Disputing the Dogmas of Surveillance Advertising (2021) [pdf]
ftc.gov
ftc.gov
The other part of the industry which was extremely upsetting was the amount of racism. Ad agencies will make blacklists of both domains and/or keywords where they don’t want any of their ads to run - regardless of campaign. There are many things on the list which are related to terroism/crime/etc, but there are some which are directly about race - keywords like “black”, “ebony”, “asian”. It is depressing to say the least.
Also, how would you rank completion candidates for almost information-free prefixes like ‘ri’?
How would I rank it? I wouldn't. I've never had trouble typing two words. I do have trouble when my words are creepily predicted. If you can't tell, my point is it's creepy and unnecessary.
And by the way, I don't think this is harmless. I never plan to, but what if I applied to google, and what, they have all my emails and two decades of search? I don't have much to hide, but fuck all Id never apply
So much of our present internet metaverse is based on these dogmas that any valid challenge to them should be taken seriously. And like many dogmas, people who rely on these as "obvious truths" will be unable to examine them. Read the comments: shoot the messenger, shoot the message and we can't do anything about it anyway.
Maybe amend and strengthen the Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act and then make it Federal instead of just some states?
Of course this kind of lawmaking has gone out of fashion and was only around for a couple decades so I'm not holding my breath.
Edit: Not sure how you immediately jump to comparisons to "pogroms" but I suppose there is always someone who goes there.
I fear that if/when the masses wake up and start anti-tech pogroms, they won't be discriminating. Such mob actions are rarely precisely targeted; they'll come for programmers regardless of our specializations.
Off topic, but I feel frustrated by my friends’ and family’s almost complete lack of interest in privacy. Most express a preference for privacy but don’t want to do the work.
I have also read Surveillance Capitalism, and I am almost done with Privacy is Power.
EDIT: I reread your comment and mine: sure, elites+tech companies will “win” but that is no reason to not push back.
Most express a preference for privacy, but are utterly incapable of doing the [ridiculously complex, fraught with caveats, and ever changing] "work."
They are also unaware of how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Yes, that wording has worked so well in the past.
>It's not the government doing it.
>It's not infringement if you have to do some paperwork and pay a tax first.
>It effects interstate commerce even if it doesn't involve an entity in another state directly.
I laud the attempt, but unfortunately you are going to have to get much more explicit.
The right to personal privacy shall not be infringed by any actor. No business that engages in a circumvention of this prohibition shall be considered to be operating in good faith unless X, Y, and Z tests are passed.
And in reality, you will see businesses structured such that you must jump through hoops X, Y, and Z must happen. So you'll need an additional clause.
Next, you'll end up with a Supreme Court challenge on free speech grounds, as not monetizing customer data will be seen as compelled speech by the government.
Is that even a valid disclaimer when it's published directly on the ftc.gov ?
> In I would like to challenge: that we can solve for data abuses by providing consumers with more transparency and control—in other words, more notice and choice.
This is a bit of a non-argument. Look at the EU, GDPR etc they work. So much so that some US websites will not serve the EU as they're not in line. A clear indication that companies are influence.
Also I don't think she understands the notion of how privacy is supposed to work.
They are made to look like they work, in practice, its unenforceable, and backups including software still dont have any easy way to delete an individuals records, mostly because its a database that is backed up and you'd have to restore the database in order to clear the individuals data.
Secondly, nobody has to wipe data if its being used for law enforcement or scientific purposes. Those are two loaded parameters, but look at what wiki says because its hard to get access to case law and the legislation search facilities in various countries is absolutely despicable; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement "Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms governing that society."
Discovering means hacking people's computer systems as Edward Snowden highlighted, so the security services will take everything they can find and when they dont have the tools, they have the search engines to fall back on via court orders if need be!
Other point is anyone who is not the police can make records and say they are for law enforcement purposes as well! Neighbourhood watch is a voluntary law enforcement scheme engaged by the public. Its even listed on wiki in the UK Law enforcement index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Law_enforcement_in_th...
The other parameter is scientific purposes, again what exactly is scientific purposes?
