Having worked in the creepy business of "location analytics", I'll say that American's should be more worried about corporations tracking them, than governments.
Government surveillance has vastly less capacity without commercial services, particularly those tracking:
- Strong signalling via payments: commerce, credit and debit payments, ecommerce, Amazon, Visa and Mastercard
- Location: mobile devices, tollpaying systems, facial recognition / biosignatures, license plate scanners
- Interests: marketing databases, demographics, AI-based content analysis, magazine and newspaper subscrptions, television and video watch history, video rentals (among the very few privacy carve outs thanks to Soliciter Bob), and online reading / views / interactions data.
- Social relationships: USPS postal covers, telecoms call records (dating to the 1980s), location data (corrolated with other individuals), email, social media friends and interactions
Corporations rely on powers of governments including:
- Courts
- Law
- The buying, selling, renting, borrowing, installation, or removal of legislators, executives, judges, and regulators
- Regulatory capture
- Law enforcement
- Military
The line that a government can kill or jail you whilst a corporation cannot is a fable long belied by history. Corporations (or straight-up criminal gangs, where differentiable) can and do act directly, or bend the government where necessary. Adam Smith's notes on commercially operated garrisons, the history of the labour and environmental movements, oil and railroad companies, chemical industrry, and more, provide numerous examples.
Surveillance, censorship, propaganda, and manipulation are tools, features, and benefits accruing to the controlling actor of any informaation monopoly, regardless of how that actor is organised or aligned. Not all abuse the power, but as Lord Acton notes, the temptation is strong.
This won't change. That ship has sailed and isn't docking ever again.
The wealth and power attainable through child labour or slavery or unethical medical experimentation is also quite vast.
Your argument is, essentially, the state is powerless to restrict markets. That we exist in a laissez faire world, where anything economically possible will be done. I’ll give it this: I haven’t seen this pitch before. Would love to see you and a free market advocate debate.
Data collection, on the other hand, can only take place in countries with a high level of Internet penetration and a developed digital infrastructure.
> advanced economies are advanced enough that there is little useful work that could be performed by a child or a slave
I am uncertain about this idea that abhorrent labor practices vanish under the light of an industrialized workforce.
There are practical issues to which we could point; China is a rapidly industrializing country, yet remains notorious for continuing to employ slave & child labor. Advancements in the general productivity of China's workforce have not led to a proportional reduction in this kind of labor practice. China had yet another one of its main goods added to the DoL's list of slave/child labor goods just days ago. [0] (Yes, this list suspiciously fails to report on any of the US's goods but that's an issue for another controversial HN reply.)
Then there's the issue of advancing economies employing increasingly-"advanced" child labor protections, which corporations are routinely found to violate. [1] As countries improve their labor conditions and solidify regulatory environments within which corporations can work, firms are frequently found to do everything they can to skirt those laws.
More generally, I'd point to the fact that "advanced" economies outsource the production of goods to poorer nations that still allow, tolerate, or willfully employ (that last one being exceedingly rare today) child labor. This sort of outsourcing of ethical responsibility is a common trait that can be observed in just about all civilizations at every level of technological and industrial progress.
I think this is more an issue of widespread cultural values. Note that the DoL's list [2] has many examples of goods produced by China, but none produced by neighboring Tibet. Turkey is on the list for its production of several foods as well as garments, despite being a modern, industrialized nation. Italy and Greece are similarly industrialized, and in similar parts of the world, yet they are not on the list at all, despite their production of many goods that are typically produced by forced/child labor.
Some places make an effort to negate forced/child labor in their markets, others do not. The blanket notion, though, that advanced economies are rid of these problems due to the lack of incentives to engage in them in the first place, to me seems quite incorrect.
[0] https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environment-sustainabilit...
[1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/chipotle-to-pay-1-4m-fin...
[2] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-o...
This either/or attitude about free markets and regulation is upsetting. Someone makes a point about a specific technology and the effects of its high value to both public and private sector, and the common reaction is to generalize for the whole history of economic theory around markets. If people trust the state in its ability to regulate a given market, then great. I think it's overly optimistic in this case however.
