Obama was promoting The Age of Surveillance Capitalism over seven years ago now. Industry insiders have known all this since 1999. Yet almost every single person I know carries a cellphone and drives a car with telemetry, things that are entirely optional. Most humans use Meta products regularly; also optional. For all the feigned outrage, people want this, and will work hard every day to pay for the next iteration of the surveillance apparatus.
PS: Something in this vein that many people are unaware of is that the 6G standard for cell towers is planned to include ISAC (Integrated Sensing and Communication). I haven’t heard a single AFK person talk about this.
I don't think people want this. I think people want the other benefits that those things bring, and increasingly feel that it's impossible to escape being surveilled anyway so do their best to ignore the whole issue.
Being resigned to something is not the same as wanting that thing.
By leveraging mobile network infrastructure – towers, spectrum, antennas, and some hardware – ISAC can detect, locate, and track objects (including passive ones with no electronics). This will enable a wide range of use cases such as UAV airspace monitoring, autonomous vehicle safety, industrial automation, and immersive AR experiences. Commercial deployment is expected alongside 6G rollouts in the 2030 timeframe
It's hard for me to take this perspective seriously when you describe a cellphone as "entirely optional". Our society is structured around the assumption that you'll have not just a cellphone, but a smartphone. Without acknowledging that, how can we have a realistic discussion? Many businesses require you to use a smartphone in some way. Some government services also require one.
Before cellphones, there were payphones everywhere for people to use when they needed to get into contact. Now there are hardly any left in most countries, so your ability to communicate would actually be worse than in the pre-cellphone era. Sure you could ask someone to use their phone, but if a stranger asked me that these days I would likely refuse.
I do not carry a cellphone. I am employed and live in a major city. I never think about not having one. I know multiple other people, also employed, living both rurally and in cities, who do not carry cellphones.
Less and less though and you need to go through quite a bit of trouble sometimes already. Banking, gov apps, I know more and more companies you cannot enter nor clock in without smartphone etc. Sure, you can just resign, move country, try to find another bank; in the end you will run out of options as they are all moving there.
I have seen enough instances of government authorities abusing their power (or even civilians using the courts against another civilian) to know that the best defense you have in a situation where you are the victim is to have your own recording.
Easiest example is having your own dash cam (don’t know why all auto manufacturers don’t have Tesla style camera recordings, especially given that all new cars come with cameras anyway).
Of course, now that video editing is cheap and difficult to spot, who knows if your evidence will make much of a difference.
> Of course, now that video editing is cheap and difficult to spot, who knows if your evidence will make much of a difference.
Maybe you could use a trusted timestamping service to stamp keyframes or stills from your video while you're recording? If the time of the recording is not in question, it would bound the kind of video editing people could plausibly claim that you could've done.
It's not foolproof - if you have enough face data of the person you want to frame and you've been to the room where the conversation takes place, you could have made a fake video beforehand and spliced it into the conversation at the time of the recording. But that would at least take a lot of preparation and quite a bit of luck and timing to find a place in the conversation that's just long enough to copy your edited version in without arousing suspicion. For dashcam videos it would be difficult to merge your edit with existing traffic, etc...
Almost every person installs security cameras hoping that one day they will "catch the criminal" unaware that the footage probably is used in all possible ways all the time, yet in case when the crime against them finally happens the footage might not be admitted as a proof.
> yet in case when the crime against them finally happens the footage might not be admitted as a proof.
Or there is simply not enough staff available to carry out the procedures needed to apprehend and charge the individual. Or a myriad of other things. People think law enforcement is easy.
> For all the feigned outrage, people want this, and will work hard every day to pay for the next iteration of the surveillance apparatus.
My sad realization is that the Buddhists were right all along. The primary drivers of human mind, before self-purification, are greed, anger, and ignorance. What you are describing here is greed. People want to get useful things for free. This is the core of the problem. If people were, by default, expecting to pay for everything they use, spying on them would not be accepted. Instead, they want stuff for free and they choose to be willfully blind to the spying.
copy the original link then go to archive .is then paste the link into the second field than choose any result. not a rocket science. the article is not interesting tbh.
