Swisher is pointing out that we even though there are some laws in place to protect our privacy, they clearly aren't working. There needs to be a technological reform to check these privacy issues we've been having. I know I do not want to be watched 24/7, just as many other people feel. I definitely think that something will be happening in the future, but the questions are: How soon? How many more advances will there be in technology before it's too late to fix the problem?
McNealy is the DEFINITION of CONFLICT OF INTEREST. Why would anyone care what he thinks?
Read any NYT article online and one is literally bombarded with ads. Thanks NYT for protecting my privacy. Such hypocracy!
1
I loved the fact that Kara Swisher used both from and goat rodeo in her article, commentary on privacy. These are wise words and used correctly in context. Bravo.
I applaud this Op-Ed ... but I wonder why Ms, Swisher did not comment on the NYT Op-Ed by Mr. Appelbaum that our tax returns should be made public. I don't think the NYT should necessarily have a unified opinion on every issue but it is bizarre - to say the least - that on the one hand they should advocate for greater privacy and on the other hand a member of their own Editorial Board should advocate for even less privacy.
I wish someone would explain with nuance, details and some explicit examples what they specifically mean by stating that government regulation would “stifle innovation”. Without those details, this often sounds like a trite answer that those in the tech industry (which I’m actually a part of) throw out to continue running roughshod through our lives and our economy at mostly their personal benefit. We should demand more from our tech leaders and government officials when this trope is thrown out, considering the stakes.
"I love technology," she writes, but she loves government more.
People, don't you see, that internet content is pro-digitalizing, because it's "internet content". It is created to lure us stay online. They employ psychologists, and develop the best possible tricks to keep you online, to advertise you more, to sell you more.
Working in an IT company in 2016 I had a task to create a Facebook game that would lure people spend more time on the company's FB page. We had provided much research and found out that only the most primitive "drag&drop" sorts of games, requiring no mental effort could bring use. Back then our client got disappointed and refused to promote his business on Facebook. Instead, he created free courses. In the physical world. And that worked. He was telling he won't use his business to help people degrade.
I'm a millennial, working as a freelancer, paying in cash, letting Facebook in my past (wasn't my favorite ever), and using Internet for work and for NYT, Zeit and Spiegel and Wall Street International.
What I know, new apps, games, gadgets and other stuff will flood our lives with its bright attractiveness. The question is - does it really gives us quality time for our growth? Is that needed?
The horrible thing is that the luring techniques they are using, whisper us there is no way out. In reality, it is. We haven't come to this world to degrade in favor of tech.
Jaron Lanier’s “Who Owns The Future” suggests changing the business model entirely - that tech companies pay anyone who creates data a royalty for the rights to exploit that data.
As a teenager who has grown up knowing that their information is being recorded and that I'm not the only one who has access, the way I view privacy versus my parents do differ greatly. Personally, I couldn't care less if someone saw my snap or the microbe research project my teammates and I are working on. It's what I have grown up with, and from here on out, I would expect that this is the reality we will face as humanity. But, my information on the internet is much less important compared to what my parents must have, examples as bank statements and such (I really don't know). So perhaps I will end up caring a lot more about my privacy in the future. We'll see.
But the one thing I can add is that wherever there is an opportunity to make money, there will be a discrepancy of morality. Maybe from all groups, or not. I think that privacy is just another example of this, technology makes it possible for this violation and by using these advancements it is undeniable that the opportunity to make money from this information is there, even if it is indirect.
As long as there is value in our information, and there is a way to access it, then it won't be private. Whether we make laws or not, I doubt that it will greatly impact this since laws really can only be enforced to a certain extent, especially if it's online.
We have too much information, too much speed but too little knowledge and intelligence. Common sense is tragically missing. STOP AND THINK! It is critical.
Do we need laws or do we need to manage ourselves better? My God I had no idea how much self-determination we have abdicated to live our lemming like possession and prestige focused lives.
It will never happen here. We aren't that smart anymore.
Scott McNealy is part of the tone deaf tech problem. The idea that people have alternatives is ludicrous and frankly a bad faith argument. Beware Mr. McNealy, that "alternative" may turn out to be torches.
2
I think maybe this angry article has to do with being in the NY area. New Yorkers tend to be angry, think the worst is bound to happen and complain more than most.
Heck I don’t mind the so called loss of privacy at all. I like going on Utube and having custom tailored videos of my various viewing pleasures waiting for me. Same with Amazon. The products “I might like”, sometimes I do like.
But more than that, I see the whole world coming together and worrying about our “loss of privacy” is a symptom of losing our historic individualism. The good news is that it is being replaced by a blossoming sense of the larger possibilities of a fuller membership in the worldwide human family.
@Jagadeesan
It’s “YouTube.”
1
Privacy is just one of many issues we are grappling with as our lives as individuals are increasingly lived under corporate dominion. We maintain the illusion we are free and direct our own lives, but there is less and less that is not in some fashion corporate controlled. At the same time, corporations have mined and even fund research into human behavior and the influence and profit therefrom.
Meanwhile, we citizenry find ourselves in a warped system of incentives and values where we are shown on a daily basis the profit, celebrity, etc. that accrues to everything from bad behavior to harmful corporate practices to the sacrifice the public good by politicians.
We can say these are growing pains of a new economy and we will adjust as we did in the wake of industrialization. But if we indeed are to make that a reality, we need to start with restoring the privacy of individuals, or much of the rest may not matter.
Personally It sort of flatters me to even be noticed. To think some big data storage driven algorithm picks out little old me to specifically target with an ad for something I have no intention of buying for otherwise I would have the first time I looked online at it, makes me feel as if something cares. And sometimes it’s “prognostic” abilities makes me laugh out loud when I see some of the stupid suggestions it makes for me. I think: like I wish I were that person you think I am. Just as long as it stays within the confines of this touchscreen I hold here in my hands, I still can always show it who’s boss by putting it down.
Kara, you could tighten your hold on reality and lessen the chances for invasion of privacy by dumping Twitter! You write a column on technology - the good, bad and ugly - mostly the latter; then invite readers to comment on NYT Privacy Project via Twitter!! Think you're enabling the entire privacy discussion to go into the toilet right there!
2
I suggest one small step we can all take is to expunge the company name "google" from the ranks of acceptable verbs, and instead say "search". Try it; it works.
Then, don't use the search engine named "Google". Instead, try duckduckgo. It does not track your browsing history or sell it to advertisers. And - bonus - you avoid having Google's cutesy graphics shoved in your face.
Duckduckgo's policy is actually readable and it works as well or better than the search engine formerly known as a verb. It's not much, but it's something to return a speck of control to we users. You'll feel better, every time your browse.
1
The author comes out on the side of privacy rights, yet repeats the industry canard, "we don’t want to impose undue burdens on new start-ups or throttle innovation" without a single hint as to how that might possibly happen.
See, that's the part I'm not buying. I've yet to encounter one credible example of how innovation would be hampered by privacy rights such as those Europeans enjoy. Heck, even Canadians have more privacy that we do, even before you consider the internet: who owns that not-for-sale view home in West Vancouver is not a matter of public record, nor its last sale price.
8
It's not just digital. On the train from NY to DC last week, I sat in front of a woman who talked the entire trip to the woman next to her. I didn't even want to listen, but in a voice loud enough to carry I learned all about her health trouble (she's tired but her thyroid is fine), the strength of her investments (they're good), her plans for a vacation in Norway, and even directions to her house. Some people have more mouth than brains. I wondered if I should suggest she wasn't being wise, but in this world I'm reluctant to talk to strangers about anything they might consider negative, especially someone that mouthy.
2
@Brookhawk, a long long time ago I heard people once had a saying that went something like . . . . Just mind your own business. Obviously that was from the dark ages before the enlightenment so why on earth would it mean anything for us today?
1
Again, where's the meat in this editorial?our privacy is being destroyed is not enlightening. What are your proposed solutions? That would be worth column space.
The sheer arrogance of a Nealy is what I find galling. Yes, I click that I accept your terms in order to use your site, but it’s totally a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Besides being pages of legalese, I have no option to edit the terms. And if more people actually read what they are about to agree to, they just might think twice and choose to decline.
Of course he doesn’t want more regulation, it’s not in his self interest, but he shouldn’t get to be the only one to decide what the terms are. Industries that self-regulate abuse that privilege. Is he truly concerned that regulations will make life more difficult for small companies, in particular those that he’s thinking of taking over? Enough already.
1
Swisher's photo/mug shot is comical. Holding the rim of her glasses to show she's a serious intellectual? Is it satire? We hope. That said, this is a smart, typically insightful post from Ms. Swisher. We HAVE given too much control over our digital lives. It's scary, it's obscene, it's time to take it back. Amen.
1
w are undone
no way out
one, yet it will destroy us all
prepare to meet our Maker
or not
1
"We’ve given up too much control over our digital lives."
That from a writer who a week ago wrote a column saying how proud she was to be a gadget addict.
"We need a law to take some of it back."
A law is ineffective, as the internet is internationally sourced.
Swisher and the Times seek to lock the barn door long after the horses have escaped.
Faustian bargain? Pandora's box? How little things change.
1
This morning, I'm re-reading Cal Newport's book, Digital Minimalism. If you are interested in this topic, I suggest you read it.
1
I see the opponents of regulation float the usual canard without regard for proof:
"....privacy law would be a mistake because it would hinder innovation, and cautioned that the costs of compliance would hurt small companies."
I say Oh Really? Show me the data on exactly how a privacy law stifles innovation. There is none; or that which they might have obviously must prove otherwise because....well....because you know they'd trot it out and show it in a heart-beat. They can't, so I ignore the canard.
Regardless it comes to this. It's my data we're talking about. Mine. Tech companies mine it and use it for profit oriented reasons do they? Their whole business model basically sits on MY BACK does it? Of course.
Then they need to PAY ME for the use of it. Any time they derive a business oriented profit on even a sliver of that which is mine by right of having produced it, PAY ME! Each and every time. And before you say this is an impossibility I say consider the advent of block-chain tech. It's the perfect mechanism by which to do this very thing.
So maybe the best way for regulation to move forward is to foment a payment system? It's the Capitalist way isn't it?
John~
American Net'Zen
2
But your data being mined is the cost of using these platforms, given that they're free to use.
@Jimmy Bob Agree -
restrict their ability to use your data and be prepared to pay for internet use even more than we do now.
@Jimmy Bob: I get what you're saying but I think of it this way. We are giving what's ours away for cheap. Far too cheap when you juxtapose that "free" against the billions they are making.
You're a free agent in this data gathering system. You deserve more, your data is more valuable, than that mere app they give you "for free."
If it wasn't they wouldn't spend so much effort in attempting to gather it, would they? You are the golden goose; so protect your eggs.
We started off using technology to do tasks that saved us time, effort and money, and to entertain us. Now we have gotten to the point where we are using technology to chip away at the very things that make us human--personal relationships, kindness, judgment, morality, ethics and privacy, for example.
Yes, technology is being used to track our preferences and market and sell stuff to us. But of bigger concern is that it has the grave potential of being used to monitor and, ultimately, control each and every individual.
Many Americans are not aware of why Western Europe has such stringent individual privacy laws and has been so active going after technology giants for their misuse of private information. The reason is Hitler. Germany had large amounts of information of each of its citizens. That cache was how the Nazis tracked down and exterminated Jews and other "enemies" of the Third Reich. Europeans have a grave understanding of this. And it was all done even without any of the tracking, identification and other technology we have today.
So is it really a far leap to see political leaders here using A.I., the Internet of Things and other technology to control people? Think a Donald Trump or his creepy sidekicks (think: Stephen Miller or Corey Lewandowski) wouldn't do almost anything to stay in power if a technology option to control voters and an election was presented to them by a political consultant, Mark Zuckerberg-type or, worse, a Russian agent?
Think again.
