So I'm a real big booster of privacy and consumer rights and I really don't see the issue. I mean, I've got a mailing list. I'd say 90% of the email addresses we get are gmail. It says right there in the terms that Google reads your gmail. Always has. Always will. I've got Google maps. If I want it to be accurate enough to use, I'm sharing my location with Google. Period. Apple's the same way. They don't require you to do this but it's too damn useful not to so you do. I don't talk to Google. I hate that. But I've seen a half-dozen people accidentally trigger Siri. Let's be honest: if you have a smartphone you're walking around with a location-and-audio-and-accelerometer-and-data-and-everything-else bug that the NSA can tap whenever it wants. Allo? Allo straight-up says "if you want to use the personal assistant you need to let us listen in with our smartest computers." You have to turn it on. I said "no thanks" and that was that. But I'm fully aware that law enforcement can turn that mic on whenever they want under virtually zero pretext. There's this assumption in all of this "not OK, Google" thinking that people don't have the common sense to understand that putting an always-on microphone in their house means that an AI will be listening in on their life. It's like the example in the article: if you go to a strip club every Sunday, the AI is going to tell you the traffic on the way to the strip club on Sunday. That's what it's supposed to do. If you're going to be mad about something, be mad about the fact that even a fucking AI has figured out you go to the titty bar on Sundays. 'cuz you know what? Everybody at the titty bar figured it out. I run Google Apps. This is a branded "google" with my own URL. When I send my plane ticket receipts to that email, Google adds my flight itinerary to my calendar. Pretty neat! Except I wanted to share that calendar with my wife, and to do that I had to punch through three different firewalls in two different places. I had to opt the fuck into that. And it's handy. So I did. All this shit is opt-in. If you don't want your router to hear your every word, don't buy a router with a microphone connected to a gajillion rackspaces worth of DSP. But you can't for one minute pretend that Google is somehow being dishonest about this stuff. They've been up close and personal about it since Gmail was invite-only.
I don't think my issue is with Google. If you want an AI to help you, your AI needs to be able to know you. If Google didn't offer that product, someone else would soon enough. But that doesn't mean that this creates more threats of government abuse. The problem as I see it, is that a government agency can tap any of this data without due process and real privacy safe guards. Not only does this diminish the judicial system, but it is going to lead to cultural change that further positions us as wards of the state rather than the state existing as a service.There's this assumption in all of this "not OK, Google" thinking that people don't have the common sense to understand that putting an always-on microphone in their house means that an AI will be listening in on their life.
I think that where we differ is in our assessment of the threat to privacy as it already exists and as engendered by AI training data. From my perspective, we have every reason to believe that every call and all our metadata is already on an NSA server. Any data that exists is already tapped. If the NSA felt like training their on AI on your data, they could do it with a button press. So - who has a better profile of you? Google, which has to use the data you give them permission to use? Or the NSA? Which can use whatever the fuck it wants from everyone you communicate with? I think most people are oblivious to the surveillance state we already live in, and utterly naive about the profile we project of ourselves simply by interacting with the world. And I suspect that most of the disquiet about "not okay, Google" comes from having the abyss stare back at you. So really - people freaking balls about Google are the ones that haven't been paying attention since 2006. Personally? I do not suffer fools. And if the NSA is going to have a digital dossier on me anyway, why the fuck not at least let Google give me one for my own benefit.
The memory of the internet is very short. AT&T's Room 641a. The NSA datacenter they are opening out in - what, Utah? I think? - that won't be ready until end of next year and is already full. The exposures of Snowden's files, as well as numerous leaks both before and after him. No. If you ever even SIT at a computer, there is a record of you. Period. And it is linked to your activity in the physical world (CC tracking, etc), and everywhere you have ever been. To believe anything less than that is to be living in an actively defended state of denial.
Lovely turn of phrase, that. I think people who have read James Bamford saw the whole Snowden thing go down and said "Yeah? And?" while people who haven't were flabberghasted. I think you were the proximate cause for my subscription to this.actively defended state of denial
Go share this simple fact that you and I accept as easily as breathing with the general public. I suspect a fair number of people, even tech savvy people would accuse you of paranoia.To believe anything less than that is to be living in an actively defended state of denial.
Yes, but even the mass media reports on these things regularly... it's not just conversations on slashdot or rec.hacking any more. But kleinbl00's comments were clearly intended for the Hubski community, and if anyone here doesn't start with the base assumption that every part of your computer, email, phone, location, and contact history is known... then, they are actively living a lie.