Sift knew, for example, that I’d used my iPhone to order chicken tikka masala, vegetable samosas and garlic naan on a Saturday night in April 3 years ago. It knew I used my Apple laptop to sign into Coinbase in January 2017 to change my password. Sift knew about a nightmare Thanksgiving I had in California’s wine country, as captured in my messages to the Airbnb host of a rental called “Cloud 9.”
Tag: privacy
Privacy Fundamentalism
a takedown of (one of the many) nonsense NYT articles on privacy.
the privacy debate needs to be reset around these 3 assumptions:
- Accept that privacy online entails trade-offs; the corollary is that an absolutist approach to privacy is a surefire way to get policy wrong.
- Keep in mind that the widespread creation and spread of data is inherent to computers and the Internet, and that these qualities have positive as well as negative implications; be wary of what good ideas and positive outcomes are extinguished in the pursuit to stomp out the negative ones.
- Focus policy on the physical and digital divide. Our behavior online is one thing: we both benefit from the spread of data and should in turn be more wary of those implications. Making what is offline online is quite another.
Chrome Privacy Sandbox
we are announcing a new initiative to develop a set of open standards to fundamentally enhance privacy on the web. We’re calling this a Privacy Sandbox. we will work with the web community to develop new standards that advance privacy, while continuing to support free access to content. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve started sharing our preliminary ideas for a Privacy Sandbox – a secure environment for personalization that also protects user privacy. Some ideas include new approaches to ensure that ads continue to be relevant for users, but user data shared with websites and advertisers would be minimized by anonymously aggregating user information, and keeping much more user information on-device only. Our goal is to create a set of standards that is more consistent with users’ expectations of privacy.
Legacy Media Conspiracy
while it may seem “facile” for some to argue that legacy media firms are out to get big internet companies with trumped up claims in their own media properties, there’s very real evidence of a conspiracy to do literally that. Not so facile.
this seems plausible. wired & the NYT have been on a dumb anti-tech crusade.
Thought Transparent World
China, India, Iran, Russia, Japan, USA and European nations are actively working to improve existing electroencephalography, magnetic resonance, functional infrared, and the magnetic encephalography spectrums to develop future military applications. The US Air Force believes BCI interfaces could provide faster reaction times for firing missiles, drones and guns.
HOA Surveillance
The “everyone” may now include the near-fascist organizations turning neighborhoods into glittering shrines of conformity. I’m talking about homeowners’ associations — the anal-retentive busybodies who want to make sure your grass is cut to the correct length and that no one’s offending passersby with creative mailboxes.
AT&T sells your data
The suit seeks an injunction to ensure that AT&T can no longer collect and sell this data. The class action represents several California AT&T users who say they were never informed, nor gave consent, for their location data to be used in this fashion
Against tech populism
If your overall reaction to business progress over the last 15 years is even mildly negative, no sensible person will try to please you, because you are impossible to please. Yet our new anti-tech populists have managed to make themselves a center of pseudo-intellectual attention. Angry lamentation about the effects of new tech on privacy has flabbergasted me the most. For practical purposes, we have more privacy than ever before in human history. You can now buy embarrassing products in secret. You can read or view virtually anything you like in secret. You can interact with over 1B people in secret.
Amazon Surveillance State
Amazon wants you to be part of its dish network. Yes, it’s a play on words (and not a good one!). This network springs from Amazon’s Ring doorbell — the doorbell with a camera inside and a cozy relationship with law enforcement! What are your neighbors and strangers up to? Give the dirt to law enforcement and trust their better judgment!
Good times await those who find themselves looking dark or suspicious (but also suspicious because they’re dark) in front of a Ring doorbell. Have you ever wanted to be an internet celebrity, with or without your permission? Ring has you covered.
Privacy economics
the major tech companies are much less of a threat to our actual privacy than is typically assumed. For most people, gossip from friends, relatives, colleagues, and acquaintances is a bigger privacy risk than is information garnered on-line. Gossip is an age-old problem, and still today many of the biggest privacy harms come through very traditional channels. Privacy is a real issue, but to the extent it can be fixed, most of that needs to happen outside of the major tech companies. Most of what is written about tech and privacy is simply steering us down the wrong track.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 