2
Please don't tell me you're waiting for Congress...yes, our hand wringing, invective spewing, largely inept and inactive Congress...to work on digital laws? Laws from which they might step on toes of their beloved benefactors? Congress can't fix our election process, can't get their heads around Medicare for All, can't fathom the fact that providing affordable education is a game changer and can't understand or address global warming–the real monster knocking at our door. It's up to the individual to give up their insipid social media. Time to adjust all their applications to turn off the feedback engines. Time to delete apps that don't give you a choice. Tell Siri or Siri like device not to listen. Nobody's going to do it for you. Most of all, don't trust big Tech.
1
"You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire. You build egos the size of cathedrals. Fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse. Grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own god. Where can you go from there? As we're scrambling from one deal to the next, who's got his eye on the planet? As the air thickens, the water sours, even the bees' honey takes on the metallic taste of radioactivity. And it just keeps coming, faster and faster. There's no chance to think, to prepare—it's "buy futures", "sell futures", when there is no future. We got a runaway train, boy. We got a billion Eddie Barzoons all jogging into the future. Every one of them is getting ready to fist God's ex-planet, lick their fingers clean, as they reach out toward their pristine cybernetic keyboards to tot up their billable hours. And then it hits home. You gotta pay your own way, Eddie. It's a little late in the game to buy out now. Your belly's too full, your thumbs are sore, your eyes are bloodshot, and you're screaming for someone to help. But guess what? There's no one there! You're all alone, Eddie. You're God's special little creature"
Pacino's speech from "Devil's Advocate" seems prescient now.
3
Privacy. Back in the day, people never wanted Social Security numbers for fear of Big Brother. The Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away. When "THEY" start hauling us away to the gulag, the Internet and digital technology will let us know so fast that the masses, Left and Right, will join together for a second Boston Tea Party.
Until then, privacy is way down on the list of concerns: #1 is Trump. #2 Jobs. #3. Healthcare. #4 Infrastructure ......#956 PRIVACY!!!
Yes. We should just get over it.
Once your data is out there, it's out there. Good luck putting the toothpaste back in the tube.
I think the better word would be narcissistic, most Americans seem to think they are all stars, the fact that they have no talent and have accomplished nothing does not seem to matter.
3
Read Neil Postman's book, "Amusing ourselves to death" which came out in 1985. TV was the bad guy, and still is,
but social media is much worse. Your personality has been hijacked by money-grubbing sexless amazons.
Alas, when it comes to hate and anger on Social Media, it corrodes the vessel that carries it. If you stay off social media and avoid the many narratives and stories that are framed for consumption, your life will improve. Democracy will be restored. You will be happier and yes, you will have more friends.
Everyone should take the time to watch Patrick McGoohan's late 60's series "The Prisoner."
We're all being folded, spindled and mutilated.
1
@Eben
I am old enough to remember this..."I am not a number I am a free man!" Great series and always apropos.
By the way, this predictive analytic hell has been around for quite awhile --- for some people. FairIsaac, the credit rating service, is arguable one of the first to have fundamentally reshaped our society without little consent and vast side-effects. Sure, it made credit cheaper and more available for some. But it also reinforced racial and ethnic redlining, with a positive feedback loop over generations that prevented the accumulation of wealth permitted to others.
We're in a heap of trouble.
2
For years I wrote anti-George W Bush and anti-Iraq war letters while my son served in the Marines, many of which were published in this paper -- and the joke among family and friends was that at some point I wouldn't be allowed back in the States because of my subversive opinions. Perhaps a joke no longer?
What passes for life in the digital world is a relatively small collection of software features used to trick individuals into giving up their personal information. A phone, a camera, email, audio and video all packaged in a small mobile device barely qualifies as anything substantively different from what was available 30 years ago as separate gadgets. Of course today's version is more convenient. Yes, it's shinier and lighter and sexier. And that charm and convenience is highly addictive for millions - which by the way isn't a side effect - it's the primary design objective. The poor souls who get sucked-in trade not only much of their privacy and attention, but they also cough up hundreds of dollars every month for the privilege.
For the corporate owners it's the best addiction going. Those addicted will even tell you this is how they attain 'life' in the digital realm. Sometimes that 'life' is so addictive people have actually walked into sinkholes or into the path of an oncoming train. People are so busy with it they often fail to connect with one another in the real world. Digital 'life' isn't life. It's just a dangerously misleading name for a rampant addiction.
I’d argue that GDPR and the recent law in the U.K. haven’t gone far enough.
These companies must be made to pay royalties each time their users’ information or content is sold to third parties. Google does it for YouTube why can’t Facebook?
Governments must also act to stop anticompetitive and monopolistic behavior by these companies. In what planet does a business model like uber make sense? Only if you think they are going to starve 1000s of taxi companies out of business then charge a monopoly price.
Speaking of ads, I buy the print and the digital version of the nytimes. The ads in the print version don’t track me, so I don’t block them. The online ads have tracking codes and ad network targeting, so I block them.
Ms. Swisher was a cheerleader for tech companies before her current avatar. Perhaps she should use her perch at the nytimes to remind herself that when you point one finger out, three fingers point toward yourself.
1
Recently the Times ran a column by Kara Swisher, who claimed she was proud of her gadget addiction. To quote our Entertainer-In-Chief, "Sad!"
The Times and Swisher's focus on privacy and the internet is decades too late. Where was the Times years ago, when it was clear where the internet love affair (a.k.a. corporations hiring ad agencies to convince people the internet was an inherent force for good and progress) would lead, at least to any non-self-serving (i.e. tech corporation) interest and any non-addicted individual?
As with all addictions, getting the monkey off your back is very hard. I expect it will take something major, such as a large chunk of our electric grid going down or China commandeering an F-35 through embedded code in all the chips we depend on them for, before we, as a society, even begin to take the issue of the internet's inherent insecurity seriously.
While people scream about the government's limited data collection, they happily give up much more information to corporations, which have absolutely no accountability to our people.
Recently Best Buy wanted my fingerprint to buy a printer. I said, "Not if you want my money!" Wells Fargo wanted prints to cash a check. I said, you want me picketing? Say no! And mean it, even at a price!!
None of the Presidential candidates is taking the underlying issue seriously, a few going as "far" as merely suggesting "laws" that are effectively unenforceable or which can be subsumed as a cost of doing business.
Scott McNealy is 100% correct. There is zero privacy. The only thing one can ultimately do is limit the invasion.
Never use any computer that has some link to you. Even that will leave a "digital image" that can be compared to a myriad of other digital images that can eventually create a singular profile of you. While your name may not be known, your "digital image" will be clearer as more data is accumulated and the ability to track you will get easier. Also, you obviously never create or use any sort of account.
If you need to call, never use anything other than a pay phone. However, that has the flaw in that anyone you call may be traceable.
Always deal in cash. Needless to say credit cards can leave a large trail of paper. Then again, how do you get that cash in the first place? Even if you never use anything related to the banking system, that person handing you the cash likely does and every one of their transactions are documented and able to be seen by whomever.
So, the only real way to get true privacy, move deep into the wilderness of northern Canada with your bearskins, stone knives, and handmade bows and arrows and never have contact with civilization ever again.
1
Before we can pass legislation that would impose new rules on the internet, we need legislators and a chief executive who represent the will of the majority of Americans. In other words, we need a democratic system of government. Does that sound to anyone even remotely like anything we have or are likely in the near future to have in the United States of America? Yeah - me neither.
2
Most of the time it's not "sharing" - it's bragging. And humble-bragging and hustling for gofundme pages and demonstrating virtue.
People, at one time, did not always seek to be the center of attention.
Calling it "sharing" is neutralizing its narcissism. And frankly, if the social media platforms want to monetize that, let the user beware. As they say, "if you're not paying for it, you're the product."
1
Everyone, please read The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity, by futurist Amy Webb.
The book is about AI, primarily in the US and China. It’s a very eye-opening and terrifying book. It’s the most important book I’ve read in many, many years, and addresses the privacy issues in great depth that Kara Swisher wrote about in this article.
2
I'll be sixty five years old in November. I have to stay connected for the next two years for business related purposes, but the day I hit 66 I'm selling my business and unplugging. The internet has now been corrupted as was demonstrated by the Russian interference in our election and is truly responsible for the "Fake News" now weaponized and used with great success by those that don't have the best interest of the nation or my personal well being in mind. The intended use of intellectual information sharing has been infected with a money and power grab. No one cares much about anything anymore other than the quickest way to acquire your money even when the services they provide are sub-standard or non-existent. We are being sold a bill of goods in almost every area of our lives and our dependency on electronics is beyond an addiction. The entire U.S. electric grid now relies on the internet. I can't express the danger in that or in the personal dependency on an I-phone in this post but I can support unplugging in any way possible to reduce or eliminate dependency on this insidious danger.
Read a good old fashion book or take your dog for a walk and don't bring an electronic device. Free yourself from the madness. Do it for yourself, your loved ones and the country.
4
The automobile industry perhaps provides a useful parallel here. There was a time when the manufacture and sale of automobiles was completely unregulated; the first half of the twentieth century was a period of tremendous innovation during which anyone who wanted to make a car could sell it to anyone willing to pay for it.
As time went on automobiles became ubiquitous and completely integrated into our society as a technology that was both incredibly useful and incredibly dangerous. The industry was dominated by a few large companies that vigorously resisted all forms of safety regulation on the grounds that it would impose unbearable costs on manufacturers and stifle innovation.
Eventually the automobile industry was regulated, and cars became dramatically safer and less polluting. It does make the manufacture of automobiles more expensive, and it undoubtedly slows innovation, but as a society we are far better off. Does anyone really want to return to a time when automobiles did not have to include safety features like seat belts and air bags, and did not have to pass crash tests?
Scott McNealy is dead wrong on this issue. Any technology that becomes embedded in our daily lives eventually needs to be regulated to make it safe. In 2019 the notion that "opting out" is a viable way for consumers to protect themselves makes about as much sense as suggesting that if you are concerned about automobile safety the solution is to never get in a car.
2
I agree with Kara. We need to tweak existing laws but because we've never been at this point in technology before, we also need something much bigger and flexible enough to grow with the ever changing tools of Big Data.
1
Thank you, Ms. Swisher, for writing this piece. It is one of the biggest concerns of humanity at this point. Most people don't speak up because they simply don't understand nor realize the level of control that is put on them. Education on how the big tech technologies, companies, and business models! work in reality is what is missing. I wish more people could be made aware of what's really going on.
1
Until people are willing to hold websites accountable it won’t change. Facebook, for example, consistently tramples on users privacy but people still need their Facebook fix.
1
Yesterday my daughter tried to enter my son's dorm to wake him up for a family emergency. They are at the same university, different dorms. Not only could she not enter, but the front desk told her they couldn't even confirm he lived there. Of course she knows he lives there. The point is, families and parents are completely shut out of even the most basic information about each other, but the big corporations can buy and sell our most intimate details for a profit. Something seems unbalanced here.
4
"So here’s an idea: Maybe we refuse to get over it."
Do you know that the Chinese do nearly everything on their phones. Drones fly overhead and have/use the capacity of face recognition. There are cameras on buildings, inside and out. On street lights, in businesses, in buses, in cabs. And how do the Chinese feel about their individual data feeds tracking the money they spend, where they spend it, what they spent it on, where they are at every minute of their life, from birth to death? They feel safer and believe that they are safer.
The data is collected by the government and its various agencies.
My thinking is the Chinese are probably more sensible because while it may not make crime unknown the authorities can pick up the person who committed the crime much faster and easier. Remember the Boston Marathon Bombers? It was a street camera that identified them.
I'm pretty sure that has already begun in western world also. I doubt that it is possible for any person to not be tracked down. They would have had to been in hiding prior to 1990. That person would not be able to indulge in something as simple as working or going to the store unless they wore a mask.
I'm sure all governments are using the ability to collect data on all of its citizens every minute of every day. While you may object to businesses collecting and using your data, you can be pretty sure that your government is discreetly getting the most out of it.
Europe’s GDPR gives false security. It’s language is too arcane/technical and there is still too much companies and governments can do that invades our privacy without our knowledge.
