‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ Review
wsj.com
wsj.com
Even if you ditch your phone and computers, there are still way to track you.
Just look at some of the crazy stuff happening in retail where facial recognition is used in some stores and malls to track where you go and what you look at in order to manipulate you in to buying more. It may be niche right now, but as the tech develops and gets cheaper it's use will become more widespread.
Please. I don't care if it's left, right, or center. Next election, support someone who won't turn America into a technologically-enabled police state.
Naval Ravikant had a good tweet about this:
The distant future is small free cities with drone armies and skill-based immigration policies, surrounded by a sea of failed socialist states.[1]
Guess which kinds of states have massive surveillance powers? Socialist ones. By definition you need to surveil your entire population in order to keep track of who gets what payment/government dole. How else would you keep track of it?
[1]https://twitter.com/naval/status/1084724006626840576?s=21
The United States?
Last that I checked, it wasn't the socialist states trying to surveil everyone in the known world, with their own citizens chirping, "You have nothing to fear, if you have nothing to hide."
And governments have the power to order companies to share their data, e.g. CLOUD Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act), so all personal data collectied by corporations automatically becomes data owned by the governments.
Not exactly, the CLOUD Act is an amendment to the Stored Communications Act which removes the stipulation that the data requested in a subpoena or warranted search under the SCA be located in the U.S.
The SCA does not authorize mass collection, unless companies are too lazy to limit disclosures to communications content related to the specific person under investigation.
If the data exists then companies and governments alike will exploit it regardless of who collected it. Your internet usage, your phone records, even your DNA profile if you used a DNA profiling service can all be accessed at will without your knowledge or consent:
https://www.purevpn.com/blog/data-retention-laws-by-countrie...
In an age when your own data can be weaponized against your best interests I think the only sensible strategy is to minimize your data footprint as much as possible. Do not join "loyalty" programs, do not sign up to surveillance platforms like Facebook, do not submit your DNA to DNA databases, pay in cash whenever possible, etc.
You will inevitably be undermined by other people forking over your data to surveillance platforms but you can only do the best you can and hope to persuade as many people as possible to do similarly.
I'm doing most of that already but even if you do all of these things, there's still the "friends" problem. The friends who use one of those apps that upload all of their contacts to the central server. The friends who use facebook. The family members who submit DNA to DNA databases. Very likely your friends are similar to you, so they serve as good predictors for your own data. As is for your family members, they usually have very similar DNA to yours :).
E.g. if your friends all live in one certain city, then you likely are to live there as well. If you have a suspiciously high amount of medical doctors in your friend circle, you are most likely one yourself. If 50% of your contacts are LGBT community members, you are likely to be one, too.
The data hoarders of this world don't need you to submit your data yourself in order to have your data.
It's the vaccination problem (not that one) — if enough people get vaccinated you can prevent a flu outbreak; if they don't, vaccinating yourself will only have limited effectiveness.
One explanation I've heard, is that so many people are purchasing with credit/debit cards, that most purchasers are readily identified and purchase history tracking continues unaffected.
And if you purchase with a credit card, one way those businesses bolster their bottom lines is by selling your transaction history -- down to individual items purchased.
It's enough to make one want to go back to cash...
This isn't as easy in some places. For example, in Sweden, we have our own mobile pay system called Swish[1]. Since most people enjoy the convenience of mobile pay and businesses are adverse to getting robbed, just because they have cash, there are many shops that are now 'kontantfritt' (cash free).
Using this example, paying in cash whenever possible may not be as practical in some locales as it is in others; so, instead, it should be that the underlying problem is adressed, rather than always looking for alternatives. Eventually, you're going to run out of alternatives - unless you start making your own but, then, your problem is getting others to adopt it.
Now if the state of Sweden abolishes cash - there is this talk of moving to the 'e-Krona' (the Swedish currency is called krona (crown)) - this will become more problematic. One way out is to pay with Euros, Danish or Norwegian crowns or any other well-known and respected currency. Just going with the game is not an option I'm going to consider.
We don't want private companies watching everything we do. They photograph license plates, and can use it to track who we are and where we go.
How long until recaptcha involves transcribing a license plate number?
Governments can act like just another customer.
I was once asked by my bank why I wasn't taking advantage of of the convenience my contactless debit card offered. I said because I didn't want them knowing what I spent my money on.
This led on to me being advised that I would struggle to get loan or mortgage facilities because the bank would be unable to see if I was spending my money responsibly.
I can live with that.
