Comment by anexprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anexprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

"It’s puzzling we are not already more angry about this transformation"

I don't think it is. We are the 1% who understand tech enough to make a rational choice of which services to use or avoid, use a VPN, ublock etc to lessen our exposure to personally acceptable levels. We're aware that some tracking goes on fingerprinting. The article seems to be written by the 1% for the 1%. The people who read these sorts of articles and have read enough to know the basics of tracking, retargeting, bubbling, IoT, surveillance, Snowden etc.

For the rest, and I include nearly all "tech natives" like our kid's generation, and plenty who should know better, if an app get's mentioned it's installed and the permissions OK'd, then they run it, now they wonder what it is and if it's any good. If you try and increase awareness they're about as interested as they were in maths lessons (or whatever your most hated thing was). When Snowden was fresh and being discussed it was "but terrorists", "but safety" and "I don't care if NSA read my pizza orders and stupid texts". Completely missing the point then.

Their idea of a complex password is usually laughable going on friends and family tech support. No amount of hinting gets it acceptable, or willing to use a manager.

IoT is cute light bulbs, smart baby monitors and neat gadgets. No realisation that the security of most is shit, that a surprising amount of cams are online, or what it means to put something on the network.

The transformation isn't realised. The implications aren't either. Most people's only awareness of bubble effects is wondering why they've seen no FB posts from their sister in ages (Edgerank decided they weren't worthy). There's no awareness of it in search, or news, or youtube and assume, no matter how skewed their results are, that what they see is the "truth". If there's a bubble effect for extremist and conspiracy theorists too, we should maybe be concerned.

I gave up even trying to educate on this stuff.

"What’s needed is more collective reflection on the costs of capitalism’s new data relations for our very possibilities of ethical life."

Apart from asking isn't it too late already? How can we have a collective reflection when effectively no one is aware of the issues or problems?

This is why I believe we are the root cause. We, developers and tech aware. Your mentioned 1%.

This isn't about agencies or governments or even corporations anymore. It's about our work ethics. Developer ethics.

We babble around the internet about all the things we defend, but we don't even try not to embed Analytics in our clients websites.

We fear for the future, for the abuse of the technological systems, yet those under the dark robe of the NSA and others are readers of this same vehicle. They are here.

People call RMS radical and so many other things, but isn't history proving him right in many of his deviations? Heading for total disaster, yes we are.

We, the ones who built and delivered computers and the internet to the world, are doing a job for corporations and not for users. If you're paid, you put your tail between your legs and comply.

This is about changing our developer attitude, our developer community. Maybe only we understand the battlefield, but still the fight is our hands now. We must protect those we love and those we have never met. We must stand up and fight the fight for them, just the way we expect a doctor to have built the knowledge and to act ethically when taking care of us, just like we expect a civil engineer to build stuff with quality and respect for our well being, we must also act honorably like that, even if it means we loose money.

The developer community, hidden behind screens, have been bought by the big man money, and act to the people as blind policemen throwing bombs at the demanding population.

I think you're right, on all points, but that leaves us deeply screwed.

I can try to dissuade my boss from putting in the 33rd analytics gizmo on our site, but they are remembering the sales pitch and all that lovely data. If I say no they'll ask someone else in the office, few more times I'll be needing a new job.

It's interesting you mention doctors and engineers, two professions that have more accountability and two well subscribed professional bodies. If doctors were being asked to surveil patients or report something, as governments will occasionally suggest, the BMA will shout rather loudly. The press listen, write up a piece with suitably scary headline, and the govt changes mind (usually).

The IET (UK Engineering body) has double the global membership of the BCS (computing) which is in far more countries. I'm going to hazard a guess there's more in tech than engineering.

I'm not aware of any tech or professional bodies that attract anything but a tiny minority. We can't blacken the web like the Googles and Facebooks can in the face of stupidity like SOPA. Without some group body we're left with signing change.org and blogging. If we don't take a job there's millions who will - FB and Google are in the top 5 best places to work, yet are part of the problem.