1
For most of human evolution privacy as we here in modern western culture understand it was nonexistent too. Perhaps our current concept of it is just a fleeting illusion and we are better adspted to not having it.
How about mandating Apple and Google not let every app we load on our phones access the Internet? For what we use the apps, many of them have no need to access the Internet... except to track and data-mine us. Even if you disable Location Services for an app, it can still use the Internet to reveal your general location from your IP address.
2
I'm OK with the trade of some loss of privacy for the huge value I get from accessing internet services. It's really amazing how much information and the many services that are available completely free. But I understand that there are many people that don't realize that you need to take some pretty obvious precautions when using social networks, so some level of regulation to protect users seems reasonable. Obviously, the more regulation the less likely you'll have the free and open internet we're used to today.
Do I want someone to track everything that I do? The answer is yes, under one condition: I want the person who tracks me to be me -- and only me.
We don't need a big eye in the sky to sort ourselves out. All we need is anonymous trust. We had that with cash. I don't need my real identity to buy stuff -- merely a trusted currency.
Crypto currencies promises to do that. What if I could be my own adsense? Not Google; me. I publish my interests to a ledger and services post their reply. Nobody knows who I am. Instead of co-opting my attention, I read their replies at my leisure.
1
It's eerie. I don't know if it's endemic to the human condition or just a sign that people, too bored with their own lives, require daily sustenance of the most insignificant sort to make it through the day. Like folks on the freeway who'll slow to a stop, backing up traffic for hours just in hopes of seeing a dismembered body to talk about over dinner. Or the gymnast who recently and oddly enough broke both knees at the same time who literally begged people to stop sharing her life-altering injury. The fact that she had to say that in the first place is a tragedy, but the fact that it will likely not be life-altering for the people to which it was directed is the real tragedy.
2
This has been apparent for decades. At one of the first meetings on privacy policy at Microsoft (6 people in attendance), almost all of what's happened was discussed including psychographic "fingerprinting.". But it all seemed so far off -- despite the obvious inevitability of a slow boiling the privacy frog.
Here's a quaint memory. In the early 90s, a congressman's video rental history was obtained by a newspaper, effectively ending his career. Soon after Congress enacted legislation requiring direct consent for such releases. This, of course, was the naive model for what's happened since. The illusion of choice -- an impossibility when services that have become infrastructure require surveillance to play.
In fact it's impossible to participate in modern, communications based economy without the theatrical trope of "opting in" to policies that, in aggregate, turn everyone into trackable objects.
The truth is that the assembly of large, joinable datasets, with an adtech economy should never have been permitted. What was presented as a modern extension of the existing advertising economy was nothing of a sort, and has permitted the creation of a persusasion machine that take advantage of cognitive limits of freewill documented by behavioral economists like Kahnemann, Twersky and Thaler.
1
"There are some countries that have gone far beyond what Americans would be comfortable with, China being the most aggressive."
What this really means is that China is currently ahead of the US in terms of invading privacy. The US will catch up if nothing is done or Americans don't wake up.
People are so needy for other people's attention and for this we sign away our right to privacy. Americans pride themselves on being rugged individuals, but the reality is far from that. People can't stand to be out of the limelight for more than five minutes, to show that they are one of the groovy crowd and up with the latest fashion in whatever.
Sure, some of the apps and gadgets are very useful but they enable the major platforms to track us. Stringent privacy laws are needed for them. We hear the same old arguments that this will hinder innovation or hurt smaller companies. But the only type of innovations that will be hindered are those for tracking and hacking. Data manipulation and analysis through AI doesn't need to rely on surreptitiously garnered information. The useful apps for personal use can be sold for an upfront price with no hidden tracking. Tracking and eavesdropping don't have to be the currency for innovation.
Eventually, this issue will come to a head and the backlash will cause damage to the platforms that are most invasive. These platforms will only have themselves to blame, just as we only have ourselves to blame for the current situation.
2
Two things we can do now: (1) when you have a choice, choose a small data footprint, (2) when you aren't required to be honest, make garbage data.
For example, trade frequent shopper cards with your friends regularly. You can get the discounts without the surveillance.
Soviet Russians were adept at resisting the machine. We could learn.
5
I think anyone is a fool to be on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Keep your private life private, as much as you can, preserve your reputation for future job applications, love relationships, etc. We are all stuck having Apple and Google track us but do we have to help them-I think not. Reality TV has made humans think that fame is to be aspired to and that Facebook, a YouTube video or a podcast are the next best things. I opt out of all of it, happily, and by choice. Anonymity and privacy are precious and I will keep mine as long as I can.
10
I'd like to think so too.
I just installed a ads-b transmitter on a client ‘s airplane. It is required by the FAA by 01/01/2020. He insisted that I turn on the “anonymous” mode which prevents his aircraft registration number from being displayed to other aircraft, because “they’re watching you”, all the while he was on Facebook.
People are not very smart.
5
The dichotomy is the more we use technology, the more isolated we become and the more we needs technology to stay in touch with the rest of the human race.
4
Scott McNealy can live without Google? Increasing, that is difficult to do. My children in elementary school have to have Google accounts and turn their homework in on Google platforms. Teachers tell them to "Google" it when they have a question...
4
@Al King
This where privacy laws have a role. No one should be forced to allow tracking and eavesdropping to gain access essential services such as education.
5
Remember the U.S. Mail? You wrote a letter to your girlfriend or boyfriend or your mistress...anyone...and it was a crime, a federal crime, for anyone to open that mail but the person to whom it was addressed. People actually went to prison. The mail was something sacrosanct, special, protected by the full power of federal law.
One big first step to allow more privacy would be to make email private, to make it go away after being sent and read. At present, email is forever. This is a good thing when government officials are talking to each other about official business, or when criminals are planning their crimes, but otherwise why is email stored on computers along its route of transit? Who came up with that idea? Why hasn't it been attacked and changed?
Why does my ISP get to keep records of my searches? Wouldn't it be wise to dump all those records after, say, ten days unless they are subpoenaed in an official, on the record police investigation?
I have very few apps on my phone but the other day while in Texas (there, I just gave some person information) I needed to use a ride hailing service. So, now Lyft has my location data. How much of it do they have and how much do they keep? Just when I need a ride or all the time?
NO ONE is protecting us. NO ONE is trying to see these issues from the perspective of the individual legally going about life and business. We are sitting ducks and they are shooting us with all the guns in the shooting gallery.
13
Cellphone carriers and social media companies should be treated the same way as Ma Bell and GTE were treated before 1984. Make them regulated companies with strict privacy controls. Ensure that no one person (yes, I'm thinking of you Mark Zuckerberg, among others) owns a majority of the company. It's a start.
Stifle innovation? Bell Labs did fine with innovating stuff.
7
"Mr. McNealy insisted that current laws, bolstered by antitrust action"
Thanks, I needed that one! When the only "competition" megacorps do is for how much MORE money and data they can take from us noncorporations, and the GOP managed to seize the White House post-Dubya with someone WORSE, antitrust is about as dead as our privacy.
A simple "I stand by my prior statement" would've sufficed, but hearty kudos to McNealy for going beyond the call to offer unintentional humor too.
2
I always wonder who has the mental energy to worry about this sort of stuff. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. Just saying that on my list of problems and things to worry about, well actually it just doesn't make the list. I'm going to try to do better in the future.
3
@Sarah
Have you read about China's Social Credit system? This where other countries are heading including the US. Except that it will be run by big companies rather than government. And the big companies will be less accountable and more opaque than a government would be.
Imagine being rated and judged by your peers and service providers on opaque criteria based on your value to that company. For example, your credit rating might be influenced by information unrelated to your finances or false information. That information might be manipulated by some opaque, bug-ridden algorithm that draws false conclusions about you.
3
@Barry Long OMG! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
it seems to me the only way to escape the tracking
is to get off the internet all together
and discontinue one's cell phone service
but on second thought
i'm not 100 % sure that would be altogether effective
since we own a 2018 vehicle that has built-in tracking equipment
so everywhere we go, our vehicle affords the gov'mint snoops
a way to track us
we also are tracked through use of our credit cards
but the answer to that is to pay with cash
it seems the only real answer
is a backward time-travel
to "before computer" and "before credit card"
most people couldn't do that
but being older and retired
i am considering it
we all need to re-earn how to write a letter
using a pen, piece of paper, and an envelop
with a 50-cent stamp on it
3
@Charles M. Beck I bought my first cell phone about 21 years ago, before smartphones were even available. Its main purpose was to be able to call out in an emergency, not for people to call me to gossip or to send me text messages. For that I had my landline and still do. I didn't buy a smartphone until 2016, over a decade after an early adapter friend of mine bought his first smartphone at a much higher cost.
I have been using credit cards for over 50 years, but I have always used them responsibly, paying off my balances in full each month.
FYI, the cost of mailing a domestic letter is now up to 55 cents (as of January) and $1.15 for letters going to Canada or other foreign countries. But I actually prefer to talk to people who are important to me rather than using emails. These days, the cost of my landline phone service including unlimited long distance phone service to the US, Canada and several other countries and unlimited DSL internet service is about $66 per month, taxes included.
1
I refuse to bow to the urgency for “patient portals.” I cannot spend a lot of time on the computer anyway, and once you use them, physicians’ offices use them exclusively. Yes, the portals are for us, the patients. Sure they are, just try downloading anything more than lab tests. Go ahead and use them. I’m passing.
2
A new violation looms. Our Medical records.
The once admirable push to get all digitized, and filed, ready for sharing has created our new black hole.
Now our Medical records, formerly being on a need-to know basis, is open for any Med care service-- in entirety.
This means that a procedure, event, or diagnosis is available, even decades later, to all future Professionals to access.
Perhaps the youthful brush with addiction is no longer necessary when going through menopause?
The young adult decision for an abortion, is to be available to the Geriatric specialist years later?
The post partum depression, to the dematologist.
Lost is the need to know principal.
(and who is limiting access in the Med office?)
3
Patient portals are the worst. If you have more than one physician, you’d better be on your computer 24/7. I refuse.
@Zeke Black
Your private medical information, now that it is in a database, is not just available to the dermatologist and the geriatric specialist, but the to the IT department, the secretarial pool, and all the administrators, not to mention anyone who cares to hack in.
The insurance companies would like it too. They already have the billing info, but they would like full access. Oh, and your employer. That's pretty much everyone except your neighbor...unless he works for the hospital.
5
Have you been in the E.U. since GDPR was put in place? It just means more pop ups warning you of site trackers, cookies etc. I bet not one person in a thousand chooses NOT to click the “I accept” button. People just don’t care any more. “Gimme what I want, and right now” would be a far more popular button.
2
I think what needs to be part of any attempt to get our lives back is a know your customer rule similar to banks.
It isn't just elections and bots.
Fraudulent solicitations are constant. Your credit card company reaching out to you to offer a better deal isn't really your credit card company. The internet giants need to know who their users are and be able to certify that they are not misrepresenting themselves. Harsh---really harsh since $$$ seems to be the only remedy available---penalties need to be imposed to get everyone's attention.
1
@DB Have you bothered to place a freeze on your credit reports? Even a lot of people who have them in place now never bothered until the big hacking of one of the major credit reporting agencies a few years ago.
Oh, but it's free!
2
I sure as HECK don't want some AI comparing my facial expressions to the "top and bottom performers" in an interview.
Unbeknownst to the interviewer and it's NONE of their GD business, I have a mild disorder which does not interfere with my health or functioning, but I smile less than most people. Using my facial expressions that way is a violation of the ADA. It's probably also a violation of everyone's constitutional rights who's non-neurotypical on the autistic spectrum or learning disabled. Not to mention that it will probably be based on how men express themselves and not keyed for women, POC, Asians, people with trauma, or any other group.
MAN, just a BAD idea. A recipe for a class action suit in the making.