Huh. And I actually use it as a heuristic in observing the world. That's exactly why I wasn't surprised by Snowden revelations.
And I would think this realization would be somewhat obvious by now. Anything that is within technological possibility and that can be profited off will eventually be attempted by someone. Child labor, slavery and unethical medical experimentation aren't exceptions - they still happen, usually where someone can make money from practicing it. We don't live in a laissez-faire world per se - regulations can make some things unprofitable and thus prevent them from happening. But regulations aren't immutable, and can be altered... with enough money.
I increasingly believe that trying to treat governance and market economy as completely different is a category error.
The purpose of a warrant is to override the usual protections of privacy and against government intrusion. If the information in question is not private in the first place, there is no intrusion.
To be clear, I strongly agree with the conclusion that the end result is distasteful and we should make some sort of change in our society to avoid it. But I don't think the right step is to say that certain information which is publicly available is somehow not available to the government - it doesn't seem like either a sound argument or an enforceable restriction in practice. I think, if the information is too private to reveal to the government, it is certainly too private to be in the hands of an unaccountable unelected unauditable corporation in the first place.
The data collection companies say that they only sell to vetted clients. I agree that trying to make selling to the government illegal would be a poor move, but they should consider voluntarily barring government organizations in an attempt to prevent this becoming a bigger issue and laws being made to stop it
Buying data is using tax payers' money, to buy private data of the tax payers.
It's entirely reasonable that tax payers are upset about this.
> I think, if the information is too private to reveal to the government, it is certainly too private to be in the hands of an unaccountable unelected unauditable corporation in the first place.
I disagree. The government can require the information to be revealed if there is due process; it's never totally "not available to the government".
Corporations don't work for the people; the government does. Corporations cannot impose a rule on people by violence. The government can. They are fundamentally different; I don't see why one having the data leads to the justification of the other having the same unfettered access.
People can be upset about what the government is doing, and impose restrictions to its access and power, even when what it did was technically legal. If the government is as frivolous as corporations can be and act, it's dangerous and worrying.
I think most people get the sense that things like this are happening to them all the time. That their personal space is being violated without their consent. Except on a technical level, it's harder to understand than magic. The only people offering answers unfortunately are the ones who try and galvanize that anger towards big company x or government y, who are also totally culpable too, but for failing to act and defend us from all these micro-tyrants.
I do object to "it's harder to understand than magic". I think that's a failure in communication, in pedagogy, and perhaps most broadly, the poor priorities of our major information systems, which include homes, schools, churches, the boy scouts, and all mass media. The profit motive should itself be deeply suspect with respect to any information service.
I don't believe it is difficult to understand the nature of your phone and how it works. You hint at it with your term - it's about size. Your phone is essentially a vast machine (truly vast, like a city block) that has been shrunk down. Your screen is a camera into that tiny city, so its like a microscope. As we move around, we can mark particularly interesting or useful views, so that we can come back to them (and even arrange them side-by-side). We find that we not only have the ability to see, but also to emit into the image, changing it, adding to it. (It might get tricky once you recognize that movement itself must constitute an emission if we are to be consistent, and this would be the invitation to look at the text of the code, which ideally be written with this intuition in mind.)
But yes, let us put an end to all the micro-tyrants and the petty injustices they subject us to!
With Government, there is some semblance of due process.
That aside, I can't tell if you're supporting or rebutting the OP's comment.
There are ways to migate the risk from corporations, and diservify that risk across several corporations
There is not anyway to mitigate the risk from government, and the idea of "due process" is really a myth created by TV Shows
With the number of criminal offenses if an agent of the government desires you to be in jail you go to jail. I guarantee you have done something, at some point that they can manipulate a jury into convicting you over
We are a criminalized society, especially the US, the "land of the free" where we put more people in jail than anywhere in the world (officially anyway)
Due process is not a "myth" from a tv show, it is a right from the constitution, if you are an American: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt5_4_2/
I do agree with your later two points though, that there is an misalignment of goals for criminal justice, but, it isn't that bad because it is an outlined process, and it does not happen overnight, behind closed doors or behind a company friendly terms of service. At least you know how the meat is made, somewhat and there is transparency.