> I can try to dissuade my boss from putting in the 33rd analytics gizmo on our site, but they are remembering the sales pitch and all that lovely data. If I say no they'll ask someone else in the office, few more times I'll be needing a new job.

If someone does something morally wrong, it is not made morally acceptable by the possibility that someone else might have done it. Justifications that use the kind of reasoning “If I had not done it, someone else would have done it.” come most often from people who might lose something (or not gain something) from doing the morally acceptable thing. I suspect it is just selfishness that makes people cling to such justifications, no matter how weak those are.

Mass data is an all consuming fire. People want the fire. The fire is warm. It enables higher quality, more advanced tech. Every existing developer in the world could stop writing a single line of analytics or big data code, but the fire would still rage on. New developers would rise up. The allure is too great.

We can only hope to find a way of managing and containing the fire before it causes too much damage. Some days I'm more optimistic, other days I fear for the next 100 years. We are now a post-big-data society -- it's one of those paradigm shift technologies that can't be undone.

As with virtually all things, people need to be burned before they learn a lesson, and I mean... most people need to be burned. I think that things like the Yahoo hack that theoretically effect half a billion people, but which most people will not even notice just reinforces apathy.

Then there's the nightmare that people go from, "Well this isn't my problem..." to "...Well in any case, I'm powerless to change it." in half a second. Educating people doesn't help if they're unwilling to actually take steps to protect themselves.

As for legislation, people don't try to force their government to pass a budget, or hold them accountable for something like the Iraq war... it's madness to think they'd spend a scrap of effort for something as nebulous as privacy.

Which is why we're all deeply screwed.

That may change when "privacy" has real-world side effects, e.g. insurance incentives for behavior change, with rates based on behavioral data.

Fiction (not great, but points for effort), https://abovetheveil.com/2015/04/19/the-ever-watchful-insure...:

"Matt carves a small chunk out of his custard-covered apple crumble pie and places it into his mouth. He chews it softly, savouring the taste and finally swallowing the remnants. A split second passes then his right hand vibrates. He is reaching his daily allowance in carbohydrates it seems. Briefly he contemplates to risk the awkwardness or play it cool and take the hit on this month’s insurance."

Non-fiction from China, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34592186:

"... it is clear that each citizen and Chinese organisation will be rated. A long list of people in certain professions will face particular scrutiny, including teachers, accountants, journalists and medical doctors. The special list even includes veterinarians and tour guides. A national database will merge a wide variety of information on every citizen, assessing whether taxes and traffic tickets have been paid, whether academic degrees have been rightly earned and even, it seems, whether females have been instructed to take birth control."

It may, but only if it's obvious enough that people connect that "burn" with their own behavior.

The piece they link to on insurance gives a fairly good overview of the pros and cons. If you're 17 with fresh driving licence it's hard to argue with upto 40% off your £1,000+ insurance premium. That many won't be identified as good drivers doesn't matter - they'll all assume they're great, and it must be a mistake when the renewal comes through!

This was telling...

"The popularity of these new-style policies is largely being driven by the youth market: 71% were taken out by motorists under the age of 25, compared with only 3% for over-50s, says Gocompare"

So softening up the new generation to be accepting of telemetry and tracking in many ways. By the time they're making real decisions it's "just normal".

It's going to be an interesting (in the apocryphal Chinese curse sense) future.

"[..]We are the 1% who understand tech .. use a VPN, ublock etc .. Snowden .. idea of a complex password .. or willing to use a manager .. I gave up even trying to educate on this stuff [..]"

How can someone educate others about subjects one is completely and utterly wrong, misinformed about, living-in-a-cave-filled-with-propaganda posters himself.

"[..] The transformation isn't realized. The implications aren't either .. How can we have a collective reflection when effectively no one is aware of the issues or problems [..]"

You are correct on this one, just add some self-reflection in there(to begin to start deciphering the world around you, pick for example the so-called Snow-den, continue towards the wikileaks honeypot network - we can then compare rough numbers of victims this particular organization has on their bill and continue from there)

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