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Comment by nickpinkston | Hacker News Reader

I love the coining of this word - let's claim the language high ground on this. Do mainstream people even know/care about this yet?

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I don't think most people know about this sort of thing. Most non-techies I've talked to are actually quite surprised about the printer thing: the idea that a printer would secretly print a pattern of light yellow dots on your paper that wasn't in your source file is very surprising to everyone I've mentioned it to. It's the sort of thing that's weird enough that some people think I must be telling them a conspiracy theory.

Yea, it's true. Companies aren't really acting in our best interests - probably the legals driving this one. It should also be mentioned that your car probably has a black box that records what you're doing - already used in many court cases.

I've heard of trucks being equipped with black boxes to ensure that employees aren't slacking off on the job, but that's the 1st I've heard about cars. Wouldn't surprise me though.

As far as I know the black box in your car just holds onto the data immediately before a crash. That said, the police can pretty much timestamp your every movement using EZ Pass.

Well I can confirm that all vehicles manufactured in Europe after 2002 do have something comparable to a "black box", recording all sorts of engine parameters which can subsequently be downloaded for analysis.

I'm talking in addition to the OBD systems. This one can also record telemetry (steering angle, wheel slip, etc.).

I used to worry that all this data could be used to track us, but then I realized how inefficient the government is.

Yeah, now your privacy will only get invaded if the government actively decides to cast their eye your way. The downside is that being chosen for a look is enough to convince your fellow citizens that invading your privacy is a special case that doesn't erode their rights, plus if the government is interested in tracking you, it might be dangerous not to let them.

And of course the "inefficiency" of government only helps until they reach a certain level of technological sophistication, which doesn't leave us much time even if you assume they're ten years behind the private sector.

Most people don't care about things like this at all. Look at how many of them happily use Facebook. If Apple put in a warning screen that said, "Angry Birds is requesting the following information: your location, your contact list, and your phone number. Is that ok?", then I would bet at least 90% of the users would just click "sure, no problem".

We are losing this battle because very few people care about privacy any more.

> very few people care about privacy any more.

... and that makes selling the whole "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide" thing a lot easier.

We are losing this battle because very few people care about privacy any more.

Rephrase: "We have lost this battle because privacy disappeared a long time ago." This isn't a new concern: I remember Usenet discussions over ten years ago about the loss of privacy due to the amount of personal data stored in large corporate databases and how easy it was for that data to be stored and transferred. It's increased exponentially since then. Look, 2 months ago I wanted to send a friend a snail-mail letter but I couldn't remember her whole address. A quick hop to Google Street View and I just "drove" down her street from my computer 120 miles away until I recognized her house and got the address off the sign.

Seriously guys, find another battle to fight: this one was lost a long time ago. Database Nation http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565926530/ was written a decade ago!

Oh, and Merry Christmas :-)

I've done the exact same thing to get someone's address I had forgotten.

What's wrong with driving down a street via Google Street View? Your house is already publicly visible as strangers physically drive past them everyday. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with Google reducing the cost of doing that, and if that's what you hope to hide behind, isn't that the kind of security-via-obscurity we all decry here?

Trying to stop people from seeing your front lawn via the Internet is comparable to DRM, both in principle and effectiveness. Merry Christmas.

Just to be clear, iPhone apps have to ask before they are allowed to use location information.

Even though most consumers don't care about things like this there are those of us who do care, and we can eventually make a difference. This is one of the reasons why I support the EFF.

Mainstream people will only be getting this

>>is meant to help locate and disable the phone if it is lost of stolen.

And are never shown this

>>your iphone may record your voice, take a picture of your location,record your heartbeat and send that information to the mothership

Then you'll love Cory Doctorow's term for those that work on such hardward and software: Vichy-Nerds.

Seriously, hackers, maybe some on this site, write this software and design this hardware, to do these things. Maybe a better question is why do we as a profession do so?

It's a little overgeneral. There are ways your software can betray you besides spying on you.

Or maybe the term is meant to include that stuff too, despite the explicit definition.

Question is "what is Traitorware? (eff.org)"

Answer is "something written by turncoat mercenary Geeks".

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