When it Comes To Privacy, Consent is Immaterial. Corporate and Gov't Surveillance Systems Must Be Stopped Before They Ask For Consent: Richard Stallman (theguardian.com) 266
In a rare op-ed, Richard Stallman, the president of the Free Software Foundation, says that the surveillance imposed on us today is worse than in the Soviet Union. He argues that we need laws to stop this data being collected in the first place. From his op-ed: The surveillance imposed on us today far exceeds that of the Soviet Union. For freedom and democracy's sake, we need to eliminate most of it. There are so many ways to use data to hurt people that the only safe database is the one that was never collected. Thus, instead of the EU's approach of mainly regulating how personal data may be used (in its General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR), I propose a law to stop systems from collecting personal data.
The robust way to do that, the way that can't be set aside at the whim of a government, is to require systems to be built so as not to collect data about a person. The basic principle is that a system must be designed not to collect certain data, if its basic function can be carried out without that data. Data about who travels where is particularly sensitive, because it is an ideal basis for repressing any chosen target.
The robust way to do that, the way that can't be set aside at the whim of a government, is to require systems to be built so as not to collect data about a person. The basic principle is that a system must be designed not to collect certain data, if its basic function can be carried out without that data. Data about who travels where is particularly sensitive, because it is an ideal basis for repressing any chosen target.
...wat? (Score:4, Interesting)
I may agree that companies have no business collecting 99% of what they collect about me, but the idea that I shouldn't even be able to consent to that when or if I deem it acceptable is tyranny by any other name. My body, my rights :: my privacy, my rights. You're not the only one who should be allowed freedom, King Richard.
Easy to get consent (Score:5, Interesting)
What he points out is that people click "yes" to usage agreements and terms of service without reading them, and as an example, links to a test where the terms of service explicitly state giving up your first-born child [arstechnica.com]... and people still agreed to them. [pcworld.com]
People don't read terms of service, they just click yes.
Have you ever read terms of service? The damn things are pages and pages of boring small print.
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What he points out is that people click "yes" to usage agreements and terms of service without reading them, and as an example, links to a test where the terms of service explicitly state giving up your first-born child [arstechnica.com]... and people still agreed to them. [pcworld.com]
People don't read terms of service, they just click yes.
Have you ever read terms of service? The damn things are pages and pages of boring small print.
Part of it is we know that contracts don't work that way.
No judge would, obviously, enforce the click through give up firstborn child thing. So even if someone did read it, they click, knowing it's not enforceable.
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So even if someone did read it, they click, knowing it's not enforceable.
And they're what, one in a hundred? A thousand? Nobody cares what the people who read it do, because it's been proven over and over that 99%+ will not read any long legalese so what it actually says makes no difference. They just click and pray that if there's some really bad shit in there a judge will stop it and okay, giving away your firstborn wouldn't fly. But US courts stretch the idea of freedom as the right to agree to damn near anything very far, it almost has to border on fraud to qualify. The exam
Re:Easy to get consent (Score:5, Interesting)
Terms of Service need to be heavily regulated. Ideally there would be a few standard ToS documents and companies would have to pick one, rather than writing their own. Or maybe a kind of build-a-licence system like the Creative Commons one.
Anything they want outside of that, sod off. Products must indicate what licence terms they picked before you buy, e.g. on the box.
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True. As it is today for online banking for instance, every bank have their own legal contact you need to agree to in order to enable online banking. And they have this perverse incentive in that the less you understand about the contract the better for them.
Compare with how it would be if the banks were required [slashdot.org] to actively work to make contracts understandable for its customers. If all banks start out with their own contract there will be a incentive to standardise at least parts of the contract to be
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Jokes on them if they think their getting the better end of the deal if the take my first born child in any exchange for service of any kind.
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People take jobs, signing non-compete clauses, knowing these are unenforceable. While most of the EULAs we are discussing are not so obviously unenforceable, and so we agree thinking it's no big deal, some particularly egregious terms would not survive a challenge.
