Comment by jhuckestein | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jhuckestein | Hacker News Reader

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In a second comment, John Carmack wrote this:

> I'm not a "privacy is gone, get over it" sort of person, and I fully support people that want remain unobserved, but that means disengaging from many opportunities. The idea that companies are supposed to interact with you and not pay attention has never seemed sane to me.

> Being data driven is a GOOD thing for most companies to be. Everyone cheers the novel creative insight and bold leadership that leads to some successes, and tut tuts about companies ending up poorly by blindly following data, but cold analysis of the data is incredibly important, and I tend to think the world will be improved with more and better data analysis.

> I have never felt harmed by data mining, and I rather like the recommendations that Amazon gives me on each visit. Educate me. What terrible outcome is expected from this? Be specific.

I find this slightly alarming. Apparently John Carmack was lucky enough not to have been unfairly prosecuted and doesn't have any secrets that could cost him for example his job.

But what happens if one day John Carmack's activities and opinions become illegal? This has happened many times in history and there's no reason to believe it won't happen again.

The scariest thing about data collection is not what is currently happening with it, but what oppressive regimes could do with it. Imagine what if the gestapo or the stasi had all the information at its disposal that Facebook has? Or the NSA even?

To me it just underscores that even a lot of smart people don't really think about far reaching consequences of data mining. Sure, most people don't care that [insert company here]'s algorithms are crawling your data and sending you product ads based on that, but what about the NSA and their secret courts and secret warrants forcing companies to hand over that data? Even if companies don't comply, SIGINT agencies will just hack their systems and get their hands on the data anyway.

And even if there is absolutely nothing incriminating about that data NOW, there's no evidence that will stay the case forever.

I've just lost a massive amount of respect for Carmack. I actually thought he'd have an intelligent opinion on subjects like this.

Perhaps you should offer up your intelligent opinion as a counter? There is no risk in being thrown in jail because of data mining--NSA can directly observe what you do. There is no reason to mine to deduce that you may be or become an X sympathizer (where X is dangerous to the current power structure), they can simply observe you communicating with known X's or viewing information in support of X. Your concerns about data mining are misplaced and overblown.

There is simply nothing of interest to the government that can be learned about you by mining that they can't learn through direct means already deployed.

I have already offered my opinion in the parent post but here goes again:

> There is no risk in being thrown in jail because of data mining

Not now. What about in 20 years when the concept of thoughtcrime finds its way into the legal system? Some countries already/still (whichever you like) already have that and people there routinely die because of accessing "illegal" information online.

> There is simply nothing of interest to the government that can be learned about you by mining that they can't learn through direct means already deployed.

False. Let's imagine someone likes to play out their wildest fantasies in a VR world using a device like Rift. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that person has fantasies about gay unicorns. It just so happens that the state has reverted to fundamentalist ways and such fantasies are now punishable by death. With all this data mining in place, what prevents law enforcement agencies from subpoenaing FB and tapping directly into that data feed and making arrests based on that? I know it's a far fetched scenario, but the principle applies to almost anything. Replace gay unicorns with whatever you like. People have murdered other people over more inane things.

Also, if you haven't heard about law enforcement agencies doing parallel construction based on tip offs from SIGINT programs, you should read up on that.

> Your concerns about data mining are misplaced and overblown.

No, my concerns are well placed. Just because there is no abuse happening now (and there likely is), doesn't mean there won't be any in the future - with the data that's being mined as we speak. Better to be safe than sorry and stop this nonsense dead in its tracks, don't you think?

And even if there was zero danger of getting harassed by the system based on the information you consume online, I don't want anyone to know what I think based purely on principle.

I don't disagree with your reasoning at all--I have made those same arguments myself at various times. Where we disagree is on the meaning of data mining. When I think of mining, I think of deducing facts that are not directly present in the data. For example, imagine the government deducing your attraction to gay unicorns by some tangentially related facts about you {likes unicorns, watches teletubbies, is a brony} -> {attraction to gay unicorns}. My argument is that such a thing is impossible. There is nothing of interest that a government could learn about you through indirect means (mining relationships out of disparate data), that they can't learn through direct observation. That is, instead of having to deduce your attraction to gay unicorns, they would simply observe it in the virtual world (leak regarding monitoring of WoW). Under this understanding of data mining, worrying about the government mining is misdirection--they will simply watch your avatar get sodomized in real time.

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