7
April 12, 2019
Why assume electronic conversation is entirely rational and without nuances and indeed just playfulness in the age constant entertainment and hints of knowing it all and with all that are of interest - and that's normal individually - but how the power of governing command the authority of thoughts is now Trumpian post modern, existential and cute deconstructionism -all to say wit live in a world Gertrude Stein and the lost everyone, everything, everywheredeiireo0reredferereedfere
1
While it is all well and good to hope for a law, rule, or edict that will somehow make all our problems go away, I think that the likelihood that one will have a long-term impact on our lives smacks of naivete.
I think that the largest and most profitable companies in the country either will figure out how to stop the legislation or will create loopholes to prevent its having real teeth. If you believe otherwise, I would take a look at the donations to both Democrats and Republicans from FAANGS and the multitude of their employees. Most pols are not going to lose millions in hard and soft money to accomplish any sort of meaningful legislation.
I do, however, have a solution. It doesn't require any legislation, improve your family relations, make you smarter, and will generally make your life better, at least according to most recent studies. Limit social media. That's it. Turn off your phone when you get home, call a friend or family member, make time for a neighbor, and pick up a book. To paraphrase William of Occam: the simplest solution is generally the most correct.
4
"While we may have zero privacy, it doesn’t mean that we have given up our right to control our digital selves."
But that's precisely what you're advocating. Nobody is forcing you to use any of these devices or services. You do it because you choose to. I'm all for regulations re: informed consent, but what you want is not informed consent - you want rules about what people can and can not consent to, on the implicit theory that people can't competent to decide those things for themselves because they are too inattentive, too stupid, or too unconcerned. In other words - you want to give up the right to control your digital self in return for letting the government do it for you.
That's an ok position to take - and it's probably correct re: the average person's capabilities - but don't dress it up as choice when what you are really saying is people shouldn't be allowed to make some choices because they can't be trusted to choose wisely.
It is too late, Kara.
Privacy is an old thing that must go away to enable a new future (supposedly good or maybe not - who knows?)
The point is, like it or not technology advance is not stoppable now. Privacy is too inconvenient.
Mr McNealy said, "... that there are still enough alternatives to allow consumers to escape being hostages of Google."
I beg to differ:
A recent project by a journalist at Gizmodo tried to cut the big five tech companies out of her life (https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-up-everything-1830565500). When she tried to not use Google for anything, some of her expriences included,
"I leave my apartment with enough time to get there via Uber, but when I open the app, it won’t work. Same thing with Lyft. It turns out they’re both dependent on Google Maps..."
"Most of the websites I visit have frustratingly long load times because so many of them rely on resources from Google and get confused when my computer won’t let them talk to the company’s servers. On Airbnb, photos won’t load. New York Times articles won’t appear until the site has tried (and failed) to load Google Analytics, Google Pay, Google News, Google ads, and a Doubleclick tracker."
3
Electric blue is not a good website color
2
I just want to know - is or is not Alexa listening when you are not talking to it? Please let me know.
@Jack
You shouldn't believe me even if I tell you she isn't.
I don't even like to comment on NYTimes anymore ... are those, too, being scooped up to track my thinking on the issues of the day?
Knowing full well that even being a subscriber, and reading articles, judgments are being made, and lists are being 'curated' for me to read.
Best decision we've made is to stay off of / away from 'social.' A few less tracks, perhaps ...
But realize that is just a small sliver of this very slippery -- and terrifying --slope nearly all of us have willingly bought and paid for already. The ground supporting that ledge we're all crowding onto is shifting waaaay faster than most average folk can keep up with, learn and react to.
46
@jazz one
I just Googled part of your comment. You are not being indexed.
@jazz one There is unfortunately no escape. The adtech eco-system is widely distributed so every click, every linger, every visit becomes part of a profile that inevitably can be joined together to track you. Whether you've joined Facebook or not, there's a node in their system that represents you, created by your interactions with their members, forever remixed and tagged.
Here's an experiment. Flush your cookie cache, and see how long it takes for those targeted ads reflecting your past usage of the net start to appear.
No escape.
1
@Frank J Haydn
Thank you! :) And how reassuring
Appreciate you taking the time.
Ms Swisher characterizes regulations as something connected to a single jurisdiction, whether it’s an American state, the US, or the European Union. What this characterization leaves out is that today the information space is much flatter than in the past. National boundaries do not function as they once did. Data moves where it will.
At the same time, the EU has a lot of it. That’s why the GDPR has already had a global impact. Companies chartered all across the globe that do business and warehouse data within its borders are subject to the regulation. The GDPR alters data privacy practices far beyond the Union.
The unprecedented ease of moving data anywhere requires us to consider a different approach on privacy. The reality is that the GDPR works because that’s where the data is housed or transmitted. The sheer volume of data is what gives the regulation its reach. This should tell us that national—and certainly not US state level—approaches can be effective.
Those who influence the most data are the ones that can drive events. That fact powers the global reach and impact of the EU with its GDPR.
Guess what other country has similar, if not greater, data that can be subject to privacy regulations? If United States passed legislation aligned with the GDPR, the impact would be profound.
4
The internets had a lot of potential back in 97. Then came the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 98, a gift to big tech and a knife in the back of writers and artists. Then came "social media" that people waste hours on every day, ironically by themselves. Greedy capitalism once again triumphed and Mark Zuckerberg is the poster child and not your "friend." The analog world is way safer and much more healthy and fun.
6
The issues in discussion are very important. But a tangent is the amount of personal information available just by Google-ing your name. Your address, phone number and even your age. You address history. Imagine someone who has a paid subscription to this "search" service - they will have even more. Examples of these services is Whitepages, Spokeo, Mylife. And it's all out for the taking. It's criminal. We need regulations so these people can stop making our lives into their profiteering racket.
4
Before computers it was difficult and expensive to aggregate data from disparate sources. Lets make it exoensive again by outlawing it outright. In addition to bring back some lost privacy it would slow down directed advertising.
2
Think back a few decades, before digital communication. Would it have been legal, or remotely morally acceptable, for AT&T or Bell Telephone to listen to all our phone conversations, track whom we called, what we ordered or what inquiries we made, what we discussed with friends, and sell the information to interested businesses, who would then telemarket to us? For the Post Office to open all our mail, private letters and packages we ordered, to look for information useful to marketers?
What Big Tech is doing is much, much worse, because so much more of our lives is conducted under their spying eyes. It's comparable to having bugs and cameras installed in our homes. In the past, spying on people wasn't illegal because it was technologically difficult, it was illegal because it's wrong.
183
@Martin In the bad old days, before Internet stock trading was invented, it cost a small investor about $90 commission to buy or sell 100 shares of IBM stock at a major brokerage firm. Now you can get the same trade done for under $5. If you have 1,000 shares to trade, the commission is still under $5. In the old days, the commission would have been hundreds of dollars.
1
@Martin
Yes..but we expect to be able to send email for free, talk on Skype etc for free.
We pay for using the postal service, paid for phone service- so one could argue we had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
We used to buy paper maps when we went somewhere new, now Google Maps etc are... free
So maybe we should accept that we will have to pay directly for some of the new technology- and can then be in a position as paying customers to demand and enforce right to privacy
4
@Howard Jarvis
What you say it true, but so what? Nobody is denying that there isn't value in the world wide web or that it can't be useful to people. But, are we suppose to give up everything for something? Are we just suppose to passively take anything the tech gods give us? It's all or nothing?
6
In about 1998 I invested in a company called NetProspect, which was going to use cookies to decide what ads to show you. It never got off the ground, but the concept certainly has. I am delighted that Europe has GDPR, and stunned by how many people run their lives through their devices. I remember all the spying that the Nixon administration did. Now we are letting companies reach far more deeply into our lives.
5
@kate I first learned about blocking ads on the Internet from NY Times columnist David Pogue.
Some of us have more serious concerns than Amazon learning what kind of shoes we like. Frankly, in this country, we are at a point in our history where the current regime poses an existential threat to millions of us.
Many of us who are not white or Christian, such as myself (I'm a native-born American with Middle Eastern ancestry) understand we are now the targets of the Trump administration. It matters not whether we are activists or in any political sphere. We all know we wear a target on our back now. And once we're identified, Trump has nearly half this country's citizens just waiting to get their instructions from him to begin their assault.
Frankly, one of my last concerns is what Google does with the information they receive about my consumer purchases. I'm much more frightened at the information entities such as Google or our own government have about my ethnic background and how easily my family may be found.
Americans who are white and Christian just don't understand what it is like being targeted in this way. Oh, certainly their privacy concerns are legitimate. But they know that whether or not they support Trump, they won't be his targets.
But many of us will. And now, these concerns for our physical safety are uppermost. We know that all the concern about "illegal" immigration is just a cover to target any brown-skinned person. And we know how technology will be used by our government to target any one of us, for no reason other than the color of our skin.
6
I agree with the author that a lot more needs to be done but totally disagree that Europe is cracking down too hard and that we "don't want to impose undue burdens on new start-ups or throttle innovation." Boy, is that ever the Silicon Valley mantra for greed.
It used to be that I could buy a computer, phone, tv or any device and that's how the companies would make their money. Then I remember when it occurred to the product marketing industry that all of theses objects could be used to track everything about you and the real money was made by selling their customers' data.
I need to use Google for my research. Why can't I pay this "free" service a monthly subscription with the guarantee that my data would remain private?
I knew that the buzz about the "internet of things" - every device being connected - along with face recognition and AI trends, meant we were in dangerous territory of being stripped of all privacy. Those new start-ups and innovators can figure out how to sell hardware and services without selling us out. Until then we need to do what Europe is doing. Europe has still not been totally consumed by the capitalist model and stills believes there's value in individual privacy.
6
@Rebecca Why do you 'need' to use Google for your research? There are other search engines out there, some of which do not track searchs so your privacy would not be compromised. That's the way to combat privacy problems, do not use devices or services that do things you disagree with.
If enough people do that, companies will get the message and modify their practices. If not enough people care enough to switch, there is not a real problem.
2
The loss of personal privacy created by the Internet has triggered the collapse of centuries of law protecting our privacy, both in the powers given to States, and in the powers shielded from interference by the Federal government.
Even the venerable NY TImes' privacy jamboree this week perpetuates the myth that privacy is not a protected right. In doing so, it undercuts the basis of far-flung legislation and constitutional law that protects other personal liberties.
We don't need a "new right". We need legislation to restore rights that have been abused and pilfered away through ignorance and the crushing power of Big Data.
54
@Sequel Then stay off line. No law will ever keep up with changes in the tech world. Just impossible.
Kara's missing the point. We're living in a money-crazed world, inhabited by the very rich and at the same time, the very poor. Inequality reigns. Even among the different levels of wealth there is envy, not trust. Such a world prompts its inhabitants to spy, and among the less scrupulous, to cheat.
Were our society constructed along different lines, of equality and concern for others, what need would there be for individual secrecy, for envy?
Think of this when you vote: what candidate is concerned with the greatest good for the greatest number?
39
@JFP
I think she's more on-point in this article than in anything I've seen from her here at the Times. We need to learn about what other countries have done, get up to speed on how the laboratories of democracy in the states are approaching this, and proactively press candidates to address this in a substantive way at a federal level.
We need a national conversation on data exploitation.
Ideally we are all equal under the law, but there are differences in genetics and disposition and education and skills and a whole host of other things that appeal to people's sense of envy. And there is, still, among many, a sense of humility. Now of all times, when everyone is curating the most perfect moments of their lives, not just in their private physical photo album you may or may not ever see once but on their social media they push notifications to you to visit again and again.
Gay young people growing up in phobic families may need individual secrecy. Some people who have experienced abuse or disease may wish to avoid having that be known to all and a stumbling block to starting fresh.
We've come a long way to society at large accepting one another's differences and not perceiving them as disabilities or sins, but there are a lot of people who have a long way to go on that.
6
@JFP A great summary of what's really important. Would that the media address this when they talk to, and about our political candidates.
1
@JFP Greatest good for the greatest number is a dangerous position to take. It can, and has been, used to justify everything from forced sterilization to genocide.
