Comment by bhauer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bhauer | Hacker News Reader

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Imagine a world with less centralizing force, where owners of devices are encouraged to decentralize data storage. In such a world, autonomous vehicles would ask you to specify where to store the data they collect. The owner could select to choose on-vehicle storage, vendor-provided central storage, or a data server they personally own and operate. And in all cases, given an option to encrypt using a key selected by the user/owner.

I would prefer such a world. It provides a different legal context where law enforcement would need to compel each individual owner to turn over data. Such compulsion could certainly still be realized, but it's a more significant hurdle than forcing the manufacturer rather than the user, and it's more likely to see challenges.

I'd love that, but there are three problems with it, even if you put aside the commercial benefits:

1. Means people have to build and test two systems

2. It's confusing to the normal user

3. It's better for the product if it's shared as they can iterate and improve based on the data.

This actually applies to loads of products, like voice recognition (Google has recorded and stored everything you've ever said to 'ok Google's on their servers).

So I don't think we'll see a solution until we see a massive shift in privacy becoming a key election issue. Which it probably won't for decades or until a ruthless dictator takes over a developed country (sort of happening in Turkey).

In my ideal world, data should go to the vendor by default. As you said, it helps the product improve by feeding it more data, and it's simpler for most users.

With that being said, privacy concious people should have the ability to opt out, and either not have their data stored permanently at all, or allow them to store it on a personal server. If you chose to do that, it's on you to make sure your server is setup in a way to ingest the data, so no additional work for the vendor.

I suspect in reality most vendors would not provide that option, because data is so valuable, which is why it's important to have laws that allow us to protect it.

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