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We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind

by Create 12y ago

We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world. This should not actually be a complicated inquiry. http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html

Create 12y ago
They are not John Poindexter, they’re trying to sell advertising. But make no mistake about it – they are in the surveillance business; that is how they make money: they surveil people and use that to profit. And so the effect is the same. http://privacy-pc.com/news/changing-threats-to-privacy-moxie-marlinspike-on-privacy-threats-at-defcon-part-2.html http://privacy-pc.com/news/changing-threats-to-privacy-moxie...
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Call me when someone gets hauled off to Guantanamo because of ad demographics. The lack of nuance here when it comes to "tracking" is insane. I can see wanting to block them for whatever reason, but I can't understand this reduction to the absurd chicken-little behavior when it comes to ad targeting.
  - Create 12y ago
    And lastly, we now know that the ‘Aurora’4 attacks on Google were at least partially about intercept. One thing we’ve learned from those attacks is that the Government is running intercept systems on their networks, and not only that but other ‘eavesdroppers’ are trying to get access to those intercept systems. So what we are seeing is as more and more data accumulates in these places, it becomes more and more valuable. And so ‘eavesdroppers’ move to those places and even ‘eavesdroppers’ without a legal backing also try to move to those places. So I think we are going to continue to see that as a problem as these become more and more valuable over time. http://privacy-pc.com/news/changing-threats-to-privacy-moxie-marlinspike-on-privacy-threats-at-defcon-part-2.html http://privacy-pc.com/news/changing-threats-to-privacy-moxie... So the primary form of collection that should concern us most is media that spy on us while we use them. Books that watch us read them, music that’s listen to us listen to it. Search boxes that report what we are searching for to whoever is searching for us and doesn’t know us yet. There is a lot of talk about data coming out of facebook: is it coming to me? is it coming to him? is it coming to them? They want you to think that the threat is data coming out. You should know that the threat is code going in. For the last 50 years what has been happening in enterprise computing, is the addition of that layer of analytic on top of the datawarehouse that mostly goes in enterprise computing by the name of "business intelligence". what it means is you’ve been building this vast datawarehouses in your company for decade or 2 now you have only information about your own operations your suppliers your competitors, your customers now you want to make that data start to do tricks. By adding it to all the open source data out there in the world, and using it to tell you the answers to questions you didn’t know you had. That’s business intelligence. The real threat of facebook is the BI layer on top of facebook warehouse. The facebook datewarehouse contains the behavior not just the thinking but also the behavior or somewhere nearing a billion people. The business intelligence layer on top of it which is just all that code they get to run covered by the terms of service that say "they can run any code they want for improvement of the experience". The business intelligence on top of facebook is where every intelligence service of the world wants to go. Imagine that you are a tiny little secret police organisation in some not very important country. Let’s put ourselves in their position Let’s call them I don’t know what, you know ... "kirghista". You are a secret police you are in the "people business" secret policing is "people business". You have classes of people that you want you want agents, you want sources you have adversaries, and you have influencables, that is people you torture who are related to adversaries wives, husbands, fathers, daughter you know those people. So you are looking for classes of people. You don’t know their names, but you know what they are like you know who is recrutable for you as an agent you know who are likely sources, you can give the social characteristics of your adversaries, and once you know your adversaries, you can find the influencables. So what you want to do is run code inside facebook. It will help you find the people that you want it will show you the people whose behavior and whose social circles tell you that they are what you want by way of agent, sources what their adversaries are and who you can torture to get to them. So you don’t want data out of facebook the day you have data out of facebook it is dead. You want to put code into facebook and run it there and get the results you want to cooperate. http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-thought-requires-free-media http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t...