1
Big tech has permeated our culture, and not just through social media or Amazon or the like. Our employers and insurers are after information of the most intimate kinds, with increasing pressure all the time. At my place of employment, a large one, we have received repeated instructions to fill out forms online with detailed questions from whether we have pain in our fingers, wrists, etc. to how many times we rise at night to urinate. We pay more for our deductible if we refuse to answer. (It's worth the money to me to avoid it.) It isn't just the possible (and likely) eventual bad uses of this power of information that is wrong with these insistences--it is the ongoing loss of human dignity that goes with being probed and scanned in all these ways. Privacy is not just an accoutrement of human being; the ability to keep it, like the ability to remain clothed and not naked, is a possession that should be in the hands of the person whose privacy it is. That should be a given.
54
Thank you, Ms. Swisher, for writing this piece. For too long there have been too many voices (mostly paid by commercial interests) ready to spread the propaganda of the wonders of "being connected".
Just the other day I saw an ad for a refrigerator with multiple internal cameras so that you could see the contents from your smart phone while away.
For real!
I'm supposed to pay more for that? Whoever came up with that has got to be insane... And then I realize, there really are people who get excited about that sort of thing and want it.
Am I destined to turn into an old fogey because I don't want to share every private detail of my life with commercial interests?
I spend most of my time in France now. I'll be retiring here soon. Happy to disconnect more and more. Virtually all my daily expenses are paid with cash, leaving no electronic trails of debit card receipts. Mostly I don't carry my mobile phone when I'm out and about, unless I'm specifically expecting a call.
NYT, WaPo, Facebook (a very cost effective way to keep in touch with the family back in the USA) and my very simple banking requirements, these are my only digital connections.
It feels really good to disconnect more and more.
More time for gardening...
32
@J Jencks - The cherry tree I planted 3 years ago got its first flowers this Spring. I'm curious to see if they will fruit.
I feel connected.
11
@J Jencks I've not seen the ad for the refrigerators with cameras, but in any case that has nothing to do with the subject of this article. those cameras give YOU information about OBJECTS -- and yes, I can see some degree of usefulness to be able to check what's in your fridge while you are at the supermarket, and not sure if you are out of something, etc.
But the point is the only question here is how *useful* that is, not if it is intrinsically "good" or "bad" to have that information even available in the first place. THAT is the subject of this article, not how worthwhile any given piece of information is.
@MadManMark - Thank you for telling what was the subject of the article.
Of course, if I can see into my refrigerator through a phone app, then the only reasonable assumption is that anyone in the world with the proper technology can alsoo see into MY refrigerator as well, though it may be illegal for them to do so.
Every digital connection OUT into the world is also a digital connection INTO our private lives.
Security is any issue extremely closely related to privacy.
So maybe I understood the article after all. I really wasn't writing about whether or not I was low on milk.
15
If you want privacy then stop giving it away for free. Get rid of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest. Don't use 23andMe and Ancestry.com. Most people know where there families are from and you can bet those two companies are monetizing your DNA results for sale to insurance and pharmaceutical companies and law enforcement. Don't use them. Call people. On the phone. Stop being so self important that people care what you are eating and where you are. You'd be amazed at how much free time you now have when you lower your digital footprint.
54
@markd Unfortunately, at this point, even if you don't submit to 23 and me, enough of your relatives, close and distant have, to make you identifiable. Facebook, whether you are a member of not, has a slot for you in its social graph. This issue cannot be addressed personally anymore.
1
@markd: There is far too much victim-blaming going on here, and this discussion of privacy is not about free time. Let me give you an example I've provided elsewhere: about a decade ago, my county digitized its property records and made them available on the county website, which can be accessed by anyone with an interest and internet access. Without a thought to residents' privacy, my county made those records searchable by name, so if you know my name and city of residence, you can easily find my spouse's full name and our address. You would also have a pretty decent window into our financial resources, including whether or not our house is under mortgage, the size and age of any loans, and whether or not we are up-to-date on our property taxes. Used to be that those records were accessible only to those who showed up at the courthouse and presented ID. Now any keyboard cowboy sitting anywhere in the world can have my information with just a few clicks. The whole thing is terrifying. I'm not comfortable with it. Are you?
2
We need something. I just got a robo call that Caller ID said was from me, at my number.
40
@Peter Aretin from Boulder, Colorado wrote:
"We need something. I just got a robo call that Caller ID said was from me, at my number."
This national plague of robo-calls began just after the financial crises of 2007-2008. I've been getting robo-calls from myself since about 2013.
AT@T, Verizon, and other phone providers claim they have not yet developed the technology to stop this plague, but I think it's because they probably make money from these robo-calls and really don't care if we are harrassed.
If I choose to leave my ringer off, since I get from 10 to 15 a day, everyday, I'm in a sort of prison-by-forced-choice.
The free market is out of control.
It's the freedom for corporations to do whatever they want.
It's called Capitalism the Bad.
3
@Paul
I no longer answer the phone unless I know the number
3
@sjs. I also got a call from my own number. I don't answer unless the number is in my directory and attached to a name, but I realize I'm going to have to be careful about that, too. A hint I got from the phone company - never give your name or say "yes" unless you know exactly who you are talking to. Robocallers can record your voice and suddenly you're ordering things over the phone that you never ordered.
2
FIRST OFF antitrust legislation to break down the behemoths, antilobbying legislation to curb their influence… Next, new laws in Australia charging Social Media Tech Sector profiteers with the responsibility for #livestreaming hate crimes are another very obvious necessary first step ~ and these exact same measures need to be directed at corporate media sporting social media SHARE buttons while streaming Trump™ rallies inciting violence. Maybe adequatly SEVERE penalties, say 75% of total revenue and/or outright shutdown of their businesses these soiulsucking ghouls can crawl back under their #rupertmurdoch rocks
1
"Share Crazy" as far too tame a description of what's happening. This is a massive collision of narcissistic, insecure and leap of faith behavior, even in the face of the obvious risks of exposure (or maybe because of them.) It's all wrapped up in "Enough about me... What do you think about me?" (Look at what I just ate! Please "like" what I just ate.) Historians of the future are going to have a field day with this age.
1
The writer states "Do you like the idea of A.I. comparing your facial expressions to a company’s top and bottom performers during a job interview? I don’t. "
Well I do! I want to be evaluated free of interviewer personal bias and passed over for a position because I'm not a member of the right tribe. Like it or not humans a highly tribal and recreate little tribal microcosms where they work, socialize and do business. It would be nice if we could be free of that at least in something as ostensibly impartial as a job interview.
Does AI, robotics and quantum computing have your panties in a knot? Take a good look around. With each passing day humans prove themselves less ans less worthy of existence. Perhaps it's time we step aside and let something else run the planet.
1
What frightens me the most is can we imagine if Stalin, Hitler or some other nefarious entity had use of our computer stored information? This alone is great cause for concern. Who has this information and what they can end up doing with it?
For starters, get a European email provider. One that allows you to die.
2
If you want to *prevent* crimes before they happen, you have to let the law enforcers keep tabs on potential troublemakers. At Disneyland, the "happiest place on Earth," you are paying a premium to live in a surveillance state for a while. You get the illusion of peace, stability and safety. They get to put up a wall around their property, screen everyone who enters, and watch visitors at every moment, from every angle.
In the past year I've stopped all kind of social media "sharing". I was always a very private person, but over the years I just went with the flow and joined the various social networks that everyone else uses. Then I saw first hand the political fights, the anger, the vitriol breaking up friendships and I realized that this entire "sharing" thing can be very unhealthy for the mind. I bailed out, and for over two years I haven't posted anything public in any "social media" platform. Today my only social network consists of a small restricted group of close friends on whatsapp. We don't get trolls. We don't have to expose our private lives publicly.
When I see famous people, so-called celebrities, spreading even the most inane details of their lives on the internet for everyone to see, I feel sorry for them. Their lives must be so hollow, validated only by the number of "likes" that they get from complete strangers because of the latest handbag they bought, or because of a selfie taken while sipping a latte somewhere. Always with their oversized sunglasses, always with their lips puckered up, always looking like they "must" look for the social media world. How pathetic.
3
Sue Halpern of the New Yorker has a very good article on this topic today. The message is that big-tech has gotten far too big for the good the vast majority of Americans. Extremely strict regulation is a necessity.
The article is at: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/mark-zuckerberg-elizabeth-warren-and-the-case-for-regulating-big-tech?utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_041119&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd66d7c2ddf9c6194380167&user_id=14672101&esrc=&utm_term=TNY_Daily
4
Scott McNealy, the prince of anti-privacy. Also the perfect guy to go into business with Larry Ellison.
I have experienced being spied on by my government. It taught me very early in life to question most of what everyone in elected office said or did. In other words, to think as I listened and to feel quite free to tell those in public office what I thought and expected from them.
But the intrusion was deeply unsettling and never forgotten. I use Facebook fairly openly, but with increasing reservation. However, it is a primary way to stay in touch with friends no longer physically near me. Writing real letters would take a great deal of time, and phone calls would alarm them. I use the privacy options available on my computer and my phone, but am under no illusion that it does much for me.
Right now, my email is overwhelmed with junk, porn, medical advertising, loan offers, and anything else that it is possible to send a human being. I never click on links I should not; never have. Still I am swamped.
All I can do is try to limit the options for others to use my data, but I would vote for greater control over the tech companies in a nanosecond. I am fed up with excuses from the tech companies, Facebook especially.
2
You want to be private? Don't use an affinity card at a grocery store. They sell the data and have for decades. The same is true with credit cards. Don't make donations, they sell lists of donors. Don't use a GPS or easy pass, they track where you are. Don't use Facebook, pintrest, Twitter, Instagram or Gmail. Any app which is free has to make money somehow.
Yes all these things are conveniences, you make the choice to use them. I know people with virtually no digital foot print. The buy in stores and use cash. They use maps and occasionally get lost. They talk to friends on the phone. No one is forced to use the technology.
3
@Liz Beader
Those are good suggestions for privacy. Although some will be costly like not using cards when shopping for groceries. Also, on the internet you can use the DuckDuckGo extension with Firefox and perhaps other browsers. Right now my DuckDuckGo extension says it is blocking several trackers included two Google trackers. Also you can use DuckDuckGo for searching instead of Google, Bing, etc to avoid data collection. On a cell phone you can use the DuckDuckGo browser to avoid tracking although in my case it doesn't work with my cell phone. You can also use an ad blocker. I turn mine of off for the NY Times and few other sites. Of course there are many other steps that can be taken for privacy on the internet although some may be technically complicated or require paying a fee.
2
I recommend Shoshana Zuboff's excellent 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism' to get an understanding of how we have sleep-walked into the hands of Zuckerberg, Brin,Page et al. We really need to take back (some) control but I fear it may be too late.
5
I will take the trade off if the law as a tool can use the internet to get pornographers, money laundering, arms trafficking, drug smugglers all the low life’s in jail or in the ground
1
Pornogrphy is not against the law.
Who is " we" ?
The hard historical reality is that black African Americans are second class citizens in every civil secular endeavor. Including the creative and business and user side of social media. Physically identifiable while separate and unequal is the honesty that exposes America's callous cruel cynical hypocrisy.
The notion that any human being does not have meaningful choices does not apply to the white European American Judeo-Christian majority. Just say no.
1
Silence is Golden.
1
At first people buy all the privacy-invading gadgets, gloat about their possessions, and then start crying for the Big Brother to do something about them. Get real and check carefully everything before though bindest thyself to it.
2
I stopped reading when she used the word "grok."
3
This is a woman who laments the problems of technology in this article, but a few weeks ago in these pages, waxed ecstatic over the dream to eliminate human drivers and be chauffeured around in self driving cars. Everyone needs to make their own decisions about this stuff. We complain all day about cell phone privacy but walk around all day tethered to them to our hands as if they are as essential as oxygen tents. (Personally, I don't have one, don't need one, and don't want one.) I always laugh when rich elitists in these pages celebrate themselves for 'giving up' cell phones for a day! Give them up- you don't need them. The only people who need cell phones are real estate agents and drug couriers. Want to make a phone call? Wait until you get home and make your calls from your living room in the evening. The rest of us do not want to hear your meaningless drivel.
