Berners-Lee: WWW is spy net
theregister.co.uk
theregister.co.uk
We all have a choice not to use them and I think this is the point he's missing (or the article is omitting). The opening paragraph should be "Inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has warned that the internet has become the "world's largest surveillance network for those that use Twitter, Facebook and Google".
I have had lengthy conversations with my family and friends about Facebook and Google and what they do with your information and the majority shrug and say either "I'm not bothered" or "They would get bored looking at my stuff". I don't bring it up with anyone anymore.
I feel that something monumentally bad will happen in the future related to the information these companies have amassed, something epically bad and the public will (perhaps) say "Enough is enough" but it will be too late... just my $0.02
- You must not use android and have Google know your location for traffic purposes (and other ad-related data-mining)
- You must ensure all your friends never post pictures of you on FB, preventing them from building a profile about you by association
- You must block every single ad that originates from the Google ad network (and which is eager to learn your browsing habits)
- You must never fly on an airline belonging to Star Alliance, as Google bought ITA Software (formerly known as Sabre) to get a hold of all the airline reservations done for those airlines
- You must never send an email to someone with a Gmail address
This is a case where choosing to not use Google is a bit more complicated than choosing to not drink Coke.
For the record, this is false.
ITA Software was an independent company established in the late 90s, which built flight search technology that powered (and still powers) some of the leading flight search websites including Kayak.
It has always been completely independent of Sabre, which was formed in the 1960s and is one of the major travel reservation systems.
Google did aquire ITA, but that only got them flight search technology, not reservation data.
Sabre remains a standalone company.
I use Android without a Google account (although I'm unclear on whether or not there is also a device ID that Google sees from some interactions).
Do we know whether Google's own apps that don't use an account or notifications make use of this mechanism?
You can be sending to gmail without knowing. Many business use gmail enterprise. I've been told that their EULA states no mining on private data, but that's very hard to believe.
Moxie Marlinspike has a great talk on this subject (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aom3JonbcZU). The problem isn't the choice -- but the constantly widening scope of the choice, back when Facebook was a brand-new thing, the choice to not have a Facebook had no impact on my life whatsoever.
Today all of the photos albums my friends have taken are in one place: Facebook. All of activities people plan together are posted in one place: Facebook. When you meet someone new the nearly first thing they do is: check your Facebook. Facebook has broadened to assimilate the scope of activities and actions which were formerly independent aspects of life and to not have Facebook now - one pays a significantly higher social cost.
I manage to have the same social life I've ever had, without Facebook. I can't be an outlier. I mean, really, you have no way of seeing what your friends are doing without logging in Facebook? No one can call/text/email/stop over to tell you? That's hard to imagine.
Maybe there's a specific demographic that is affected in this manner?
I've had trouble with missing out on social events because of not being on Facebook -- mostly party invitations (like birthday or housewarming parties) and cases where people are going out with a small group to see a movie, concert, etc. They could e-mail or text me, but they generally don't. So I still get one-on-one invitations to dinner and so on, but I think a lot fewer large and small group invitations.
I think even one-on-one invitations may be affected somewhat because people may be reminded that they want to see people by interacting with them on social media. "Oh, there's an update from x; we should get dinner sometime, shouldn't we?"
A single friend can call/text/drop in to tell me about something, but what if that friend wanted to lets say inform a 100 of his contacts of this without having to send 100 texts/call/emails and keeping track of all of them for responses?
And social networks aren't just restricted to people but there are plenty of groups, organisations and clubs that want to reach out to not only all their members but potential audience too. Of course they can publish articles/ads in papers/magazines/TV, stick-up posters, send unsolicited email/calls etc., or they can have a Page/Group on Facebook.
I think that the key lies in forgetsusername's precise wording (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11888033): "I manage to have the same social life I've ever had"—not necessarily the same one you've ever had. I, too, have the same social life that I've ever had without using Facebook. My answer to how I keep up with the plans that my friend broadcasts to 100 people only through Facebook is that I don't, and never have, participated in events that require notifications of 100 people. If I want to hang out with my friend, I do so; if my friend wants to host an enormous party, then I will wish him or her good luck, and see him or her later when we can have some time to ourselves.
(This means that my social life is probably pretty dull by the standards of those who participate in those parties, which is fine by me!)
Future demographic(s) will be impacted, due to not-knowing and/or not caring about it
1. It's not pure capitalism when there are political mechanisms in place to subsidize entire sectors of the economy and protect, through the arbitrary application of laws and regulations, some companies but no / at the expense of others.
2. Capitalism, on its own, by which I'm assuming you mean the market mechanism for price discovery and resource allocation, does not solve problems like the tragedy of the commons, it does not concern itself with things like civil rights or labor rights, it does not opporate satisfactorily in many sectors and circumstances such as building out public transportation before it is needed or financials panics or war time.
3. Neither whether or not you personally have a problem with them and whether nor not they are filling a commercial need are social issues. One is a personal issue. The other is a commercial issue. Perhaps you should consider the issue for a societal perspective.
