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Surveillance as a Business Model

schneier.com

57 pointsr0h1n12 comments

> Google has a more intimate picture than I do. The company knows exactly what I am thinking about, how much I am thinking about it, and when I stop thinking about it: all from my Google searches. And it remembers all of that forever.

Then stop using Google search!

People say that Google search gives them better results than whoever. What Google is best at is giving you what Google finds. Which is good, but not essential.

Use DuckDuckGo, they are currently in their defacto "don't be evil" period. Use something else when DDG jumps it.

Schneier does somewhat address this:

"the Internet's winner-takes-all market means that privacy-preserving alternatives have trouble getting off the ground. How many of you know that there is a Google alternative called DuckDuckGo that doesn't track you? Or that you can use cut-out sites to anonymize your Google queries? I have opted out of Facebook, and I know it affects my social life."

Am I the only one who is rationally skeptical of DDG claim it doesn't track? surely NSA could have already infiltrated. Or: doesn't track at a -corporate- level.

ixquick is another search engine which claims to protect your privacy. It has a proxy link beside each search result too.

I would highly encourage anyone who thinks that the solution is as simple as "don't use XYZ" to see what Moxie Marlinspike had to say about "Changing threats to privacy" at Defcon 18: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk

The relevant part starts at 8:20.

Interesting talk, thanks.

Are you referring to Moxie's "expanding social choice?" Yeah, it's an issue. I don't feel I'm losing anything in that area by not using Google search.

Or are you talking about Google Analytics' encroaching into the fundamental functionality of a site, beyond mere analytics, so that blocking Analytics breaks the site? To that I would say to a site owner, don't use Analytics. As for me the visitor ... dunno.

We do what we can and what we have the energy for. And while we should use and develop a lot of these technical solutions, we'll get longer term bang for the buck if we restrict the operations of our spies. Make 'em follow the Constitution, in the US, for example.

Except, how would we know? And even if we did, as Moxie points out, now that the NSA is collecting data where Google et al. collects it, other powers and criminals are also doing the same thing at the same places.

So it's a mix, and I don't know how it's going to play out.

But I don't use Google search. Mostly.

Or switch to StartPage (https://startpage.com/), a good DuckDuckGo alternative.

Its obvious that there's a ton of money in selling people's information for advertising, but I don't think that people are even that angry that their information is being sold so much as they aren't aware of what information is being sold. I think that it'd be interesting to see more transparency in selling of information so that target advertising can still be easily done which allowing the users to actively choose one product over another if they don't want their email addresses being given out as compared to cookies for search relevancy or something along those lines.

Sorry, looks like this is a repost of a Nov 20th piece Schneier did for CNN -http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/20/opinion/schneier-stalker-e...

It is (and he notes that at the bottom of the post). Schneier frequently reposts his essays from other sites.

I know it is, and I missed it while posting this to HN. Worse, I've semi-ranted about such Schneier reposts earlier :-/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6641908

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