1
The solution is simple. Go on line using an artificial identity.
1
Social media is not exactly a haven of sincerity as is.
There have been several articles along this line in the past many months and neither the authors or the commenters ever provide any good solutions to the most important reason we have arrived at this lack of privacy.
How will internet content providers earn a living off their work, and how do we convince users to pay for it. Even the E.U. hasn’t answered that question.
Many good points but just highlighting an inaccuracy I hope the author will clarify: "my deeply felt relationship with that iPhone that spans decades now." Somewhat misleading although technically accurate: the iphone has only been around for about 11 years so I guess it spans two decades but clearly the author intends to convey a longer period of time. Just a tad misleading. I do agree with the general thrust of her article--she had no . need to exaggerate!
2
The "hindrance to innovation" fig leaf has gotten tiresome and predictable. Regulate them and regulate them good.
5
@Wuchmee In other words, I'm not strong enough to wean myself from privacy compromising services and devices, so protect me from my weaknesses.
Yes, we need privacy in our tech world.
We also need real privacy rights in all of our world. We did not really have them before. Other countries do, but we never did. The Supreme Court found a right by "penumbra" enough for birth control in our bedrooms and control of a woman's body for the early stages of pregnancy. But that's all we got of privacy. That's it.
We need to create real privacy rights, and not just as limits on tech giants.
4
I have been preaching for quite some time that our information should be just that, ours. There should be regulations stating that upon the user's request, all data a company has pertaining to said user needs to be disclosed as well as completely deleted if asked. Regarding Mr. McNealy's comments that any regulation would put an undo burden on a company's ability to innovate; I say too bad. If a company cannot come up with a business plan that doesn't include digging for every scrap of information about someone, then society is better off without them.
5
Around the time of the Edward Snowden leaks, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times pointed out that the greatest threat to our private's came not from governments but from corporations who are subject barely any law and little regulation, and who, moreover, can move their data as easily as they move their capital from place to place, from country to country, as they please. Yet we are complicit. Because we like our services to come free -- email, shopping and shipping, searches, news, you name it -- we have commodified ourselves and sold them in the form of the only currency we create, data. Some of us remember a time when the "electric company," the "phone company," the "water company" were public utilities. If ever something were ripe for public ownership, it would be the internet, which are like the airwaves, and which had once been regulated as such too ... with fairness doctrines and restrictions on how much of the media (broadcast and print) a single entity could control. But in our brave new economic world, we now privatize our public resources and submit our private lives to public scrutiny and exploitation.A very bad trade-off indeed.
5
You can thank FCC chair Ajit Pai, among others, for this state of affairs.
There have been a number of stories on how the NSA pretty much hands the "keys to the kingdom" to whatever law enforcement entity asks for it.
The "keys to the kingdom" are all of the tools that the NSA has to spy on terrorists and anyone else who they want to. This is what Snowden warned us about. It includes the ability to hack into all of our devices and turn them into spying devices -- cameras, microphones, and tracking devices all rolled into one. Don't make any enemies. With this level of information, they can set into motion all manner of conspiracies against you.
2
It's interesting that most "tech-skeptic" articles (if I can call it that), include some sort of disclaimer such as "Let me be clear — I love technology, including my deeply felt relationship with that iPhone that spans decades now."
It's like we feel the need to proclaim that we are not neo-Luddites in order to be taken seriously. Well, "technology" encompasses many things. It is not a singular noun and, for the most part, I don't love most new technologies and don't feel the need to apologize. With some obvious exceptions, many apps and new devices are overly distracting, intentionally addictive and manipulative, actively separate us from each other, track us ceaselessly, and can actually make us feel worse about ourselves. Technology is not neutral.
7
Beyond legislative remedies to assure that there exists some digital boundary somewhere between what is public and what is private, the larger problem is a cultural one.
Americans, today, have almost no inkling of "civil society"; that there might be beneficial implicit guidelines for how one speaks and behaves in public versus how one might behave in private. Look to our social media President's indisputably deplorable public behavior and his continued approval by much of our population for a case in point.
Expecting others to respect one's privacy, to mind their own business, goes hand in hand with not insistently foisting one's own private affairs, private choices and private expressions upon everyone one meets, in person or digitally, as if they were important to all and worthy of everyone's applause and approval. The personal is decidedly not always political, or at least making it so has vast unintended consequences that can erode the liberty of all.
We need privacy legislation to assure that privacy is possible, but we need to change how we think about ourselves and each other to make the distinction meaningful. We need to restore the understanding that we play our part in civil society and in our democracy with a public persona; that it is not a form of hypocrisy, worthy of scandalized public intrusion, to wear a civil mask. We need a Digital Miss Manners to tell us what not to parade in public and to politely look the other way when others' privates are exposed.
3
I can't imagine anything worse than handing the regulation of all this over to appointed, not elected, government bureaucrats. They answer to nobody. We don't have to use any of the technology. As far as I'm concerned, the farther the government stays away from all this, the better. Adults shouldn't need nannies.
1
@Working mom
No, but big tech sure seems to need nannies. You don't trust the government but you do trust huge, profit-driven tech companies to respect your privacy?
2
Because we cannot prevent discrimination, privacy is fundamental to democracy. That is why our founders promulgated the secret ballot. The freedom to support whatever political leanings we might have depends on our ability, at times, to keep them to ourselves.
Remember the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when people having indices of the wrong attitudes were sent to farms for "re-education." The same thing can happen anywhere on a more subtle basis.
Does holding a particular opinion or political belief prevent me from being employed? Do my religious beliefs undermine my ability to hold public office? Are the police more likely to harass me if they know my beliefs? These things happen now and, with my privacy compromised, they can get a lot worse.
3
What’s missing here is COST
I pay to use google with my data
Do I want to pay instead with money? No
So take my data and I really don’t care what you do with it. Nothing to hide.
Also - MONOPOLY
There is no alternative to google.
That is a monopoly - but my outlay to Google over my entire user life has been $0.00
So I don’t really care.
8
@DMB If someone *did* care, how is the market offering them search and social network services they could choose to pay for in cash... rather than paying "in kind" by allowing massive surveillance of their activities for the purpose of manipulating them?
Just call it "Market Failure #10,000,000"... and put it somewhere on the list beneath all the external costs imposed on others by ExxonMobil, Uber, Walmart, et al.
Google is in a class by itself
Exxon holds no monopoly - they sell a commodity with a market price
They have huge US and global competition - mostly against the US/EU integrated majors and global government owned oil companies
Walmart is not a monopoly as evidenced by Amazon which has taken their market share year by year
These companies cost us US dollars and sell goods and services
Even though there is not a single viable competitor to google, they don’t take my money
And no one is forcing you to google to find out who won Best Picture in 2002 (A Beautiful Mind)
That’s a big difference - every google you do is an agreement that you are using a service someone built on their dime for your benefit without exchanging money and instead data - assuming otherwise is naive
The window to the world for the cost of data has been a great deal!
Instead when they get regulated we’ll be charged money - just because you are worried a corporate will know that you googled “how to treat hemorrhoids” or “nearest Panda Express”
Don’t ruin the free lunch
@DMB
What you said pretty much sums up the attitude of most people, especially millennials and younger. If it makes things more convenient, and it's free, most people don't care if they have no privacy.
1
Is it our privacy or how it is used? Would anyone have imagined when we shared our telephone numbers that robo-calls would later deluge us? That firms would sell our most personal details? That their laissez-faire data security would lead to our credit cards getting hacked? This isn't about sharing, but corporate abuse of our personal information, crossing boundaries we never expected would even be legal.
Clouds are something I imagine to be be faces, creatures and plants. My mobile phone flips open and is used for emergency purposes. I own and use a FAX machine. I know how to write a letter and apply a stamp (I miss the licking). My most frequently visited sites are the weather, river levels, tides and NYT. Yes, you guessed it, I'm old.
56
Is being old some kind of a redline for enjoying licking stamps? How absurd.
Hindering innovation is becoming increasingly a red herring that absolves most of tech of any responsibility. We need to take care of people, not programming.
1
Completely agree that tech companies have amassed too much control over the public's life. It would be ideal to take power back through legislation, as Swisher suggests, but.....does anyone seriously think our government - and this applies to both parties - would put the public interest over the interest of rich, giant corporations? One could've been less cynical about this some years ago, but that's not the America we live in today.
2
If the middle class carved out private space for itself, Google, Amazon and Facebook have colonized it utterly. Online activity used to "feel" private, sitting at home on the couch, but for all legal intents and purposes, you might as well be standing in a public marketplace in your underwear shouting out purchase orders (and opinions).
We're only starting to realize the extent this information reveals about our circumstances, hopes and fears. Merely changing a brand of toothpaste or cancelling cable might tell Cambridge Analytica you've lost your factory job and will vote for anyone who promises to restore coal/auto/oil jobs.
Did you recently google "divorce" "herpes" or "gambling addiction"? We know.
3
Maybe we should tell the tech giants, hey, we're going to break you guys up. From now on, think of yourselves as tech pygmies. Oh, and "get over it."
As you all I worry already a long time, this is no revolution, this is not an open internet, but as long as the algorithms are not that smart as we are, we can make our own choices.
You don't have to buy from Amazon, you can still perfectly shop in the reel world, you don't have to accept digital currencies, we luckily still have coins and dollar bills, I can phone my friends and really talk to them!! So people wake up, the capitalist companies only try to manipulate you, as ever. Stand up !! Stand up for your rights! Love you all !! Jaco from Holland
31
@Jaco de Boer - I very much like the spirit of your message. What do you think of the recent move by Sweden to eliminate all cash currency, so that all purchases must be done with a card? This naturally results in a database of every financial transaction, it's amount, time, location and the identities of the individuals involved.
From what I gather, from family who have traveled there recently, there is no resistance to this on the part of Swedes. It seems to have been accepted without question.
3
It's becoming increasingly difficult to apply for a job without going online and the job application is also often accompanied by a psychological survey of ridiculous rhetorical questions. You can't apply if you refuse the survey. Often you never here back at all. Occasionally you get an email telling you that you did not pass the initial screening. In a serious job search, you could easily fill dozens of these type of questionnaires that purport to provide potential employers with a measure of your suitability for employment. Who owns them?
1
Mr. McNealy has never been forced to apply for a job online. It's an interesting and annoying experience because the applications are poorly designed, the sites require us to create accounts, and we're often asked questions that look legal but aren't. On Facebook no matter how often I click on the same idiotic ad to eliminate it, it returns as do recommendations for "friends".
I will not do my banking online, pay my bills online, or buy from Amazon (if I can avoid them). I'm tired of targeted ads, emails, and other things online. I resent having my information online to begin with. I resent being treated like a wallet. People should not have to worry that their identities will be stolen, their personal information put out for all to see, that they will have their credit scores ruined because the companies collecting their data cannot protect it.
Technology, when it's used to invade or compromise our privacy, is not user friendly. If nothing else every person ought to be able to go online and destroy whatever data they don't want others to see. Mistaken arrests, foolish posts, embarrassing pictures, childhood posts.
The other thing everyone needs to keep in mind is that those vicious posts we make shouldn't be made at all. Never post or put into an email anything that can be twisted to hurt you or someone you care about.
Measure twice, cut once.
2
Not sure how you can have a "decades"-long relationship with your iPhone, considering it first came out just under 12 years ago.
4
@Nick I was about to comment the same. I stopped reading this piece after reading that sentence. Obviously everything is exaggerated by this author. The iPhone is only been around a little over a decade. I agree that privacy has become more of a luxury nowadays, but you still have the control. You can choose not to use social media at all, for example. It wont kill you. I did not have facebook on my phone and stopped using it for a year, and my life was perfectly fine, if not better. I thought of deleting it completely but I still see some values in it because I have friends all over the world. Anyways, my point is, you still can have control over your privacy by limiting your own technology or social media use. Just because everybody else is doing it, you don't have to.