The EFF or some other watchdog should put out some public ads that depict corporations as a creepy person stalking someone:
It's a lot more disgusting and universally hated when you hear about a peeping tom, or a pervert, or a jealous ex, hounding someone,
but when faceless corporations and governments do it to EVERYBODY 24/7, everyone's like, ehh.
I mean, right now, just think about me, clicking on your HN profile, googling your name, going through all your public photos.. Don't you find me repulsive just talking about that?
Right? There are 8 billion humans on those planet. You are 0.0000000125% of humanity. No one outside your family and friends even knows you, nevermind gives a shit about you, unless you stick out in some way. If GP wants to take a tour of my GitHub or my blog and send me a thoughtful email, I'd be delighted!
You might find something I wrote interesting. Then whatever public info there is on me helps you to get to know me a bit better. You may stop there and forget about me, or you may try to reach out.
> Just because it's all public doesn't mean you want the cashier from the supermarket following you around to your family picnic.
This has never happened to me. Out of the space of “bad things that can happen to me” I don’t have time to worry about things with such a small probability of occurring.
I think people's idea of privacy is very simplistic and personal and relies on the disgust of a human peering over your files. Most laypeople don't have the same disgust of machines peering over their personal files that is why the weirdo video recording elicits a negative response but Meta or Alphabet doing it doesn't. Plus the fact that they "depend" on Meta and Alphabet tech makes it easier to give them a pass not unlike fans of [insert your favourite celebrity] who happily look away or justify the celebrity's bad actions.
https://archive.is/JxaZ7
oh no!
Obama was promoting The Age of Surveillance Capitalism over seven years ago now. Industry insiders have known all this since 1999. Yet almost every single person I know carries a cellphone and drives a car with telemetry, things that are entirely optional. Most humans use Meta products regularly; also optional. For all the feigned outrage, people want this, and will work hard every day to pay for the next iteration of the surveillance apparatus.
PS: Something in this vein that many people are unaware of is that the 6G standard for cell towers is planned to include ISAC (Integrated Sensing and Communication). I haven’t heard a single AFK person talk about this.
I don't think people want this. I think people want the other benefits that those things bring, and increasingly feel that it's impossible to escape being surveilled anyway so do their best to ignore the whole issue.
Being resigned to something is not the same as wanting that thing.
Agree, you’re either a digital hermit or you’re part of the problem / system
By leveraging mobile network infrastructure – towers, spectrum, antennas, and some hardware – ISAC can detect, locate, and track objects (including passive ones with no electronics). This will enable a wide range of use cases such as UAV airspace monitoring, autonomous vehicle safety, industrial automation, and immersive AR experiences. Commercial deployment is expected alongside 6G rollouts in the 2030 timeframe
https://www.ericsson.com/en/6g/isac
Thank you, this deserved a link. I was being lazy.
People wouldn't want this if they were adequately educated.
the main solution is the same as with many other problems - education on what's wrong + making the right way as easy as possible
it's easy to fall into complain hole, as that seems to fulfill the 1st part
but 2nd part is as much or even more valuable
> making the right way as easy as possible
I wish I knew what you were talking about here.
It seems like the easy way would be to forbid the collection of this data… but that is obviously not happening, so I need a different part 2.
It's hard for me to take this perspective seriously when you describe a cellphone as "entirely optional". Our society is structured around the assumption that you'll have not just a cellphone, but a smartphone. Without acknowledging that, how can we have a realistic discussion? Many businesses require you to use a smartphone in some way. Some government services also require one.
Before cellphones, there were payphones everywhere for people to use when they needed to get into contact. Now there are hardly any left in most countries, so your ability to communicate would actually be worse than in the pre-cellphone era. Sure you could ask someone to use their phone, but if a stranger asked me that these days I would likely refuse.
I do not carry a cellphone. I am employed and live in a major city. I never think about not having one. I know multiple other people, also employed, living both rurally and in cities, who do not carry cellphones.
It is entirely optional.
Less and less though and you need to go through quite a bit of trouble sometimes already. Banking, gov apps, I know more and more companies you cannot enter nor clock in without smartphone etc. Sure, you can just resign, move country, try to find another bank; in the end you will run out of options as they are all moving there.
Counterpoint: I could not do my job without one. Clients expect support over WhatsApp.