And unfortunately that won't ever get your data back. We will need laws that compel agencies to confirm, by some verifiable means, that they got rid of what they should not have had. This will mean forcing these agencies (and corporations soon en
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People take jobs, signing non-compete clauses, knowing these are unenforceable.
Are you quite sure that non-compete clauses are unenforceable?
I can tell you how it is in healthcare: non-compete clauses are fairly common, and people tend to take them quite seriously. I did read about a case where a non-compete clause was defeated in court (the doctor argued, successfully, that it harmed the public interest by depriving patients of their choice of physician), but it took a significant amount of time and money. That court decision took place in a different state than the one I live in a
Re: Easy to get consent (Score:2)
Many, not all, are unenforceable. And not in all states.
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And they're typically in a tiny window that can not be resized, so you can only see a sentence fragment at a time, which is massively obnoxious.
Still, worse than the Soviet Union? In the Soviet Union, what they find when eavesdropping on you could merely send you to the Gulag death camps, where you'd never be heard from again. Google and Facebook's surveillance might result in... let me compose myself... them trying to SELL you something! Showing you TARGETTED ADVERTISING!! The horror, oh, the horror.
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Re:Easy to get consent (Score:5, Insightful)
A key part of reading comprehension is the ability to understand the meaning of a set of words in a specific context and I would venture to say that's where additional protections are needed. Any person capable of reading can read even the most convoluted user agreement but MOST people would read it word by word but not really having the experience, education, or skill to fully understand the implications of a set of words in a specific order.
This may be a real bad analogy, but it's kinda like the protections you get in a Law. Imagine if your Law said "No-one is allowed to force you to work more than 8 hours in a consecutive 24 hour period".
Then you went to work for an employer who made you sign a 50 page employee contract. Somewhere buried in all that text was a roundabout way of the company saying you had to work 12 hours in a consecutive 24 hour period. That stipulation would be immediately null and void (despite your signature) because it's overruled by the Law that said you can't work more than 8 hours.
So
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There is also the issue in contract law of capacity, as in the ability to understand and consent.
That is unfortunately more a theoretical factor than a practical factor given how far companies are able to and allowed to skew the imbalance far beyond a David vs Goliat relation to something more like a single soldier against a national army imbalance. In most (all?) countries law/justice is not part of the mandatory education for kids (which when you think about it is crazy; all citizens of a country are supposed to follow all laws but are given no education about (the most important) laws or the justic
Re:Easy to get consent (Score:5, Insightful)
For an average user it would take 76 days to read the terms of service that they typically agree to in a year.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/reading-the-privacy-policies-you-encounter-in-a-year-would-take-76-work-days/253851/
That's insane, no one will spend that much time reading usage agreements. This isn't about reading comprehension.
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Re:Easy to get consent (Score:5, Insightful)
But that is their problem?
When the legalese is so long and cumbersome that it would be literally impossible for any normal person to read, understand and actively give informed consent to it, yes, I think it is their problem.
We've got into this strange situation with online services where there is this fantasy legal environment where everyone is signing up for things with these huge accompanying documents that they have supposedly read and agreed to, when those documents might contain terms that have very little to do with what the person thought they were signing up for.
Just imagine the bricks-and-mortar equivalent of what is supposedly happening with online purchases: you get to the checkout at the store with your groceries, spend a couple of minutes getting everything scanned and bagged up, and just before you tap your contactless card to conveniently pay for it in a few more seconds, you have to stop and spend an hour reading 27 printed pages of legal terms including how you may serve the beef, removing any responsibility from the store if your pack of fresh vegetables is half-rotten behind the packaging you can't see through, promising to pay the store's legal costs if anyone else who was in that day falls and hurts themselves but mentions your name while they're suing the store for damages, giving up your own right to take normal legal actions against the store in favour of some obviously not loaded at all "arbitration" process, and agreeing to let someone from the store visit your house whenever they want to check what's in your fridge and then stand in your lounge offering your whole family replacement products they think might interest you that are available from their carefully selected partners. It's absurd on so many levels.
