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Comment by alexvaut | Hacker News Reader

It makes me think that there are, at least, 2 ways to move forward:

- What can we do about this situation we are in ? Is it a problem that Technology can solve (I'm thinking about startup in the privacy field) or it's more political and in this case it will take years to fix.

- What can we do about the other fields where we still have some power ? Like Smart Assistant, self driving cars with AI. Someday we are going to wake up again and realize that again someone used one our of weakness and abused it. It will again return against ourselves by restraining our freedom and/or make us more dumb.

I'm sure history has many examples about that global behavior: "change for the worst, acknowledge it, repeat". What is the way to avoid taking that direction again ? I'm not sure education is the answer nor politic or technology... I'm out of answers...

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These Bruce Schneier Talks at Google try to explain this:

Liars and Outliers: https://youtu.be/m3NJ-Ow2Lvg

Click Here to Kill: https://youtu.be/GkJCI3_jbtg

Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World: https://youtu.be/GhWJTWUvc7E

Highly recommended it since you seem interested.

Thanks for the links, so from Bruce Schneier, the problem needs to be taken care of by citizens (politic) like it was done for many industries (car, food, pharma...). Except that this is going to be much more complex in the information era where everything is a computer. Hence there is a need to have tech people in the public sector to help decisions to be wisely made. Enforcing the rules is the only way to make the industry to change, in this case, in terms of security and privacy.

However I tend to think I have more power as a consumer than as a citizen. I spent dollars everyday while I vote every 2 years. It seems that since there is no other way, the last resort is to go through the political way. I'm happy we have governments but still, I'm convinced there is a way to convince consumer. Do you ?

I personally agree with Schneier. I don't see how BigTech can be made to respect privacy given the current status quo and the data wars. I think regulation and government intervention is very much necessary at this point.

In some instances, BigTech, BigTelco, and govts have incentives aligned (surveillance and censorship), so its paramount for folks part of the tech industry to help steer the conversation and laws.

The problem is inherently one of norms, values, law, and regulation, not infotech itself.

Make data a liability.

> Is it a problem that Technology can solve (I'm thinking about startup in the privacy field)

Probably yes, at least in part. See https://puri.sm.

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