There is none, per se outside financial obligation for corporations.
The constitution is more religion than it is law, as like the priests of other religions, the priests of the law (lawyers and judges) twist and pervert the plain text of the constitution to mean anything they desire even a clear and exact opposite position of the very text they hold to be scared
>>but, it isn't that bad because it is an outlined process, and it does not happen overnight, behind closed doors or behind a company friendly terms of service. At least you know how the meat is made, somewhat and there is transparency.
This is also false, there are all kinds of actual laws, or defacto laws, or regulations that are behind paywalls or simply ruled "national security laws", we have secret courts (FISA and others), there are all kinds of Sealed judgments that impact other things. Then there is the entire scheme of parallel construction the NSA/FBI invented to get around that pesky Constitution
This idea of "government transparency" is foolish
Also, US is one of the good governments. Pretty much every government with the legal, financial and technical means is using this data (and the metadata). What are they doing with it?
But it won't matter what most Americans think if there are just two choices and both are designed so that only a few can modify the OS.
There's also the pinephone of course, but "Most Americans" object to the pinephone so severely that they'll offer to buy you an iphone if you switch to one.
(Say someone or some corp sends you a two-factor SMS that includes some identifying data)
Purism doesn't have this solved either.
And from the PoV of governement surveillance, lol. Just forget using a PSTN.
And whether you've revealed your identity or not is in fact binary. This issue is not about security, but privacy.
No, it's not. It is equal to the price/time to find it out. Even though you are right that Purism does not protect from that fully, they do make it harder/more expensive.
Cellphones such as the PinePhone or the Librem aren't intended to hide that you are you; that will be discovered in hours anyway and it's not even worth attempting; they're rather intended as a way to avoid direct data access and surveillance by corporations and governments. That is, they will immediately know it's you and where you are with coarse accuracy, but what you are up to is another story: they need to access the data directly by sneaking malicious software into your phone, which its Open Source nature will made extremely difficult to achieve.
My expectation is that most Americans would have little interest in a detailed discussion of the Pinephone (so they would take a pass based on a brief description) and not care if you had one and thought it was great.
Only that they do have the majority market share at 60% https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/united...
Statcounter uses active devices, so it seems like a much better indicator of what people are actually using, assuming they are able to get a good sample set.
They do according to some sources [0]. By all accounts they have the majority when you breakdown phones by brand (as compared to platform). By every account they’re nearing 50% in the US.
Also, among the US youth market they have close to 90% [1] so fortunately the general share will keep rising. (I say fortunately because I look forward to the US being able to regulate their policies.)
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/10/06/us-teen-iphone-ow...
Largest market share would differ for brands and platforms though.
My broader point, that the exaggeration makes it difficult to understand what they are getting at, survives quibbling about what the words mean, and probably if some platform that isn't Apple has a 40% market share (Rather than just a brand). 40% is a big chunk when the starting line is that everyone will react severely.
I fear this, although regulation would be welcome. Already, the AppStore is a bigger revenue generator than PlayStore even though Apple holds about a 27% share worldwide. If a big market like US, went all in on iPhone. I fear that we will have an app problem in Android and other free Android forks, which eventually might kill competitiveness of any non iOS platform.
Unless it becomes easy for the average person to realize without jumping through hoops, I fear there is little hope for change.
Even a feature phone would have location tracking from your cell service provider which I'm sure they would monetize because they can. Are there more privacy based cell providers that people could switch to? I know it's possible to make your own ISP for home internet but can that be done for cell phones too?
I primarily use a smartphone because my job makes me use one for VPN. If it was possible I wouldn't mind keeping a useless smartphone with no data plan sitting in a drawer at home and going back to a feature phone (especially one with a slide out keyboard :D).
I think it should be mentioned that part of the 5G-NR wireless standard includes a protection against IMSI catchers (Stingrays as they are commonly called).
Article on it: https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2019/5/fighting-imsi-catche...
I am worried about the government tracking me, because they have the ability to legally required me to be tracked, giving me no way of avoiding it if I ever have a need to do something privately. And the consequences of the government tracking me all the time are much higher, since they can put me in prison, or put me on some watchlist.