Perhaps the greatest irony is that, at least in places with sensible legal systems, a lot of the legalese is mostly worthless anyway, because if there is something surprising and unreasonable in a standard form contract like this then it's unlikely to stand up in court anyway.
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The question you should really be asking in this context is "Should you have gun rights if I don't know how to use a gun?"
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A right is not 'granted', but is inherent to the person. You're thinking of privilege. That said, yes, nobody should suffer an abridgement of the rights just because someone else is retarded.
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A right is not 'granted', but is inherent to the person.
While this is correct...
You're thinking of privilege.
... this is not.
We quite often (and quite necessarily) restrict or remove certain rights from a person when they show they can't handle the responsibilities that come with those rights. Let's traverse the Bill of Rights, just for kicks:
We don't have the privilege of free speech, we have the right of free speech; but certain speech is restricted, such as misleading or dishonest advertising.
We don't have the privilege to bear arms, we have the right to bear arms, but ownership of
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That said, yes, nobody should suffer an abridgement of the rights just because someone else is retarded.
Ideally, no, but such an arrangement is not always practical.
Consider something like traffic laws. I'm an experienced driver, with a good car and statistically a very good safety record. There is no doubt that under various conditions I could break various technical traffic laws, for example exceeding the speed limit or passing a red light, without causing any risk or inconvenience to anyone else. And yet the limits and restrictions apply to me just as they do to everyone else, and consequently the rules ar
As many as you want [Re:Easy to get consent] (Score:2)
Rights cone with responsibilities. If you learn how to (safely) handle a gun, you should be granted the right to do so; if you shirk your responsibilities, you should necessarily lose your rights
Maybe that's the way gun rights should work. The actual gun rights, in the U.S., are that you have a right to as many guns as you want regardless of whether you can use them safely.
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Should you have car driving rights if you don't know how to drive?
Re:...wat? (Score:5, Insightful)
He should probably have used East Germany rather than the Soviet Union for his comparison. The Stasi not only conducted surveillance but relied on a climate of fear and suspicion in which people informed on one another, either to escape suspicion themselves or to gain some advantage.
Even if you do not consent to your data being collected, as soon as someone else puts it out there (e.g. your photo, phone number, email, twitter handle and date of birth in their contacts list) and consents to it being collected, you're shafted.
Re:...wat? (Score:4, Insightful)
He should probably have used East Germany rather than the Soviet Union for his comparison. The Stasi not only conducted surveillance but relied on a climate of fear and suspicion in which people informed on one another, either to escape suspicion themselves or to gain some advantage.
It's a good point. At the height of it 1/3 of East Germans were Stasi informers.
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There are too many times I hear people getting frustrated about having put in so much data every time they call in. Ask shouldn't the computer already have this information ready. Or you know where to send the bill, but not to call for follow up information.
For most of the information gathers it is used to benefit us. Not spy on us and determine what evil plot we are doing.
It is perfect? No. Are their a lot of abuses? Yes.
But RMS is an absolutist. There is rarely any grey area in RMS view on things. Eith
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There are too many times I hear people getting frustrated about having put in so much data every time they call in. Ask shouldn't the computer already have this information ready. Or you know where to send the bill, but not to call for follow up information..
I'm still wondering why my phone's flashlight app needs access to my email address book.
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For most of the information gathers it is used to benefit us.
You're going to have to be more specific here. I'm sure that there are specific applications like this, but the majority of the information collected commercially is used for advertising and market research, and the majority of information collected by the government is used for law enforcement.
Certainly law enforcement does benefit us in general, but being spied upon by law enforcement does not benefit you. You only benefit when other people get spied upon. And that's assuming honest, trustworthy spies.
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We've bought into the idea that certain agreements just cannot be made (see, minimum wage laws, etc.). I have no problem with data mining having similar limits on what data you can share.
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Perfect quote (Score:5, Insightful)
"the only safe database is the one that was never collected."
Been saying this for years. SO glad someone with a louder voice agrees.
