7 ms·

If something is technically possible, one should act as though it is already happening and hope to be wrong rather than refusing to consider the issue until suf

by Lammy 8d ago

If something is technically possible, one should act as though it is already happening and hope to be wrong rather than refusing to consider the issue until sufficient “proof” is given, by which it will be too late. Doubly so when advertisers are involved, who as a group are economically-incentivized to not care about consent.

nickff 8d ago
This seems paranoid. There are many things which are technically possible, but there is no evidence of some super-advertiser doing. It's not even clear to me that much of the 'fingerprinting' (past basic re-targeting) actually works.
- privong 8d ago
  > This seems paranoid. There are many things which are technically possible, but [...] Isn't this what people said pre-Snowden? Not that NSA spying is the same as corporate "surveillance capitalism", but if companies can make more money off it and the technology exists, it seems prudent to assume companies are trying it.
  - nickff 8d ago
    There was evidence of the NSA intercepting international communications before Snowden, but for some reason that didn't seem to make much of a lasting impression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A It's also significant to note that while the government is quite bad at keeping 'problematic' behavior secret, companies are much worse at it.
    - privong 8d ago
      Analogously, there's evidence that companies will make extensive use of available techniques (browser fingerprinting, cookies, etc.) to track and surveil users without their knowledge and often against their will. The exposure of that arguably also hasn't triggered an effective backlash against those companies. So, as with the pre-Snowden evidence for domestic communication interception by the NSA, I think there's ample evidence of the willingness of companies to exploit whatever technologies they can in order to surveil users.
    - structural 8d ago
      The way this is typically handled is through compartmentalization, where no one working has enough of a global view to be able to claim that the behaviour is problematic. There's a lot that's problematic that we suspect that is going on but don't have firm proof, because the organization actually is pretty good at keeping it secret enough. There's some exceptions where things do get leaked/revealed, but how would you know if this was 99% of wrongdoing, or 0.99% of it?
deadbunny 8d ago
This would be trivial to test and detect. Just like every claim that TVs will connect to open WiFi networks if you don't connect them to a network. Yet after years of these claims and being extremely trivial to test not a single shred of evidence has ever been provided.
- cassianoleal 8d ago
  How would you test this?
  - deadbunny 8d ago
    If they form a mesh and route traffic via one TV that acts as an exit node you can check the packet TTLs.
    - wtallis 8d ago
      Isn't messing with TTLs a pretty obvious thing to do when communicating covertly? And wouldn't that kind of packet inspection only catch cases of TVs literally acting as packet-level routers, but not catch application-layer shenanigans like aggregating statistics in the exit node so that all the data going over your own network appears to be originating from the same device? It's still implausible, but thoroughly verifying that your TV isn't spying on you isn't trivial.
    - structural 8d ago
      There's no requirement that the mesh be IP-based or function as a layer-3 router... Even if it were IP-bsaed, it would be extremely straightforward for one box to send a UDP message to another, and receive and retransmit at the application layer. No TTL nonsense, No multiple IPs showing up communicating upstream.
    - cassianoleal 8d ago
      But if my TV is doing this, then by definition it's not acting as an exit node so how do I test it?

by Lammy 8d ago

nickff 8d ago

This seems paranoid. There are many things which are technically possible, but there is no evidence of some super-advertiser doing. It's not even clear to me that much of the 'fingerprinting' (past basic re-targeting) actually works.

privong 8d ago
> This seems paranoid. There are many things which are technically possible, but [...] Isn't this what people said pre-Snowden? Not that NSA spying is the same as corporate "surveillance capitalism", but if companies can make more money off it and the technology exists, it seems prudent to assume companies are trying it.
- nickff 8d ago
  There was evidence of the NSA intercepting international communications before Snowden, but for some reason that didn't seem to make much of a lasting impression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A It's also significant to note that while the government is quite bad at keeping 'problematic' behavior secret, companies are much worse at it.
  - privong 8d ago
    Analogously, there's evidence that companies will make extensive use of available techniques (browser fingerprinting, cookies, etc.) to track and surveil users without their knowledge and often against their will. The exposure of that arguably also hasn't triggered an effective backlash against those companies. So, as with the pre-Snowden evidence for domestic communication interception by the NSA, I think there's ample evidence of the willingness of companies to exploit whatever technologies they can in order to surveil users.
  - structural 8d ago
    The way this is typically handled is through compartmentalization, where no one working has enough of a global view to be able to claim that the behaviour is problematic. There's a lot that's problematic that we suspect that is going on but don't have firm proof, because the organization actually is pretty good at keeping it secret enough. There's some exceptions where things do get leaked/revealed, but how would you know if this was 99% of wrongdoing, or 0.99% of it?

deadbunny 8d ago

This would be trivial to test and detect. Just like every claim that TVs will connect to open WiFi networks if you don't connect them to a network. Yet after years of these claims and being extremely trivial to test not a single shred of evidence has ever been provided.

cassianoleal 8d ago
How would you test this?
- deadbunny 8d ago
  If they form a mesh and route traffic via one TV that acts as an exit node you can check the packet TTLs.
  - wtallis 8d ago
    Isn't messing with TTLs a pretty obvious thing to do when communicating covertly? And wouldn't that kind of packet inspection only catch cases of TVs literally acting as packet-level routers, but not catch application-layer shenanigans like aggregating statistics in the exit node so that all the data going over your own network appears to be originating from the same device? It's still implausible, but thoroughly verifying that your TV isn't spying on you isn't trivial.
  - structural 8d ago
    There's no requirement that the mesh be IP-based or function as a layer-3 router... Even if it were IP-bsaed, it would be extremely straightforward for one box to send a UDP message to another, and receive and retransmit at the application layer. No TTL nonsense, No multiple IPs showing up communicating upstream.
  - cassianoleal 8d ago
    But if my TV is doing this, then by definition it's not acting as an exit node so how do I test it?