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/the-digital-... (2016) & https://vimeo.com/110222526 (2014)
> While advertisers have been the dominant buyers in the early history of this new kind of marketplace, there is no substantive reason why such markets should be limited to this group. The already visible trend is that any actor with an interest in monetizing probabilistic information about our behavior and/or influencing future behavior can pay to play in a marketplace where the behavioral fortunes of individuals, groups, bodies, and things are told and sold. This is how in our own lifetimes we observe capitalism shifting under our gaze: once profits from products and services, then profits from speculation, and now profits from surveillance.
> The bare facts of surveillance capitalism necessarily arouse my indignation because they demean human dignity. The future of this narrative will depend upon the indignant scholars and journalists drawn to this frontier project, indignant elected officials and policy makers who understand that their authority originates in the foundational values of democratic communities, and indignant citizens who act in the knowledge that effectiveness without autonomy is not effective, dependency-induced compliance is no social contract, and freedom from uncertainty is no freedom.
This is insightful (to me at least) — the next step after surveillance capitalism is coercion capitalism.
I think the “nothing to hide / nothing to fear” people won't like being coerced. (Also, by their logic, GAFAM should be unafraid of publishing their algorithms — right?)
Perhap this book will reveal to me some dangers that I am not currently aware of. I'll try to keep an eye out for it and read it if it can.
But Facebook suggested I tagged some faces on some photos my family shared. They were all of me. Not my brothers or other people also in the photos. But me.
Of course there is a lot of context shared by family and friends, but how Facebook could get the right faces baffles me.
How does it affect my daily life? I don't know yet.
Let's be more day-to-day: all your data is sold to insurance companies. Where you go, how fast you go, what kind of food you eat, your gym attendance etc.
Not day to day situation
>Or some law is passed and suddenly some of your old activity is made illegal
Then the law need to be changed so that past activity that is now illegal shouldn't affect you.
>all your data is sold to insurance companies
Ok so what's the danger? If anything I could get maybe cheaper insurance.
Re: insurance: Is that happening right now? I am not aware of any reports that indicate that is currently occurring.
We are still in the early days of commercial data analysis. Online retailers and ad brokers (e.g. Google) have been the trailblazers. But it will spread. Imagine a combination of facial recognition and data analysis being used in the real world to serve you custom billboard ads or to allow sales people to remind you that you probably need to buy new shoes.
Lets move beyond sales in to really creepy territory. Want to intimidate someone? Get hold as much of their marketing data as you can, it'll probably be on sale from some data broker. If its not on sale, bribing someone will probably get you what you want. Now let your target know that you know where they shop, what they buy, what websites they visit and maybe they have a drink problem they want to keep hidden. If you think that what legitimate businesses can do with your data is bad, imagine what criminals could do.
The same goes for your hypotheticals about billboards and facial recognition. Very creepy and I certainly don't want to live in that world but at the end of the day, I'm not being harmed by it.
Invoking fear of criminals and underworld behavior is an unconvincing argument. If someone with those resources seeks to harm me, they're always going to be able to find a way to do it. We can stand about and talk about "what if's" all day, I'm interested in how my life is being affected today.
These companies that do this do not care about your interests, they care only about their bottom line.
In capitalism you have property rights. That being so, your private information can be protected and hence “capitalized” upon (pun intended) by the owner because in free market you would be able to sell it (should you want to do that) at a price that makes you willing to share your info.
So what we have is rather fascism, or extreme statism. And it’s more prevalent in countries where the government controls more GDP (so, socialist-like countries).
they're completely opposite on the spectrum. socialism is people's democratic ownership of property and government.
And frankly, if you ever try to impose that on me, I will treat it just as any other form of assault (as will many with me across North America).
A lot feel the same way about the system you impose on them.
No "employer" imposes any system on anyone, they can only negotiate.
People can feel whatever they'd like, that doesn't entitle them to property which is as much theirs as the neighbour's dog.
Mr Mussolini was a member of the Communist Party in Italy before creating its own version.
The main difference between socialism and fascism(also called national socialism) is that instead of accepting the International Socialist agreement(that was supported[paid by] and controlled by Russia by the way), they decided to be on their own, that is nation interest are a priority over international agreements.
The other important difference is that fascist were completely defeated, while communist won the WWII. That has made "fascist" an insult while "communist" is not.
You can make films about Hitler or Mussolini being terrible, but you can not about Mao big leap and cultural revolution for example. Most documentation on Russia's atrocities has been destroyed.
NSDAP went around privatizing industries and the government was deeply in-bed with private entities