2
Asking us to give up some aspects of the digital worldview, or to support legislation to reduce the prevalence of the digital world, is a little like asking someone addicted to oxycodone to take fewer pills each day.
In fact, it’s harder. The digital “worldview” is the only way of dealing with our world that the rising generation is accustomed to and has adopted subconsciously as a set of deep-seated assumptions about the nature of life.
Try convincing a majority of the people who are religiously committed to the belief that the Bible is literally true—that the sciences of geology, cosmology and evolution are useful, increase our understanding of everything material, and are generally true—and you’ll see what’s going on with the new worldview.
Good luck.
1
Why don't we just have protests days where everyone deactivates Facebook or other social media? Can this country not go one day without Facebook? Would the result not be significant to the stock performance or image of the company? Would it not prove our ability to take control of our own lives and stand up for ourselves? I think too many people simply don't care. I mean putting an Alexa in your home is basically admitting you don't care if a corporation hears everything in your home. I suppose people aren't ready to take control of their lives. As usual, we need "the government" to do what we should be doing ourselves. Corporations should fear the ability of their customers to influence their decisions. We've all become sheep, staring at the fence like it's some impenetrable barrier.
1
US tech companies that do business in Europe (which is all of the large ones) put in place privacy measures to comply with GDPR. In most cases these are tools which give users more knowledge of how their data is being used, and more control over its usage. For example: at myactivity.google.com you can search all of your interactions with Google, and selectively delete them.
3
Capitalism is all about making a profit. From the wind if necessary. Look at the crazes of the past centuries: tulips, oil, real estate, stocks and bonds...we are just a greedy species. So we permit others to mine our data that they've glommed onto somehow and this too is capitalism at work, to make money. Problematic is decoupling sheer greed from the more sinister potential of social control and domination. For that we need to implement and enforce privacy laws.
2
It's not helpful to bewail data sharing in general; we need to look at how that data is being used. There's a difference between data used to sell us stuff, data used to decide if we get a particular job or qualify for a mortgage, data used for law enforcement, and so on. And then there's data sharing intended to protect us, such as knowing if the people we pay to care for our children have been convicted of child abuse.
Letters of recommendation are a form of data sharing, as are online restaurant reviews. It's hard to know where to draw the line.
3
How about some regulation please.
1. You own yourself, dna in particular
2.Data about you is yours, you own it, not business.
3. If someone wants that data they should pay you for it.
4.You should have a choice as to whether you want to give up data at all, for money, free services or not at all.
5. All of this "commerce" is taking place over what?
Bandwidth, the airwaves, electronic wires.
We own that, not business.
Make regulations to govern privacy through the FCC
Basically through data collection and sale this is exactly like a pickpocket reaching into your pocket non stop all day long and whenever he finds something he can sell he does. We need to stop the wireless pickpockets.
This brings to mind the idea that there is nothing new under the sun. Pickpockets are one of the oldest of the criminal professions and the easiest to accomplish if you've got good hands and are even a little stealthy. Try not to look at all this new technology with awe and just look straight at it for what it is.
Data mining is simply an act of wireless pickpocket.
We're all being stolen from 24/7
Lets stop it.
10
I mess with them by searching for, clicking on or "liking" very discordant things. I like Trump and Maxine Waters. I love and hate Cheetos. I have an arsenal of AR15s but I hate guns and don't have any. I browse Home Depot and then buy from Lowes. One thing I don't do is put Facebook on my pho...oh NO, now I've done it!!
3
@PeteG I've done that too, it's fun!
The genie is not going back in the bottle.
2
Too bad we can't post graphics here because this morning a took a screenshot of this opinion piece "We're Not Going to Take It Anymore" on my iPad blocked off at the bottom with the message "You're in private mode . Log in or create a free New York Times account to continue reading in private mode."
I read the NYT using a self-invented honor system: My subscription gets paid automatically every month, but I often do not log in when I read (I have various ways of doing this & can get past the message quoted above.) I'd pay an extra $5 a month for a 100% non-tracked subscription and I'd even read without ad blockers if none of the ads ever, ever moved but just sat on the page like they do in magazines.
12
On the contrary, tech giants need to be slapped down hard just the way the EU did last year, but with much stiffer fines and jail time for executives who do not comply.
4
Scott McNealy says that consumers can escape being hostages of Google or Facebook or Amazon...and are free to stop using their platforms.
McNeally well knows that these platforms are use used by people everyday in both their personal and business lives. Smugly dismissing consumers concerns by telling us to get over it is the epitome of self-serving business arrogance.
10
I usually love Ms. Swisher's columns ... and who WOULDN'T want "more privacy" rather than "less privacy?" Actually, without exaggeration, there may be many millions who would consciously OPT, as the author puts it, for EVEN MORE "SHARING."
But she leads off with half of the truth - Mr. McNealy's unlovely but SPOT-ON summary. The other half is that PRIVACY COSTS - used to be you could have an unlisted number ... for a few bucks a month. NOW, those who dislike Google's model (heavy on advertising ... HENCE - and make no mistake about this - THEIR wanting to know more about you than you'd really prefer to give them - light on privacy) have limited choices. Yes, there's a search engine that swears it doesn't "monetize that data," but Facebook has some time-saving aspects ... together with 2 dozen other features, some of which I love (and you may hate) ... or vice versa.
It's great that the folks in Belgium seem to have values that align well with Ms. Swisher ... and me. But I think they're fighting a losing battle. This is whack-a-mole with many $billions at stake - FB *clearly* will do almost anything to maximize its profits. They'll certainly lie about what they're doing and how they're doing it ... and pay the fines if (and only if) that's to their financial advantage.
Meanwhile, look for the likes of them playing the games that cable channels now do, "LET THEM KNOW - you want your (free) social media!" Ms. Swisher might as well advise that we all take up yoga.
1
The old, unattainable dream of dictators, of religious leaders, of con men of any kind. In short, of anyone who needs control: the intimate knowledge of people's minds, desires, dreams and fears. The knowledge of their acts, their habits, their affections.
And now, pushed by the lesser impulses of vanity and puerile approval, the people themselves give it away. For a few likes. For the feeling of ownership (the newest iPhone, oh!).
Never thought I would see this.
too bad.
1
anyone remember when you opened an account with whichever telephone company you were GIVEN the phones? no batteries, very little chance of losing usage when the power went out?
what are you 'connected' to that's so important that you've paid a stupid price for more plastic parts and declining natural resources to be made/used?
in december my car and i met a guard rail on ice. some terrific young ladies pulled up and offered to call a tow. no reception.
get a grip and a life instead of staring at an overpriced, unreliable, planned obsolesence, unnecessary 'machine'.
3
The Sacred Teachings of American Capitalism: Rule One: thou shalt not take any actions that shall interfere with or impede the unfettered pursuit of profit.
1
Europe has it exactly right. If our data is so valuable, we should own it, get paid for it, and so control what's done with it.
1
I wish someone would give examples of what "innovation" would be "stifled" by European-style regulation. How many food-delivery, ride-sharing (taxi), or home-sharing (rental) apps do we need?
1
If there's something in the past that could embarrass you, it's more likely than ever to come out. Technology and the internet have let the publicity genie out of the bottle, and there's not much we can do about that except keep a low digital profile and be careful about what we reveal to others.
I have no Facebook or other social media accounts. Using a dating app is obviously out of the question. As for my medical, tax, and financial records, I assume they can be monitored and made public, despite any government regulations to the contrary. Same with my whereabouts and movements. In short, I assume that I have very little privacy and act accordingly.
I'm glad I don't live in China and that I'm too old to worry about the development of a thought reading microchip that the government will require to be implanted into every citizen's brain.
To really understand the danger of digital to the future of humans a good idea is to read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Frontier at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zubofff who coined the phrase surveillance capitalism. People will not be understand this from tweets, some heavy reading is needed. To really take on these high tech companies who gathering data to predict our behavior and modify requires understanding what surveillance capitalism actually is which is the purpose of Zuboff's book. Also, it is important not to fall for the hype about computers and to believe they can replace humans. Computers don't really learn in the sense humans learn, all they they do is make better predictions with their algorithms by analyzing data sets. Computers don't know what they are doing, they are just computing numbers. And don't expect self-driving cars to arrive soon or even to arrive. So-called self-driving car can never drive as well as a human in the complex environment of local streets. It isn't clear why the idea of self-driving cars hasn't been abandoned as a fantasy. The purpose of the internet of things is to gather personal information on people to make money. It makes no sense for anyone to hook anything up to the internet except for computers and cell phones and maybe a printer. Everything else hooked up is a needless invasion of privacy and creates the vulnerability of hacking.
4
@Bob
Thanks for highlighting this interesting book with "Survelliance Capitalism" in the title.
You write: "The purpose of the internet of things is to gather personal information on people to make money."
I haven't read "Das Kapital" and only know about Karl Marx through second hand and more likely third hand sources, but we really do need to appreciate him for his prescience for the power of the capitalist economic project in human history. He foresaw that anything and everything that could be commodified would be, such is the driving force in humans to gain profit.
Just as cities (New York and San Francisco notwithstanding) create zoning rules about building height, residential area versus commercial, etc. so must "surveillance capitalism" be zoned to protect privacy and preserve the dignity of life itself, to live without being eaten by data.
Maybe the simple answer is that every household needs to be shielded with a Virtual Private Network, or we just turn ourselves over as we have but require all companies to subscribe to a "harm prevention principle" and make it a felony in event the data is turned against the user.
Scott McNealy is basically right; I doubt this is his opinion as opposed to a simple observation on his part. And the law won't rectify the situation because law over IP and subjective concepts like privacy are equivocal. They fail too often to define their subject matter (leaving it to the courts over time).
Modern law is a slow, blunt, inexact instrument. Where there are laws, statistics, data analytics and machine learning (AI) will -- I predict -- quickly defeat the effectiveness of such laws. Technology is leading us back to the world we knew a century ago. A world of villages, small town gossip, honor and shame and where everyone knew (or had an opinion on) everyone else's business.
1
While I loved "B's" anecdote about his mother's spies, I think "B" is wrong. We have lost something valuable. Part of it is summed up in two phrases that I used to hear fairly often. One was "getting away from it all" and another was "live and let live." Now you can find the phrase "zero tolerance" (a phrase in which all shades of grey get lost) even on the website of the ACLU (which I otherwise mostly love). We can't seem to understand that some human errors are the result of mental illness, brain injuries, lack of education, somewhat lower IQ, failure to adapt at lightning speed to changed customs, etc., etc.
3
The EU in this case has it more right than wrong.
As for some sensible rule stifling innovation, that won’t happen. The medical devices industry is probably on of the most highly regulated of all high tech sectors. Yes, real high tech, not low to medium tech such as Facebook and other social media companies.
And yet the medical devices sector is one of the most creative sectors that exists. Those who want no regulation always use this canard.
1
Mr. McNealy displays textbook wealth-induced myopia. He may be able to live without google without missing a beat, but the rest of us-- including, I would bet, his assistants-- not so much.
1
@johogufu I believe you misunderstand. What he actually meant was using a search service like duckduckgo instead of google.
@johogufu:
Living without Google is easy and has nothing to do with wealth. Simply use "Duck Duck Go" or the myriad of other free search browsers created with and have/leave no digital trail.
I realize these days everything and everyone must bash the rich is order to show their bona-fides, but a simple search on Safari will provide you with an entire world-wide community providing support and real ways to stay away from Google, Amazon, etc.
@MadManMark - I was going to mention duckduckgo myself, until I remembered how Google is so much more than a search engine.
1
Kara,
Good and proactive article. McNealy's perspective isn't wrong, but needs updating. Like Scott, I've been in the computer business a long time. When we started, in the 80s and 90s, virtually all the internet users were techies with STEM educations. We now have virtually every person in the world carrying a computer/smartphone in their pocket. Unlike the original users of the internet, these millions of new users are true consumers. They should not need computer science degrees to use the internet safely any more than they should need electrical engineering degrees to know if their new toaster has design flaws that will cause it to burst into flames. My suspicion is this type of issue is exactly why the Consumer Protection Agency was established initially and a good place for new privacy protection rules to be implemented.