I have seen enough instances of government authorities abusing their power (or even civilians using the courts against another civilian) to know that the best defense you have in a situation where you are the victim is to have your own recording.
Easiest example is having your own dash cam (don’t know why all auto manufacturers don’t have Tesla style camera recordings, especially given that all new cars come with cameras anyway).
Of course, now that video editing is cheap and difficult to spot, who knows if your evidence will make much of a difference.
> Of course, now that video editing is cheap and difficult to spot, who knows if your evidence will make much of a difference.
Maybe you could use a trusted timestamping service to stamp keyframes or stills from your video while you're recording? If the time of the recording is not in question, it would bound the kind of video editing people could plausibly claim that you could've done.
It's not foolproof - if you have enough face data of the person you want to frame and you've been to the room where the conversation takes place, you could have made a fake video beforehand and spliced it into the conversation at the time of the recording. But that would at least take a lot of preparation and quite a bit of luck and timing to find a place in the conversation that's just long enough to copy your edited version in without arousing suspicion. For dashcam videos it would be difficult to merge your edit with existing traffic, etc...
Almost every person installs security cameras hoping that one day they will "catch the criminal" unaware that the footage probably is used in all possible ways all the time, yet in case when the crime against them finally happens the footage might not be admitted as a proof.
> yet in case when the crime against them finally happens the footage might not be admitted as a proof.
Or there is simply not enough staff available to carry out the procedures needed to apprehend and charge the individual. Or a myriad of other things. People think law enforcement is easy.
> For all the feigned outrage, people want this, and will work hard every day to pay for the next iteration of the surveillance apparatus.
My sad realization is that the Buddhists were right all along. The primary drivers of human mind, before self-purification, are greed, anger, and ignorance. What you are describing here is greed. People want to get useful things for free. This is the core of the problem. If people were, by default, expecting to pay for everything they use, spying on them would not be accepted. Instead, they want stuff for free and they choose to be willfully blind to the spying.
where's archive link when it's needed the most...
copy the original link then go to archive .is then paste the link into the second field than choose any result. not a rocket science. the article is not interesting tbh.
The EFF or some other watchdog should put out some public ads that depict corporations as a creepy person stalking someone:
It's a lot more disgusting and universally hated when you hear about a peeping tom, or a pervert, or a jealous ex, hounding someone,
but when faceless corporations and governments do it to EVERYBODY 24/7, everyone's like, ehh.
I mean, right now, just think about me, clicking on your HN profile, googling your name, going through all your public photos.. Don't you find me repulsive just talking about that?
This puts me in mind of the infamous GMail Man commercial that Microsoft put out:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oR4jTvxPruw
i get a little thrill knowing im that important to someone :)
Right? There are 8 billion humans on those planet. You are 0.0000000125% of humanity. No one outside your family and friends even knows you, nevermind gives a shit about you, unless you stick out in some way. If GP wants to take a tour of my GitHub or my blog and send me a thoughtful email, I'd be delighted!
No. Why should I find you repulsive?
You might find something I wrote interesting. Then whatever public info there is on me helps you to get to know me a bit better. You may stop there and forget about me, or you may try to reach out.
There is nothing wrong about that.
> Why should I find you repulsive?
Me googling your shit might lead to your real name, your family photos etc
Just because it's all public doesn't mean you want the cashier from the supermarket following you around to your family picnic
or just because you like to let the sunlight in doesn't mean you want random pedestrians peering in through your windows..
I can't believe this needs to be spelled out: "Public" life is compartmentalized.
> Just because it's all public doesn't mean you want the cashier from the supermarket following you around to your family picnic.
This has never happened to me. Out of the space of “bad things that can happen to me” I don’t have time to worry about things with such a small probability of occurring.
I think people's idea of privacy is very simplistic and personal and relies on the disgust of a human peering over your files. Most laypeople don't have the same disgust of machines peering over their personal files that is why the weirdo video recording elicits a negative response but Meta or Alphabet doing it doesn't. Plus the fact that they "depend" on Meta and Alphabet tech makes it easier to give them a pass not unlike fans of [insert your favourite celebrity] who happily look away or justify the celebrity's bad actions.