Re: Perfect quote (Score:2, Interesting)
He's right. As someone who has actually lived in the Soviet Union, I can't agree more.
Stallman is on point. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, he is a bit extreme, but then again he needs to be.
And I for one am glad he is out there, fighting for us who have given up.
Re:Stallman is on point. (Score:5, Insightful)
> Yes, he is a bit extreme, but then again he needs to be.
Each time, it is repeatedly shown, that his seemingly extremist ideas simply appear so, only because they are ahead of their time (or rather, most of us are behind time when it comes to understanding current technology). He is far better able to project into the future, what the natural consequences of the current systems are.
"In a rare op-ed, Richard Stallman..." (Score:5, Funny)
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He is slowing in his old age..
I just fought this last night... (Score:5, Insightful)
I was buying groceries at Target, and happened to get a case of beer - for which I was fully expecting to have to show ID (I'm >40 years old btw).
When the cashier asked to "see my ID" (emphasize the "SEE"), I held out my license. She physically snatched it from my fingers and before I could even react she turned it over and scanned the barcode on the back into their POS system. That bar code contains all kinds of personal data including my address and biometric info. I did NOT consent to them collecting that info, and yet I have no way to get them to expunge it from their system. Not only am I being tracked in 17 different ways with their marketing and other systems, but they're likely selling that info of to other "partners", and putting it at risk WHEN they eventually have a systems breach.
That type of collection should be illegal. I've contacted their guest relations team about my concern, and have yet to hear back.
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Actually that would not work, as I am required to verify the ID is real. I worked in the industry (bartender and at a liquor store) and anytime someone would show me an ID in a windowed wallet I was required to have them remove it and hand it to me. Pretty much every "ID Check" instructions mentions those wallet windows and that the ID must be removed.
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when did people become so obtuse about GIVING THEIR INFO OUT in the first place?
Re: I just fought this last night... (Score:3, Insightful)
First, everyone does it so you get to pick which devil you sell your information soul to but you can't pick whether you sell it.
Second, the information is now there and won't go away. It will be in systems for the rest of eternity.
Third, bug data relies on patterns. You don't matter. Get used to that. You have no significance. Your data helps build a bigger picture, but any person's data would do the same. You are disposable. As long as enough people shop there, their system learns exactly the same stuff. Y
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What are you going to do when EVERY shop does it (hint: they all do already)? The stupidity here is incredible.
At least you admit how stupid you are.
EVERY -- the hyperbolic assclown award goes to you. Congrats.
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For years my (dual citizen) buddy would offer one of his passports for ID checks. Scan that, f-kers.
A trusted traveller card (Global Entry, Sentri, Nexus) would also work. As long as it has a picture, birthday and is issued by a government, good to go.
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I plan on that... but this was my first experience with this issue, and now they have my data against my will. Stopping shopping there is a protest, but doesn't solve the initial problem.
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When the cashier asked to "see my ID" (emphasize the "SEE"), I held out my license. She physically snatched it from my fingers and before I could even react she turned it over and scanned the barcode on the back into their POS system. That bar code contains all kinds of personal data including my address and biometric info. I did NOT consent to them collecting that info, and yet I have no way to get them to expunge it from their system. Not only am I being tracked in 17 different ways with their marketing and other systems, but they're likely selling that info of to other "partners", and putting it at risk WHEN they eventually have a systems breach.
They may not be storing your information. At a few different stores I've gone to in Michigan, they are now swiping your ID with every liquor purchase to verify that it's not a fake ID. They're all mom & pop stores, so I doubt those places are storing any information in a database. One of the places I go to, the cashier girl just swipes her own ID for the people she knows. I'm sure she could get busted for it, since I'm sure the state is tracking who purchases alcohol.
Seeing was enough to lose the same data (Score:2)
If you merely show the card, then they have everything. They don't need to touch it. You might be right to be concerned (about the various consequences of data collection), but you're also making a mountain out of a molehill with the barcode thing, since the barcode was merely a convenience.