    - dang 12y ago
      Please don't paste stock quotes into HN threads. Good conversations aren't like that. Especially please don't do it repeatedly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7777147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7777147.
      - Create 12y ago
        Please respect factual arguments instead of tolerating stock downvotes. Good arguments aren't like that, assuming good conversations are the goal.
        Snail_Commando 12y ago
        A bit of tactical advice: good conversations start with context. Your blocks of text didn't read like someone engaging me in conversation, they read like a political flyer stuffed under my windshield wiper.
  - pyrocat 12y ago
    Why? If company X tracks all the websites you visit, it's really not that hard for the government to get a hold of that data. It doesn't matter who collects the data or what it is initially used for; as long as the data is collected you're at risk.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      So we must hamstring all advertising and personalizing because somewhere a government might abuse their power and get into the data. That's absurd. Why should we change our behavior because bad actors exist instead of dealing with the bad actors? The whole argument implies that somehow blocking ads will keep $someScaryTLA from screwing with you, which is silly on its face. And on top of that, ad tracking data is all about aggregates. Ads are targeted to "groups of people who like X", not "pyrocat, 123 foobar st, san francisco". I really don't get this fear. I'd rather see ads for things that are relevant to me.
      - denom 12y ago
        I thought the whole point of the various social graph implementations was to build a datastructure that handles details on the level of an individual: who your friends are, what you shop for etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_graph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_graph E.g. I was browsing cutlery on Crate and Barrel, suddenly I'm seeing ads all over the internet for products that I was viewing. I visited Digital Ocean's site and I see ads everywhere offering their hosting. Same with New Relic. If I had to guess, the economic systems that underpin these ad networks are getting stronger and eventually they will all merge. Well, of course there will still be big players like facebook, but you get my point.
      - pyrocat 12y ago
        I'd rather not see ads that are targeted to me. The more an advertiser knows about you, the easier it is for them to manipulate you into buying their product.
  - schoen 12y ago
    Governments do directly use ad network tracking data for surveillance. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/nsa-turns-cookies-and-more-surveillance-beacons https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/nsa-turns-cookies-and-... (I was a coauthor of this blog post, though not of the underlying press reporting. There was another article on this topic recently underscoring that there are other programs to use these cookies this way.) In this case the problem from the point of view of a user concerned with government surveillance is not necessarily the ad network tracking, but the fact that it wasn't protected with HTTPS so other people were able to take advantage of it for their own surveillance purposes. Unfortunately, ad networks have not generally responded by making HTTPS mandatory, or even optional. Apart from exposing users directly to government location tracking programs, ad networks often know that some users don't want to be tracked and deliberately track them anyway. http://www.techpolicy.com/FlashCookiesPrivacyII.aspx http://www.techpolicy.com/FlashCookiesPrivacyII.aspx Sounds like a good time for users to adopt countermeasures.

