffic due to Waze. So in that case, giving up privacy gives me more freedom, not less"
Well, not really. In that case, you are giving up privacy in
Re: Privacy thoughts (Score:1)
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"Say hey Google..." (Score:3)
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I have disabled the permission for Google (the Android app) to access my microphone in order to turn off "OK Google" recognition. Of course as a consequence, I have disabled a few microphone-related Google features. I wish I knew if any other apps were surreptitiously recording me. If I know or highly suspect this, I take action (for example switched to Shazam over SoundHound), but some app(s) may still be listening in. Is it a know thing that my Android is listening anyway even if I were successful in
Why even bother asking; no one gives a shit. (Score:5, Interesting)
Do Google and Facebook threaten our ambient privacy?
Of course they fucking do.
Do the citizens who willingly engage in these free services give a shit?
Of course they fucking don't.
Citizens don't even care if they're the product. They wear narcissism like a badge of honor, and we reward our best attention whores handsomely. Privacy settings get changed or removed under their noses. EULAs remove the last shred of litigation to allow all wrongdoing. They don't fucking care.
As long as our electronic drug dealers keep giving the product away for free, citizens will keep coming back for more, privacy be damned.
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Re: Don't forget the risk created by social media (Score:1)
Privacy is a modern invention, and not a great one (Score:3, Interesting)
...Ambient, permanent privacy is a contrivance of the industrial, anonymized modern era.
Humans evolved in small relatively-static communities, where everyone knew not only nearly everything about you, but likely everything about your family going back generations. Certainly privacy - for example for intimacy - was achievable for short slabs of time, but it was either circumstantial or had to be sought and arranged.
There was no assumption that everything a person did and said would be forgotten. There was little to no ability (really none before the printing press) to say or do anything without attribution on any sort of scale.
As much as it goes against our modern, western "we don't need to be tied to our past" ethos, I can't say the invention of privacy and anonymity had be an unalloyed good, either.
I'm certain there were serial killers in the ancient past, but I am equally pretty certain that particular predator has benefited by vast millions of people living in anonymous cities. In small towns, people have to be polite because if you're an asshole, everyone will know about it and remember it. It will cost you. In a city people can be assholes all day long to the majority of others, because anonymity and numbers mean they're unlikely to cross paths again.
Sure, "Timmy's father, and his farther before him were drunk wife-beaters" might be unfairly stereotyping Timmy's future behavior. But I'd guess in a majority of cases? It's usefully predictive.
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But even in those small towns, people relied on human memory which is not that great. Quick, tell me the color of the eyes of the last cashier you saw? Whereas now on the news odds are better than even that a camera somewhere caught the details of the news report. Cameras are everywhere because they are inexpensive and disk is cheap so the recording may last forever. Even that small town did not spend all its effort watching others and writing down everything they did. Now with cameras and AI to ident peopl
Re: Privacy between 20 people vs 5M is different (Score:1)
Irony doesnâ(TM)t fall far from the tree (Score:2)
I find it incredibly ironic the company and walled garden most techies abhor is the only company that seemingly gives two shits about privacy. Even the movie The Circle pinned its whole world on Apples culture, campus, and leader. It was very misguided. These companies are insidious.
Two party consent (Score:2)
Here in CA, we have two-party consent. If someone is picking up my convos without telling me, I can have criminal charges filed against them. If they are open with what they are doing, I can refuse to engage with them.
Not a big deal.
It isn't spying, it's worse (Score:1)
Spying brings in the idea of the spy hiding source and methods to gain information. This situation has gotten to the state where the folks gathering the information have enough power that they don't feel the need to hide. Just another example of power corrupts. This part of human nature is the why trading liberty for security usually fails. Benevolent dictators are hard to find. 'Do no evil' was a promise to try, that appears not to have worked out.
To add icing on the cake, these services operate 'at s
C O P Y R I G H T ? (Score:2)
Before we go advocating new regs, why not use the laws we already have? New regulations often have large unitended consequences. Why not simply define that the maker has a copyright interest in any and all personally identifiable information? Every keystroke, click, hover, sample and anything else recorded. It is obviously of value because it was recorded, the only question is who owns it. Long standing copyright is given to the creator not the recorder.
Now obviously the server/recorder has been reques
My buddy has IRC logs dating back to the 90s (Score:2)
Do we really need to phrase this in terms of a few big brother companies? It's technology that makes having these giant record sets possible, like I got an inbox full of every mail someone has sent me since in the last 20 years. Anything you sent me in the mail? Mostly thrown away, unless there was a real reason to keep it. How many photos did we take when we had to do it on film and process it? Not nearly as many as today, most are quickly forgotten but we can usually pull them up again. It only fills a sm
They have become completely ingrained in society (Score:3)
For example, I presently feel pressured to open up a Facebook account because my landlord prefers to use Facebook to communicate with renters. While my landlord will use regular email or even post a paper on your door if legally required to do so, by not belonging to Facebook I am out of the loop on many things.
As another example, a recent article in the NY Times discussed age discrimination in the new job market. The article mentioned how easy it is for employers to use Facebook to discriminate against potential job applicants. However, my take-away was "When and how did Facebook shoehorn itself into the job search market?" Are we now required to have a Facebook account if we want to find a new job?
Facebook and Google have become the gatekeepers of our societies social communication and organization. They own everything, can see everything, and will sell anything that passes through their gate.
To use my landlord example, I wonder if my landlord is aware that Facebook will have knowledge of and may sell information about such things as when my lease is up for renewal, what incentives they may offer to get me to renew, and what issues I may be having such as a leaky roof.
I do realize that these companies have various privacy settings you can use, but that does not change the fact that this information is still in their universe, and belongs to them. You can do nothing more than trust and hope that they will honor the privacy settings you set.
It almost feels as if you don't truly, completely exist in todays world if you don't have a Facebook/Google account.
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It almost feels as if you don't truly, completely exist in todays world if you don't have a Facebook/Google account.
And even better, if you use the "alternative login methods" on other sides so you don't have to make new credentials, you'd better keep on the good side of those same companies. Someone was surprised when he got F/G upset and they disabled his account. Oh noes, can't read email or some such.
But THEN he figured out he used that same company ID as automatic logins to other sites, and surprise! he couldn't login THERE, either. Just because you _have_ an identity doesn't mean that you always get to KEEP i
Lived This Way For Thousands Of Years (Score:2)
We lived without substantial ambient privacy for thousands of years in small tribes and small towns. Many people still live this way in towns where everyone knows each other's business. What's difficult is the adaptation from the system we got used to where we are essentially anonymous in our daily lives in big cities.
What is dangerous isn't that computers will record our actions or even that other people will see those. We can adapt to that just like we did before. We'll just have to drop the hypocriti
No need for that qualifier, "ambient" (Score:1)