The mere presence of a camera is enough to get most of that biometric data (from you, not the card) and your address is probably on the front of the card, and most importantly, so is your driver's license # (a unique key
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Same with the mag-stripe readers for driver's licenses in my state. When those started showing up; I knew quite a few people in the local rave and club scene. And I actually got into a conversation with a promoter about why he started using those machines. He waxed poetic about them... not because they made verifying anyone's age any easier. No one really cares if an 18-year-old drinks, or if a 16 year old gets into an 18+ party. "Their money is as good as anyone's who's legal. Why shouldn't we take i
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Problem was buying beer at Target or Walmart. The mega chains are juicier targets for enforcement (fines) and thus they make 100% certain their ass is covered. Instead, go to a trusted grocery store (mine just keys in the birthday off the license to get past the prompt, and for obvious over 35s just keys in a random date). Absent that, try an independent beer distributor or older gas station. Chances are even if they once had a scanner, it hasn't worked in years.
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Laws are the answer as well. Don't buy dangerous pharmaceuticals! You should have read the ingredients and KNOWN that diethylene glycol was a deadly poison before drinking the cough syrup...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
How about... (Score:2)
How about stopping the data from being retained more than a specific length of time?
Example -- if you have a cell phone bill, the company needs to retain call records for a few months in case you need to dispute a bill or if there's fraud involved. But once the bill is paid without dispute, the records should be deleted after a few months.
Same with security camera footage. Unless there's evidence of a violent crime, it doesn't need to be retained forever -- overwriting it after a few weeks provides enough
Re:How about... (Score:4, Informative)
You trust them?
The federal government has been caught multiple time keeping gun background check records. Despite the law specifically forbidding it. They have even been caught retaining database records that federal judges explicitly ordered them to delete...next time they are caught with the database, there's those same records again.
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So your saying your in favor of selective law enforcement?
No fed has gone to prison for trying to turn background checks into de facto registration. Despite a 20 year history of ignoring data retention laws.
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You just answered why data-retention length laws wouldn't work. Hackers are included as "third-party" too. The only safe data collection is no data collection.
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Lets take an Irish problem in the 1970's Every person of use sent to UK from Ireland gets arrested. Their accent, work, documents just don't provide any long term cover as a new person in a community. Reported on at any new location in the UK by a network of informants. Followed. Police then caught entire support networks.
Perfect documents, work and a local accent are difficult to create.
The next option was generational. Immigrat
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You trust them?
I generally trust corporations to run a cost-benefit analysis before deciding on any course of action. If the cost of getting caught with the data is 1,000 times the financial benefit from retaining the data and the probability of getting caught is 1%, most companies won't keep it. If you double the fines and double the probability of audit every time that a company gets caught, then eventually the converge at making it too expensive for a company to keep.
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The only easy way to track people who pay with cash and gift cards is to track their face and licence plate.
Get a image of any passenger helping them too.
That CCTV frame of a face is kept for years.
Linked to any licence plate. Data stor
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What do the mil and police do? They keep collecting and use parallel construction.
The other method is to use social media in real time to track political crimes.
No retention needed if everyone is under investigation all the time.
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They just hammered me with dozens of questions about alcohol, firearms, food, soil, and ebola, no criminal questions.
And if you encountered USCBP on the way *out* of the country you must have been doing it wrong - US has no exit controls. International departing flights leave from the same gates as domestic. Heck, leaving US from San Ysidro to Tijuana is a simple metal one-way turnstile, identical to what you'd find in a NYC subway station, with no US authorities in sight.
Fantasy land (Score:2)
The beauty of the US constitution is that it assumes the people in charge are greedy, self interested, power hungry assholes, and then uses their self interest against them in a balance of power to restrain the overall (usually) growing power of a centralized government.
Stallman, otoh, seems to prefer to pronounce a world of pleasant fantasy where companies and government are going to build applications and tools voluntarily limiting their self-interested benefit.
In short, unless he can devise a mechanism i
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Nash Equilibrium (Score:4, Insightful)
Cooperation is cheaper, easier, quicker. And humans are lazy before they are greedy.
