How did we go from a country that made it a crime to share video rental records to one where everything you watch is constantly monitored and monetized?
Just wait until you see how white collar crime is punished compared to street crimes!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork
> During debate over his nomination, Bork's video rental history was leaked to the press. His video rental history was unremarkable, and included such harmless titles as A Day at the Races, Ruthless People, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Writer Michael Dolan, who obtained a copy of the hand-written list of rentals, wrote about it for the Washington City Paper.[36] Dolan justified accessing the list on the ground that Bork himself had stated that Americans had only such privacy rights as afforded them by direct legislation. The incident led to the enactment of the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act.[37][38]
If you want a TV privacy law, you'll have compromise a congressman.
Most of us have no reasonable ability to compromise a congressperson.
I suspect someone will hack together a WiFi-derived radar, combine it with a bunch of laser microphones, and point the result at the homes of politicians to get pose, heart rate, breathing rate, and room-by-room sound recordings.
https://web.archive.org/web/20071009150938/http://www.theame...
But note that Bork was not a mainline candidate -- he had some significant baggage and was well outside the legal mainstream in his opinions on privacy. It was that latter thing that sank Bork, who held that there is no guarantee of privacy.
https://schoolworkhelper.net/robert-borks-the-right-of-priva...
The baggage was related to Watergate. When it became apparent to Nixon that Watergate was going to sink him, Nixon tried to get the special prosecutor dismissed. Nobody would do it, except Bork:
> Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox; Richardson refused and resigned effective immediately. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox; Ruckelshaus refused, and also resigned. Nixon then ordered the third-most-senior official at the Justice Department, Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire Cox. Bork considered resigning, but instead carried out the dismissal as Nixon asked.
EDIT: I should add that accessing his video rental history was used as an example and a counter to Bork's own anti-privacy position, which is probably the real reason his nomination was rejected (although I can't say for sure since I'm no expert in this stuff and this all happened before I was even born)
You'll find the info at the following link under the "U.S. Supreme Court Nomination" section:
So thanks for the rabbit hole!
>During debate over his nomination, Bork's video rental history was leaked to the press. His video rental history was unremarkable, and included such harmless titles as A Day at the Races, Ruthless People, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Writer Michael Dolan, who obtained a copy of the hand-written list of rentals, wrote about it for the Washington City Paper.[36] Dolan justified accessing the list on the ground that Bork himself had stated that Americans had only such privacy rights as afforded them by direct legislation. The incident led to the enactment of the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act.[37][38]
>To pro-choice rights legal groups, Bork's originalist views and his belief that the Constitution did not contain a general "right to privacy" were viewed as a clear signal that, should he become a justice of the Supreme Court, he would vote to reverse the Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. Accordingly, a large number of groups mobilized to press for Bork's rejection, and the resulting 1987 Senate confirmation hearings became an intensely partisan battle.
> informal US
> Obstruct (someone, especially a candidate for public office) by systematically defaming or vilifying them.
> Origin
> 1980s from the name of Robert Bork (1927–2012), an American judge whose nomination to the Supreme Court (1987) was rejected following unfavourable publicity for his allegedly extreme views.
It would seem strange that a political etymology had a specific impact on the computing world. But the mistype of broken as "borken", and further mis-grammaring to borked would seem consistent with the humour of computing people IME.
The use in computer circles is also just one of "generally broken" (or utterly broken, perhaps) rather than "politically discreditted". I think they might be just coincidental homonyms.
Here's a [not particularly] interesting prior use: https://archive.org/details/Florida_Flambeau_1959/page/n221?... someone borked the pronounciation in Russian of beetroot soup ("borsht", Russian "s" is with a "c" shaped letter).
Now maybe actively attacking members of congress isn't the most forthright way of convincing them that a law against that specific attack is a good idea, but assuming you can do it legally (such that the only way any future such attacks could be prosecuted would be if a new law were created to make the attack illegal) it does seem like like a rather effective approach.
That's the clear and present danger here, not that businesses and their data scientists are having a field day with your personal life, but that they are sloppy and you, your data and your community are vulnerable to irreparable damage being inflicted by bad actors downstream.
Surely even they know their day will come.
It will, won't it?
Given everything amazon has on offer in the way of machine learning etc. is their algorithm for promoting items you might want to buy as simplistic as "I see you bought a pair of running shoes! Perhaps you might want another pair of running shoes?".
Come on amazon!
Though, that Patreon has any traction at all suggests that a shift is happening or at least becoming feasible.
It seems subscription is the only alternative to free and I don't want endless subscriptions to news (be it tech news or what's going on in the world). Because it all adds up. I want to be able to buy stories/news etc. ad hoc as I do/did a newspaper rather than being committed to a month subscription where I may not take advantage of it all the time.
Spotify is an example of a service I use frequently but probably don't use it every day and as such I sometimes unsubscribe from it. I'd love to be able to subscribe to it when I'm using it. Say 25p/30c a day (or less ideally).
Sure it may end up coming out costing me more than a monthly subscription but some months it wouldn't because I don't use it all the time.
I'm all for paying for content but all these subscriptions add up.
AWS has got it figured out, to a degree - more so than media companies. Charge for usage.
Also, people like “free” stuff.
I think this is the same for any category of information though. Informed people will heavily advise against things that the public just has no idea on. Health is a big one.
My question is what can we do aside from running around in panic? It feels hopeless.
Consumers don't care about these schemes because they largely don't know the details.
There should be clear, tobacco-esque disclosure requirements of this sort of thing on the product packaging.
If Samsung et al. want to data mine their customers in exchange for lower pricing, they're welcome to do so. What should not be legal is doing so and appearing the same as a company who does not do so.
Then the market can make up its own mind.
I couldn't point to one IoT / internet-enabled appliance that I would say is transparent about its adtech to non-technical users.
"THIS TELEVISION MONITORS ALL OF YOUR VIEWING HABITS AND THE DATA IS SOLD FOR PROFIT. ANY TIME IT IS USED, THE PROGRAM BEING WATCHED IS SENT TO THE MANUFACTURER. IF YOU DECLINE TO BE MONITORED, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO RETURN IT FOR 30 DAYS FROM DATE OF PURCHASE AT NO CHARGE TO YOU."
and some did not.
1. there is a lot of knowledge
2. the ramifications of not knowing things in that field are fairly high.
3. is a common source of experts advising the public do things differently. Eat less, exercise more, etc.
Which I think is somewhat the case here with Privacy and Information Tech. It's a problem that affects the public to some degree of severity, but "they" seem largely unaware of it.
Nothing is free. People don’t realize that google being free is because, let’s say, Samsung pays Google for ads. And Samsung passes it on to customers. Lo and behold, your phone purchase pays for Google. (This is simplistic but I’m using it as an example of hidden costs. Advertisers could potential still spend the money elsewhere or keep it as profits)
I pay for a ton of products and services that still siphon my private data and serve me ads. The problem is that companies will try to squeeze as much value as they can out of their customers, whether they pay or not.
> In a word: lobbying.
can i simplify this as "laws are made by lobbyists" ?
FTFY.
The goal was always to make corporations money. The task necessary to accomplish this goal just happened to flip.