Is it training an AI, would all the tech companies like facebook, MS, Apple & Google et al be justified in retaining all and any data they can get their hands on in order to further develop AGI? They would be, but recently the UK data commissioner seemed to ignore the law and fined US based Clearview AI a facial recognition company £7.5 million for collecting 20billion images of people. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10845123/Orwellian-...
Now the fact that UK Police authorities are reportedly using their services, would suggest the Police are happy with what Clearview AI have done, no criminality whatsoever, but the data commissioner thinks otherwise. The other misdirection is the fine is not that much money. Whilst it will effect a behaviour change in Clearview AI, that behaviour change may well include putting up the prices because the data commissioner gave them a free advert which police and law enforcement agencies elsewhere in the world will sit up and notice. As they are also US based, any UK enforcement notices are just hot air. This imo is nothing more than an advert and a way to make Clearview AI charge more.
This is on a par with the US Coastguard and Canada and the Northwest Passage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Polar_Sea_controversy#Voy...
Some of the Northwest Passage is classed as international waters, the US coastguard using it instead of Panama (usage fees) gave Canada the reason to take the US to some international court and whilst getting a fine levied on the US coastguard also happened to get the Northwest Passage recognised as Canadian waters so that Canada could start charging fees for ships using it! It also advertised the waterways as open for business because of the lack of arctic ice, ironically Russia also helped Canada out here as well by recognising the Canadian waters so there is now an alternative to using the Panama canal for some journeys.
If you are a soccer player, this is kicking the ball out of play for the other team.
Scrupulous companies really do think about compliance (they usually miss something because they're not tech people so they forget about backups as you mention)
Just look at the K2 tax avoidance scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2_(tax_scheme)
Or look at the big tech companies running their affairs through offshore tax havens. I think you would have to be naive to think that scrupulous companies exist, their primary objective is existence and profit making which can involve some risk taking.
The first section on "Not just privacy" echos my own thoughts. Privacy is a too broad and ill-defined term. Labelling some things as "privacy issues" reduces them to relative personal morals and sweeps other harms under the rug. She properly terms these broader effects - that touch on civil liberties, freedom of movement, harms to competition, misinformation and exploitation - as "data abuses", the same language I've used in Digital Vegan and in Ethics for Hackers. So I am really happy to see this gaining usage. Overall though I still think a useful term is "Digital Dignity" because many of the harms done are hard to formulate yet seem natural affronts to personal dignity. Later she touches on the body dysphoria, suicides and other mental health issues plaguing teenage girls as a result of digital exploitation, but does not fully link them to the business models of Facebook etc.
In the second section "Notice and Choice Is Not the Answer" Commissioner Slaughter nicely sums up why simply telling someone that you are going to harm them, when they have no effective choice or capacity to extricate, merely adds insult to injury. It is certainly no excuse or useful legal mechanism. I have long maintained that "meaningful choice" is absent since most ordinary people, even the most intelligent and well educated amongst us, effectively lack the capacity to consent over complex technical issues. Onerous contracts leveraging general ignorance abound in the digital world.
In a way, section three is really her conclusion, albeit an obvious one, that "Minimization is a Better Model", but possibly because the scope of the FTC is limited fails to identify the broader problems of how abusive technologies are foisted onto people via other agencies, such as schools, governments and medical services. A more mature analysis would not blame only commercial data collection, but the overall societal normalisation of risky behaviours, and poor data hygiene. That said, I feel she gets the deeper point in saying:
"It should not be necessary to trade one’s data away as the cost of
full participation in society and the modern information economy."
Anyway, GDPR in its current state is broken and needs to be updated.
The problem is mostly impatience with how slow the data protection agencies are with putting a stop to these violating popups, especially the Irish DPA that has jurisdiction on the big FANG. This slowness isn't too surprising given that the industry developed to where it is under the eye of the DPAs in the first place, so they aren't exactly packed with folk that have shown initiative...
That is 100% against GDPR. The button to oppose data processing should be as big and accessible as the one to accept it. Closing the prompt does not equate to giving consent.
I'm sure all drivers did not stop at stop signs immediately when they were introduced. And I still see people not stopping at these signs. I still believe they're good regulation and the more people know it makes roads safer, the more they respect the signs. Same with seat belt.