Cooperation also yields better results, which is why America and Britain are sliding down every metric and Scandinavia is on the rise.
Stallman uses simple economics. You don't have to agree with him, but you will be uneconomic and unsustainable if you do.
He is not a communist, he is a pragmatic capitalist.
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Corporations are a creation of the state. Without a corporate charter, approved and sanctioned by the state, they wouldn't exist. Corporatism is just another form of statism. The solution isn't more state, it is less state. A lot less state.
No doubt, someone will cry out about safety and security, and protecting people from themselves. To that, I'll ask the question, what purpose does it serve when the state prevents a child from having a lemonade stand, by requiring a permit?
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The primary reason for a government-based corporate charter is to protect investors against government legal sanctions when there are legal claims against the corporation. That's because current law wouldn't allow corporations to discharge such liabilities contractually.
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Government approves their creation via regulation, but does not create them itself.
Corporations are a creation of the state. Without a corporate charter, approved and sanctioned by the state, they wouldn't exist.
I was very clear as to what part the state plays in the creation of a corporation. There are all sorts of laws regarding how corporate charters are created, and granted by governments. They are as much a creation of the state as they are of those that are incorporating. It literally takes both to "create" a corporation and therefore, it is equal partners and is part of the "creation" the state grants existence to.
However, do not mistake their collusion to mean that corporations are state
I don't make that mistake. They are a creation of the sate. They are subservient to the state,
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Indeed it is. But corporatism is the antithesis of free markets and capitalism.
Quite the opposite: government interference in the free market is what creates corporatism.
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Corporatism IS fascism -- literally corporations in bed with an authoritarian state. The proper response is SOCIALISM, where the government actually acts in the interest of ordinary citizens, not wealthy CEOs.
Yes, look what socialism did for the people of Ukraine during Stalin's reign, or Venezuela today.
No darned corporatism there! Millions starving, sure, economies in ruins and hyper-inflation, yes, but you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, right?
It's Progress(TM)!!
Strat
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Corporatism IS fascism -- literally corporations in bed with an authoritarian state. The proper response is SOCIALISM, where the government actually acts in the interest of ordinary citizens, not wealthy CEOs.
LOL - yeah, that's how socialism always works out.
SMH
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Correct.
What you advocate, "government acting in the interest of ordinary citizens" is, in fact, the essence of fascism. It's the rallying cry of fascists. Once you give the state the power to impose its will on corporations (fascism) or own corporations outright (socialism), it will necessarily become
Wait (Score:2)
I have to update my location on Four Square, my status on Facebook and Tweet about the nice cat I saw on the street. You were saying something about privacy and consent?
Asking a scorpion to not use it's sting (Score:2)
Furthermore: information is power; what was the last time anyone gave up power they've acquired? Never.
Finally, law or no law, do you really expect any corporation to go along with this? They'll all cheat one way or another, because it affects their profits. They'll find some loophole around it, or lobby the living fuck out of Congress when
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national security concerns
In the case of security clearances, its a matter of informed consent. Very informed. And interestingly enough, the ongoing surveillance of myself has, at times, been of benefit to me.
Governments are addicted to data (Score:2)
The USA over Vietnam.
The UK in Ireland. The UK into West and East Germany.
The NSA collecting it all.
Computer users have two options.
Stop using network computers. Thats difficult for most people.
Start flooding networks with random cultural junk when online. Bonus points for creating new intelligence thats collected on.
Remember what made the East German system so complex? A new file on so many people. Confidential informants reporting on undercover
"Basic funciton" vs "helpful function" (Score:2)
Stallman sounds like he would be happy in a "bare bones, no personalized customer service" world.
The opposite extreme is full-bore "we know you better than your mother/spouse does" concierge service, which requires knowing your needs, likes, and dislikes pretty intimately.
The real world, where the restaurant waiter that you like best knows when you come in, what table you like, and what food you like but on his day off the backup waiter probably does not unless you've enrolled in the restaurant's customer-r
Agree, mostly (Score:3)
The other part is that this information is the fuel driving most of the economy. Just over the past decade empires have fallen and replacements have risen as fortunes redistribute based on these records. Your not going to displace the current titans without fight.
