Snowden Warns World Against Trusting Privacy to Tech Giants | Hacker News Reader

Snowden Warns World Against Trusting Privacy to Tech Giants

sputniknews.com

47 pointssalmonet9 comments

Relevant hn posting and discussion from 2 days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11322978

Are there any efforts to create some kind of open equivalent of the iPhone Secure Element? It seems difficult to not trust your privacy to tech giants when only tech giants are providing the technology you need.

If you want privacy you shouldn't be broadcasting electrical signals from your living room.

I very much question that you "need" to be broadcasting electrical signals from your living room. You probably "need" to be broadcasting electrical signals from your office in order to get a paycheck.

You're still free to send pictures and letters to people using public infrastructure like the post office. You're free to keep those pictures and letters privately in your house.

I don't know why you feel so entitled to your privacy when you're willingly giving information to a 3rd party private company.

If you want this to change, you should be in support of public communication infrastructure based on individual rights. You should be in support of government regulation that makes private 3rd party companies like Apple or Facebook legally liable for the information that they hold on behalf of their customers. You should get more involved with the political and legislative process.

Or get involved with free and open source software and hardware. There are plenty of projects that you could be contributing to!

But honestly? If your really worried about privacy, the easiest thing to do is to not use the Internet.

"You can't always get what you want".

Seriously? You can't imagine why people might want to take advantage of modern technology while simultaneously wanting privacy protections?

Your argument reminds me of this Onion video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY

I can definitely imagine that people might want to take advantage of modern technology while simultaneously wanting privacy protections.

I just can't imagine why they think that relying on a private company is the proper course of action.

I can also definitely imagine why thinking that public infrastructure or using free or open source software and hardware will lead to actions that will actually make a difference towards securing privacy protections.

Why do you make this "private" distinction? If you give your info to ANY third party, public or private, the surveillance machine will have its hands on it.

Specifically, you mention the post office. You do realize that your postal letters and packages are opened, scanned, and otherwise viewed in transit, don't you?

I think you have way more faith in the public infrastructure, when it pertains to privacy, than it would merit.

Can we please curb the use of such loaded terms like "the surveillance machine"?

Briefly, the counter to your "they know everything and will do bad things to us" is "transparency in public infrastructure gives us contemporary civilization".

Here's what I know about the legal infrastructure in the United States. Anything that leaves your house is considered "published". You are entitled to privacy within the confines of the physical property that you own. Hence, people can't put a GPS tracker on your vehicle without a warrant but they can dig through your trash without permission.

As the Fourth Amendment clearly states, the government is entitled to search and seizure with a warrant. They don't need a warrant to look up phone records because you literally broadcast that information. If you use a phone, you're clearly transmitting information "to somewhere else".

The same goes for the postal service, however, you have additional rights that services like Facebook do not offer. The Post Office can't take your photos or letters and use them to sell advertisements. To use any social media or 3rd party website you have to give up your rights to sue for copyright infringement, amongst many other things. How else could they sell your "private" information to marketers?

I think it is really unhelpful to expect private companies to protect our individual rights. That's the goal of government. Arguing that government is ineffective is unhelpful. Figuring out how to make government effective is helpful.

There are undoubtedly issues with the current legal infrastructure related to digital telecommunications but the proper course of action is going to be in following the existing procedures to make the necessary changes, be it via legislation or amendments to the constitution.

>But honestly? If your really worried about privacy, the easiest thing to do is to not use the Internet.

Real talk. Maybe not "not use the Internet" but people would do well to be more judicious about their internet use.

People have never liked the idea of being liable for their own actions.

What is strange is that people on this forum now thank that rich and powerful corporations shouldn't be liable for their actions either.

It's pretty clear that Apple should be liable to their customer's privacy. What seems to be forgotten is that Apple is also liable to the government's right to search and seizure.

We made the government agree to the 4th amendment to define not only our own individual rights but how they are balanced against the public good.

The judicial system has interpreted the constitution to state that these 4th amendment rights only cover what is contained within a person's private properties.

This is very important: There is no legal concept of an "authored work" that is non-public in nature. As soon as information that is attributed to you leaves your private property is is considered published.

We've structured our entire economy, legal, and political order on this concept. We have public marketplaces. We have public credit and criminal reports. We have public notices of lien. We have public courts that enforce private wrongs of all sorts. We have public records for land titles. We have public roads and public parks and anything that happens out there is considered freely published to the world. We have a public copyright regime that gives us financial entitlements to those published works.

There is no legal notion of "authored work that is private and non-public in nature" that leaves your physical property. Imagine what would happen to the above public infrastructure if this was the case. You can't because that's almost as fantastical as saying "imagine that we didn't have money and just bartered with bags of salt".

Clearly we have a need for some limited concepts of "authored work that is private and non-public in nature", or as I've been calling them, "privished works". Clearly this privished work is going to need to adhere to the existing notions of the constitution and we will need statutes that clearly outline the liabilities to both private citizens as well as public governments.

As I see it, Apple would need to be liable to both the government as well as to individuals. They would not be allowed to sell privished works to 3rd party marketers. They would not be allowed to let anyone other than the author decide who is authorized to read privished works. They would have to make sure the government could read privished works with a search warrant.

The deeper issue on this forum is that current software developers do not want to be liable for anyone else's privacy either. They just want to keep being able to make their apps without really being held responsible for their actions.

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