While I generally agree with your perspective here, it's worth noting [a] even if one eschews all services of tech giants, one is still tracked in practice through one's social network, such as through photo recognition or sending an email to gmail.com; and [b] the number of people who actually jump through the hoops required to live free of FAANG effectively rounds to zero.
The extreme imbalance of power between corp and netizen may not be as stark as between fed and citizen (the monopoly on force involves deleting accounts and predictive analytics rather than decades in a cage), but it should be concerning all the same.
This being the top comment is why I stopped working on privacy legislation.
Propose limits on governments? What about the corporations! Propose limits on private data collection? Why are we ignoring Snowden!
Zero coördination between the left hand and the right. I know this isn’t anyone’s intent. But it’s a seductive argument for complacency that has buried over a dozen bills in New York City, Albany, Sacramento, the House Financial Services and Senate Banking Committees.
To use a concrete example, there was a case recently in which a streamer asked people to vote for things by posting red and green emojis on the livestream chat. YouTube's algorithms proceeded to ban people who posted too many emojis. A ban on YouTube means a ban on Google account, which means no more GMail and Google Docs in particular. For an average person - particularly average worker in a small company - this immediately turns one's life upside down and is likely to do permanent damage to employability.
An equivalent situation with a government would boil down to getting a small fine - nobody is going to terminate your driving license if the police spots you blinking your lights a few times to a friend driving ahead of you.
If your whole digital life is invested into a single company, that's on you. There are plenty of ways to hedge that risk.
Unfortunately for those without wealth, hedging government risk is near impossible.
Also: does it have to be "armed secret services"? What about other ways of killing people? I vaguely remember some corporations being involved in funding militias to secure mining sites of tantalum[0]. But to use a more recent and easier-sourced example: how about driving people to suicide? There was quite a big fuss recently over France Télécom/Orange doing that in the process of privatizing public telecoms and turning lives of undesirable but unfireable employees into hell, which ended in multiple suicides[1].
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[0] - There's something on it, including names of some of the companies involved, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan#Ethics_of_mining_in_the...
Funding a militia is a good one, that's some government-style play.
I think the Telecom and Orange one is more of some people within the corporations hand in hand with some people within the government.
They are - depending on how you look at it, you can consider them an extension of governments, or as private companies that figured out a way to partake in the "monopoly on violence" and thus get to make money by killing people. Governments have limited ability to micromanage their contractors - in fact, a reason to hire a PMC is to outsource micromanagement. You tell them where to be and what to do, and they manage themselves.
Now if you give a company permission to use violence and legal cover, the obvious thing happens - the companies start to do their own things on the side. Documented cases include murder, smuggling of alcohol and weapons, sex trafficking and host of other evil acts[0].
> I think the Telecom and Orange one is more of some people within the corporations hand in hand with some people within the government.
That's true, but this is always the case with large corporations. Private markets and governance aren't independent - they're very much intertwined. Power begets money begets power. Trying to talk about government vs. private interests, we have to remember that the boundary between them is very fuzzy - the separation makes sense when economists talk about bakeries and barbers and mom&pop stores. It breaks down as you approach bigger and more wealthy companies[1].
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[0] - Bunch of examples listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_military_company.
[1] - Hell, you could say it breaks down as soon as company's wealth or influence approaches the wealth or influence of the political unit in which it's embedded. It'll take a megacorp to seriously play on the national politics stage, but even a humble factory can have huge impact on county politics if it employs a significant chunk of said county's population.
https://bgr.com/2011/09/02/apple-accused-of-impersonating-po...
Look at the number of people who continue to use Facebook despite a long history of sketchy behavior with people's information and shady security practices.
Nobody cares.
We now have two generations of people who grew up with no privacy and don't care about it. This is a growing trend that people who are in those generations are starting to believe we need MORE suppression of speech. MORE suppression of ideas THEY deem dangerous to the state. The number of people who really believe and promote privacy is shrinking. The amount of people who feel this is normal is outpacing those trying to fight for their privacy.
The old analogy of the frog in the boiling water is apt here. So many kids have grown up not expecting privacy so why care now? To them it doesn't matter. To other's its already too late.