The true retail battle is over how to acquire more - car companies are going to start collecting your driving / gps data for monetization, in home IoT devices are being pushed by every company imaginable, people flock to sites to get their DNA tested as they waive their rights to their own DNA forever... so go ahead and buy that Alexa, google home, Xfinity One, or any myriad of spyware toys companies are tying to insert into your personal lives.
action, not platitudes (Score:2)
That's a lot of platitudes and no concrete ideas about improving privacy in the real world.
Here are some hints, Richard:
(1) Government mandates on privacy don't work and are even harmful. EU privacy directives contain massive loopholes, in particular for gove
Key point missing.... (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a key point missing that isn't brought up much. The data is not there to help you and will be absent when it's your turn to actually need it. I can easily prove this....
State tracking car insurance. That data will get me pulled over if I let my insurance lapse, but if I get pulled over for other reasons and lack my insurance card, that data is unavailable to exonerate me. I'll still have to physically go to court/police station to show that card. They won't just "look at the data" showing I have insurance.
Same for medical records. It will be used to raise my insurance rates but I will have to actually pay to get my own records and even then it won't be the electronic copy that's legible, instead it will be the doctors scribbling that is incomprehensible. I even had a doctor tell me I wasn't paying him to read his handwriting to me when dealing with carpal tunnel years ago.
If I lose my cell phone, despite it containing enough tracking to immediately find it, the phone company will not give me that data. But if I rob/hurt/steal/kidnap/etc with that phone on me, that data will ID me and I will be in trouble. When I need it and can prove I am the account holder this data unavailable to help me recover my lost phone.
Stop thinking the data is okay because it helps us and makes our lives easier. That is not the case!
Great idea, but costly for capitalism. (Score:2)
This is a great idea for all humans, unfortunately our ass-backwards idiotic economic system would be greatly wounded by it, since targeted advertising is a decent chunk of the economy.
This isn't the first or last activity that is harmful but profitable, but the only other one so profitable is fossil fuels, and unlike most there is no vastly less harmful but comparably profitable alternative to take the place of the activity we're stopping (like renewable energy for fossil fuels, or "living" for cigarettes)
Can I own my own data? (Score:2)
I own my personal information, and for me, it is more valuable than shitty webmail, and social platforms. I will not trade it for (most) those things, and those that take it without my consent are stealing from me. All of the same reasoning that is used to claim the right to sell access to aggregated collected data should be valid for the opposite as well. If my data is a product, I should be able to choose not to sell. If you guess, and get it wrong, I should have recourse when you choose to sell access to
He is right. Will take a catastrophe though... (Score:2)
... for people to see that. Or rather another catastrophe. There are enough fascist catastrophes in human history and there are enough new ones currently happening or in preparation. Humans are stupid and cannot see a clear and present danger when it stares them into their faces. Even Germany, with first the 3rd Reich and then the DDR now thinks excessive surveillance of citizens is a good idea. Since we cannot identify the proto-fascists at birth (and then drown them to everybodies benefit), we need to fin
he's dreaming (Score:2)
St. Ignutius (Score:2)
Re:Useless battle (Score:5, Funny)
It left the station back when the data was still kept on index cards.
Poison the well, every chance you get.
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How many times/day do you think your license plate is scanned?
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Passing laws works fine. Imagine a Facebook employee knowing they can get half of the billion-dollar fine Facebook would be hit with for whatever they do in secret. How much stock will their employees need not to take the payday and retire.
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US law allocates a percentage of the fine to the whistleblower (in some circumstances.) Since that person is frequently giving up a career, it's necessary.
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At my age, "giving up a career" is considerably less of a threat. Alas, the company I work for isn't doing anything that that sort of whistles need to be blown about. Not that they've told me about, anyway.
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Sure, but Facebook famously only hires 20 year olds. And they do have a lot to lose. Or they could whistleblow thirty years after the fact.