I understand the political aspect of companies like google and the security nut in me says that they are in collusion with various other parties (I include governments in that) to give them access to their data (I have no evidence of this, I just think it's the case!)
we, as in the more 'tech'-savvy ones, sure do. But if you don't even know about alternatives or don't realize what happens with your information, and I'm sure there's a ton of people like that, then you don't really have a choice.
That's even one step further then your family and frinds who say they can't be bothered: at least now they know something's rotten because you told them and maybe there's even a couple of them who'll take some action.
I have no idea how this can best improved in practice though. A start could be that schools teach this: incorporating information about privacy, other search engines and whatnot in lessons given to the youngest ones already seems like a good first step.
If nothing else comes of his courageous actions, Edward Snowden saved me from a few years of 'that look' when I try to inform people why all those 1/2 trillion dollar tech behemoths are giving so many services away for "free".
It can be tedious at times, like hitting a link on HN to a site that requires JS... do I let them in or not? But it can be done.
I don't know what size my footprint is online but I reckon it's tiny compared to, say, my mums.
The thing that worries me is when someone puts everything together, i.e. Facebook data, Google data, Twitter data, government sites data etc... that's worrying.
Facebook is a bit harder to avoid I admit... not sure what you do about that although I have had a few people lately ask me if it is ok to put a picture of my son on Facebook... never had that before.
Inconvenient and incredibly tin-foil-hatty but possible.
Imagine if we only had a state-owned ISP and VPNs were banned... that's what we need to watch out for.
Facebook, Google, Twitter and <insert other big co.> will not be around forever: Even tech giants fall - Look at Nokia!
Strictly speaking they are not, but they are forcing your hand when it's not practical to do different. Concretely Google have elevated that to an art.
"Facebook, Google, Twitter and <insert other big co.> will not be around forever: Even tech giants fall - Look at Nokia!"
All true. Sadly, you can be sure that their databases are going to be around forever..
I assume that's what the Facebook buttons on websites all over the place are for but I use NoScript and UBlock Origin so I don't exist as far as they are concerned.
In the past, we could have been indifferent to this massive trove of information collection because we relied on security of our personal lives through obscurity, or "needle in a haystack" philosophy.
But with the advent of bots, we have opened the door for artificial intelligence by providing it a playground of information that it can run and develop algorithms on. This massive trove is not so massive anymore. And we should come to accept the doors of privacy have been virtually blown fully open now.
The big question that remains is "What's next?" Self-imposed ethics? Thought police? Enslavement to an all-knowing being? Big brother?
What's an example of something monumentally/epically bad happening involving this information?
I am not sure but we have seen breach after breach and no one is really batting an eyelid about it so it would have to be a massive breach leading to a massive problem.
Original discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11859395
> "The web is already decentralized... We don't have a technology problem; we have a social problem."
I am not sure I follow. Surely censorship and mass surveillance are facilitated by the hierarchical topology of the internet and the reliance on central authorities like IANA for key resources. This does not look like a social problem to me. Maybe a political problem, yes.
(Not to mention that for the average person, setting up a website and publishing something there is not an easy technical problem in 2016; most wouldn't know where to start. Personally, I'm not a web programmer but I am a working programmer and I can write a simple web app using a CGI Python script or Django or Rails, and for me setting up a website is fairly annoying in 2016. And anything involving non-static HTML is a PITA, and writing static HTML is no fun, either. The web is not the most pleasant thing, technologically, and this is one reason that a company amortizing the cost of dealing with the web over many users has an easier time than an individual trying to do something over the "bare" web without intermediaries.)
So I wasn't for an obsession with any one level of user but for catering to all levels of users, which seems to be technically possible now, so why isn't it happening? Instead we get closed-source systems with vendor lock on the one extreme or free systems which grandmas (which stands for any non-tech user) can't use as easily as their closed source counterparts. Why can't we have freedom (as in open development/transparency, not price) & ease-of-use together?
People will use things which most of the time do not punish mistakes too harshly and don't present problems requiring actual thinking to solve. I think people are right in refusing to use the other kind of thing because the alternative burns too much of one's time and is too risky. Big web companies manage to build such artifacts over the infrastructure that is the Internet and the WWW; I'm not aware of alternatives.
Are they? Censorship maybe sometimes (e.g. when the FBI takes over domains), but in general I'd say censorship and mass surveillance don't have much to do with that level of internet centralization. Right now the fact that people use centralized services, which are easier to monitor, and can be forced to help censor (or willingly self-censor), is the bigger issue.
"In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution."
For a much bigger look at similar effects, see Critical Mass by Philip Ball https://www.amazon.co.uk/Critical-Mass-Thing-Leads-Another/d...
I wouldn't confuse the effects of the profit motive with some nature people have for centralization.
My friends, myself and even my mother were content with the disparate isles of the net 20+ years ago.
Network effect.
Considering that we depend a lot on CAs and the DNS root the web is distributed, not decentralized.
I personally usually just recommend installing the EFF's Privacy Badger [0], which eats Cookies and blocks tracking scripts all in one, while almost never breaking webpages, so while it's not perfect protection, it's a good compromise for most people.
Facebook CIA project: The Onion News Network https://youtu.be/cqggW08BWO0
http://us.cnn.com/2013/03/16/opinion/schneier-internet-surve...