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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>The basic premise of the article is that : more data -> more surveillance. Certainly, this could be possible. However, is there a way to collect more data and yet not increase surveillance?

No. Surveillance is the collection of data by a third party.

What that third party does to the data (e.g. whether it sells them to advertisers or not) is irrelevant. Especially if others like governments can also get access to those.

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I'd say when the data is observed is when it becomes surveillance. If Apple collects this data encrypts in cloud storage and only does analysis on device. Do you still see this as surveillance?

> I'd say when the data is observed is when it becomes surveillance.

If I recall correctly, that was exactly the US government's defense after the 2013 Snowden leaks revealed it was tapping every internet connection possible and sucking in every piece of data available.

It depends on the meaning of "observe." What if the data is secret-shared among many independent parties, so that no single party (or even a group of parties smaller than some threshold) can process it in any way? This is a common model for using MPC to protect privacy while collecting user data; in fact the first real-world MPC deployment was organized in this manner.

Speaking for myself, yes, I do consider it surveillance even if Apple (or anyone else) does "on-device" analysis. The main issue is whether they give me a choice in the matter, and control over the data collected and how it is processed.

Once the data is collected, BigTech can change their privacy policy or Terms of Services to access this data any time. (And that is exactly what they have been doing). Moreover, they still need to collect some data to ensure the "on device" analysis is working as intended. (That's where the clause "we may also collect data to improve our services" comes into picture).

Or when its first admitted to being observed? How do you know without observing the observers? Trust them when they don't trust you?

No. Surveillance is the collection of data by a third party.

Do you work for Apple's PR firm by any chance?

It's against the site guidelines to do this on HN. Would you mind reviewing the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and sticking to them in the future? We'd appreciate it.

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