by Create 12y ago

Create 12y ago

They are not John Poindexter, they’re trying to sell advertising. But make no mistake about it – they are in the surveillance business; that is how they make money: they surveil people and use that to profit. And so the effect is the same. http://privacy-pc.com/news/changing-threats-to-privacy-moxie-marlinspike-on-privacy-threats-at-defcon-part-2.html http://privacy-pc.com/news/changing-threats-to-privacy-moxie...

Karunamon 12y ago
Call me when someone gets hauled off to Guantanamo because of ad demographics. The lack of nuance here when it comes to "tracking" is insane. I can see wanting to block them for whatever reason, but I can't understand this reduction to the absurd chicken-little behavior when it comes to ad targeting.
- Create 12y ago
  And lastly, we now know that the ‘Aurora’4 attacks on Google were at least partially about intercept. One thing we’ve learned from those attacks is that the Government is running intercept systems on their networks, and not only that but other ‘eavesdroppers’ are trying to get access to those intercept systems. So what we are seeing is as more and more data accumulates in these places, it becomes more and more valuable. And so ‘eavesdroppers’ move to those places and even ‘eavesdroppers’ without a legal backing also try to move to those places. So I think we are going to continue to see that as a problem as these become more and more valuable over time. http://privacy-pc.com/news/changing-threats-to-privacy-moxie-marlinspike-on-privacy-threats-at-defcon-part-2.html http://privacy-pc.com/news/changing-threats-to-privacy-moxie... So the primary form of collection that should concern us most is media that spy on us while we use them. Books that watch us read them, music that’s listen to us listen to it. Search boxes that report what we are searching for to whoever is searching for us and doesn’t know us yet. There is a lot of talk about data coming out of facebook: is it coming to me? is it coming to him? is it coming to them? They want you to think that the threat is data coming out. You should know that the threat is code going in. For the last 50 years what has been happening in enterprise computing, is the addition of that layer of analytic on top of the datawarehouse that mostly goes in enterprise computing by the name of "business intelligence". what it means is you’ve been building this vast datawarehouses in your company for decade or 2 now you have only information about your own operations your suppliers your competitors, your customers now you want to make that data start to do tricks. By adding it to all the open source data out there in the world, and using it to tell you the answers to questions you didn’t know you had. That’s business intelligence. The real threat of facebook is the BI layer on top of facebook warehouse. The facebook datewarehouse contains the behavior not just the thinking but also the behavior or somewhere nearing a billion people. The business intelligence layer on top of it which is just all that code they get to run covered by the terms of service that say "they can run any code they want for improvement of the experience". The business intelligence on top of facebook is where every intelligence service of the world wants to go. Imagine that you are a tiny little secret police organisation in some not very important country. Let’s put ourselves in their position Let’s call them I don’t know what, you know ... "kirghista". You are a secret police you are in the "people business" secret policing is "people business". You have classes of people that you want you want agents, you want sources you have adversaries, and you have influencables, that is people you torture who are related to adversaries wives, husbands, fathers, daughter you know those people. So you are looking for classes of people. You don’t know their names, but you know what they are like you know who is recrutable for you as an agent you know who are likely sources, you can give the social characteristics of your adversaries, and once you know your adversaries, you can find the influencables. So what you want to do is run code inside facebook. It will help you find the people that you want it will show you the people whose behavior and whose social circles tell you that they are what you want by way of agent, sources what their adversaries are and who you can torture to get to them. So you don’t want data out of facebook the day you have data out of facebook it is dead. You want to put code into facebook and run it there and get the results you want to cooperate. http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-thought-requires-free-media http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t...
  - dang 12y ago
    Please don't paste stock quotes into HN threads. Good conversations aren't like that. Especially please don't do it repeatedly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7777147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7777147.
    - Create 12y ago
      Please respect factual arguments instead of tolerating stock downvotes. Good arguments aren't like that, assuming good conversations are the goal.
      - Snail_Commando 12y ago
        A bit of tactical advice: good conversations start with context. Your blocks of text didn't read like someone engaging me in conversation, they read like a political flyer stuffed under my windshield wiper.
- pyrocat 12y ago
  Why? If company X tracks all the websites you visit, it's really not that hard for the government to get a hold of that data. It doesn't matter who collects the data or what it is initially used for; as long as the data is collected you're at risk.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    So we must hamstring all advertising and personalizing because somewhere a government might abuse their power and get into the data. That's absurd. Why should we change our behavior because bad actors exist instead of dealing with the bad actors? The whole argument implies that somehow blocking ads will keep $someScaryTLA from screwing with you, which is silly on its face. And on top of that, ad tracking data is all about aggregates. Ads are targeted to "groups of people who like X", not "pyrocat, 123 foobar st, san francisco". I really don't get this fear. I'd rather see ads for things that are relevant to me.
    - denom 12y ago
      I thought the whole point of the various social graph implementations was to build a datastructure that handles details on the level of an individual: who your friends are, what you shop for etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_graph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_graph E.g. I was browsing cutlery on Crate and Barrel, suddenly I'm seeing ads all over the internet for products that I was viewing. I visited Digital Ocean's site and I see ads everywhere offering their hosting. Same with New Relic. If I had to guess, the economic systems that underpin these ad networks are getting stronger and eventually they will all merge. Well, of course there will still be big players like facebook, but you get my point.
    - pyrocat 12y ago
      I'd rather not see ads that are targeted to me. The more an advertiser knows about you, the easier it is for them to manipulate you into buying their product.
- schoen 12y ago
  Governments do directly use ad network tracking data for surveillance. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/nsa-turns-cookies-and-more-surveillance-beacons https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/nsa-turns-cookies-and-... (I was a coauthor of this blog post, though not of the underlying press reporting. There was another article on this topic recently underscoring that there are other programs to use these cookies this way.) In this case the problem from the point of view of a user concerned with government surveillance is not necessarily the ad network tracking, but the fact that it wasn't protected with HTTPS so other people were able to take advantage of it for their own surveillance purposes. Unfortunately, ad networks have not generally responded by making HTTPS mandatory, or even optional. Apart from exposing users directly to government location tracking programs, ad networks often know that some users don't want to be tracked and deliberately track them anyway. http://www.techpolicy.com/FlashCookiesPrivacyII.aspx http://www.techpolicy.com/FlashCookiesPrivacyII.aspx Sounds like a good time for users to adopt countermeasures.