One concern I have with your thesis is that it's broad and your solutions are broad. Consider where we'd be in this conversation without Facebook, and to a lesser degree Google/YouTube. (I'm focusing on privacy here rather than free speech). FB apps like Messenger and the changes to What'sApp and Instagram suggest nothing has changed in how they plan to grow and thrive. They are also the biggest consumer platform. It's a bad combination. McNealy is right that antitrust could be used to block future FB acquisitions and existing laws to limit their mistreatment of their users. That's a start.
1
After the Christchurch shooting, I found it illuminating to see a lot of comments on the NYT website about how Facebook et al enabled this by allowing the video of the shooting to be distributed by anonymous sympathizers. And so as way to stop viral hate and harassment from spreading, Facebook and other internet companies should link users to their real world identities.
These commenters have a point: Anonymity on the internet seems to unleash hateful and/or trollish behavior in some people, leading to a hostile on-line environment and, perhaps in extreme cases, terrorist attacks. My next door neighbor Bob might be less willing to engage in on-line hate speech or trolling behavior if everybody in the neighborhood finds out that Bob is doing it.
However, tying on-line identities to real world identities would be the ultimate in anti-privacy measures.
Ms. Swisher and every other columnist in The Privacy Project assume that privacy is an unalloyed good. But it isn't. How do we strike a balance? How do we protect privacy to an extent that most people are comfortable with while mitigating some of the bad effects that total anonymity can unleash?
I wish the NYT would explore this in greater detail rather than treating privacy as a simplistic black-and-white issue.
2
I don’t think the Founding Fathers had any intention of creating a system where anonymous writers would fill our lives with garbage. They believed any person had the right to say, write, and create any criticism he or she desired, provided that person made it clear who they were. In their minds, what kind of pathetic low life would not stand up and take responsibility for what he or she wrote or said? Yes, they had some anonymity for things like the Federalist Papers, but everyone at the time knew the authors. Madison and Hamilton were not hiding from anyone. Ben Franklin had Poor Richard, but it was a one person newspaper. Who else could it be?
I would have no problem with NYT using name verification in its comments process.
1
As one commentator has pointed out the amount of time frittered away on these devices, especially kids, may be the bigger problem here.
So some observations on the invasion of privacy. First money is driving this. You are the first party, the website(s) you are looking at is the second party, and anyone they sell your data to (or worst case scenario--the government) is the third party. It's your data. Whether you don't mind sharing it, or do mind, it's your data. If someone is buying it, it's worth something, and just like your time that you get paid for at work, you should receive something for it. So a simple law: When your data is purchased by a third party, you get paid for it. How much? Negotiable, but i would say at least a third, plus you know who the data is sold to and any subsequent sale, also who they are. Burden record keeping? No, not at all, the internet companies are already doing this.
On major platforms like fb, google, and the Times another law: They must offer a subscription service with no third party tracking/sales, if users request this.
And a big button on all these websites that says No Tracking, if a user prefers that. And assuming the revenue will be made up with normal no tracking ads, that a percentage of ads be reserved for small company ads, say 20%, same rate as big advertisers.
Cookies make it easy to use websites that you return to. All other websites, a button to not allow or erase cookies. Default = Privacy, ease of use.
7
@loveman0
I think you are on to something here...good points. We really are witnessing a "wild west" of digital space.
Exactly what kind of "innovation" are we trying to protect when we give up our privacy, our power, our agency, and our money?
It's innovation that has brought us, what, Instagram? Snapchat? Lyft? A way to pay for goods by subscribing to them rather than owning them, locking us in a never-ending cycle of renting goods we never have legal control over?
All this "innovation" from the private sector has produced products which are used to coordinate genocide, spread hate, encourage addiction, increase anxiety and depression, separate people from each other more and more, etc.
In short, the innovation Americans love to defend isn't actually helping anyone other than those who steal its profits from those of us who build the economy. And it's only capable of feeding our worst habits, our worst instincts, our worst demons...
It's tragic, made all the more tragic because the tech companies tell us the tragic is inevitable. It's the same way Big Tobacco tried to convince us that cigarettes were harmful and not addictive: "If people are concerned, they are free to stop buying it." Just like how alcoholics are free to choose not to drink?
"Any system which allows [humans] to choose their own future will end by choosing safety and mediocrity, and in such a reality, the stars are out of reach."
We're in full control now. God help us.
5
It's not just how much privacy we have, it's our expectations of privacy. This has real significance. Consider U.S. law that has developed around the 4th Amendment. Consider Roe v. Wade. We absolutely need law/regulations as stringent if not more so than Europe. These big tech firms like Apple have cash to burn and then some and in this relatively unregulated environment they aren't doing so much in the way of "innovating." To some extent this column shows the effects of too much corporate Kool Aid.
Personal information should be considered a property right, similar to physical property, and treated accordingly. If Amazon, for example needs certain information to complete a transaction, I might grant them a limited license to use my property, and only to the minimum information required to complete the transaction, but without explicit permission and possibly some further remuneration (from Amazon to me) that license would be very limited. If they want further information and/or want to distribute that information to affiliates, track me, etc., then they have to ask permission and pay me for my property. This concept should be applied to everything from e-commerce to personal medical records.
A shift in mindset towards personal information as personal property with property rights enforced similar to physical property would likely require substantial shifts in many current business models and would likely cost all of us something in that much of the Internet could no longer by “free”. I believe the cost would be more than worth the increase in privacy and ultimately in security. As always you get what you pay for.
12
World wars saw us publicly reinforce the need for secrecy with such idoms as loose lips sink ships. One of the unrealized risks of storing and classifying of so called benign information is that in aggregate, it has incredible value. This is why hackers (I would guess foreign states) went after personnel records in US govt, hotel records and so on. GPS location data is also super useful; it shows us where secret bases are when someone runs around the perimeter wearing their fitbit/garmin/iwatch (really happened!). So be cavalier about the fact that everyone knows you buy toilet paper - it might just bite you in the $$$ eventually
4
Thanks for the irony: a little while ago I made my first attempt to post a comment on this article about the threats associated with high tech data collection. Instead of the usual input portal, the system responded with a notice that it was broken.
It's fixed now, but that failure provided a pertinent footnote to Ms. Swisher's observations: the least acknowledged significant threat of high technology is that which it imposes upon itself and those who rely on it.
You needn't be an expert in the arcane math of
Chaos Theory to grasp the increased vulnerability created by expanding the complexity of a system.
Case in point:
We've been stuck using a variety of phone company's super whiz bang high tech systems since the breakup of "Ma Bell" in 1984. Many of those outfits have disappeared for various reasons but none in our experience have ever equaled the superb reliability of the Bell System's "POTS", i.e., Plain Old Telephone Service.Example: calls to 911 from my home phone now get routed to the wrong municipal emergency operator!
One can only hope that the NTSB will succeed in exposing this phenomenon in the tragic crashes of the Boeing 737 Max 8. A comprehensive root cause analysis could inform deeper probes in the FAA's certification processes.
####
Regarding online privacy, it's simple. I follow Nietzsche's warning:"When you peer into the abyss, the abyss peers back into you." (And outlaws use "burner phones" to stay out of jail.)
3
I love how even articles critical of tech cannot help but worship at the altar of "innovation." What are these innovations but new ways of spying on us and new ways to reduce the workforce?
Everyone, it seems, has ideas about what indicates a society is going to hell in a hand basket. Mine are two: that adults watch films and television about superheroes and dragons, and that people get excited about thermostats that spy on them and then sell the data. Thus, when I am driving home to watch Game of Thrones or stream the newest Marvel movie, I can use my phone to set the temperature of my house because, God knows, it was too difficult to do prior to the Nest. I never liked McNealy, but he is right that we choose these things. Not only choose them, but having them is seen as a sign of status. Hand baskets everywhere.
10
My biggest privacy concern is along the lines of the 2nd and 4th amendments and how our democracy and individual rights are affected. For example the Nixon administration used dirt on people to try to bend them to his will. The tools available to identify and profile people that have views opposing the government are by far the most powerful the world has ever seen.
I read somewhere that if you asked law enforcement to describe the ultimate surveillance tool 20-30 years ago, what they described would not have been as good as what is available today. Clearly law enforcement should be able to use some of these tools, but the scale of what is possible now is so different, that I fear our laws need updating.
(I also don't think Scott McNealy is much of a privacy expert. Better to talk to someone at the EFF, Susan Landau, Bruce Schneier...)
Outlawing AI in products and services that improve energy efficiencies serves to channel profits to illegal markets. If this is the goal, the illegal drug and trafficking markets will happily develop and absorb what we ignore.
I would suggest AI is NOT the boogeyman that the media and “experts” suggest.
Start by reviewing a short video by Victor Hidalgo, an AI future we need to embrace. Ponder it. Think in terms of the following, which are not mentioned:
- You are the owner of your data.
- You model AI functionality to your needs and desires.
- Expanding on the AI video, consider the choices and redundancies you need to build and safeguard the products and services you purchase in a free market, such as your home and savings, while also building your ability to survive a severe natural disaster or climate change. For that matter, have it help build the decisions you need to make to avoid climate change by linking to the community and leveraging economies of scale. This can help democratize our wishes.
Search for “Trusted Identities in Cyberspace,” an old White House document where Obama and Trump appear aligned.
Think about it when you follow GPS. You control the vehicle. The same for AI, unless we simply allow governments, tech companies and illegal markets to have exclusive control.
Search Victor Hidalgo TED talk, getting rid of politicians.
https://www.ted.com/talks/cesar_hidalgo_a_bold_idea_to_replace_politicians/up-next?language=en.
Enjoy!
“So we are off and running to a confusing patchwork of laws. We need a more unified approach, because right now, our privacy regulation looks like a goat rodeo.” This is the way our governmental system is intentionally designed – as a vast federalist labyrinth of checks and balances. This is the way we want it. We would rather surrender every vestige of our privacy than to let government tell us what to do, even if it is in our best interest.
Secondly, the giddy programmers who design the platforms, devices, and software have zero training in big picture perspective, critical thinking, or the ethics and ramifications of what they do. Their sole passion and obsession is to make devices and processes smaller and faster – period. They can’t see beyond that. We have turned our world over to a bunch of tunnel-visioned idiots like Mark Zuckerberg. They are aided and abetted by our libertarian capitalism that likewise lacks any ethical perspective beyond short-term profit.
Put these two factors together and guess who is going to win.
3
Sulzberger’s column in today’s Times is simply awesome. Do take time to read it.
Yet my ad blocking software is telling me that I'm currently blocking at least six tracking cookies as I read this. I get tired of columns like this that pretend the Times isn't part of the problem. I get the need for revenue, but I don't see why paid subscribers have to put up with it.
2
@Frank J Haydn
You are delusional if you think you have full control over anything. At best, you are led to believe you choose from among the options advertisers, manufacturers, doctors, drug companies, stores, schools, churches, and every other broker in our economic and cultural life have pre-selected for you. And you do so without full knowledge, or often any knowledge, of the pros and cons.
To take your specific example, drug companies giving incentives to doctors to prescribe opioids, consumer focused campaigns about the right to "full" pain relief, prescriptions with no information about a drug's addictive potential, poverty that fuels street sale of drugs for a quick high, lax health insurance oversight and regulations that permit reimbursement for excessive prescriptions, the greed of drug manufacturers, and myriad other factors seriously compromise a sick person's "full control."
Same goes for computer access. It comes with a whole lot of mandates and pre-selected "choices." It is specifically designed to give users the illusion of control with no actual agency or power at all.
4
You have a choice.
Did you check the little box that says "I agree with these terms and conditions"?
You have a choice.
Stop using Facebook.
Stop using Amazon.
Stop using Google.
Browse in Private.
Or....
Get over it.
3
No. And you get over it. We are not impotent before corporate demands. They will not restrain themselves decently and so require regulation. For these services just as for others that affect the public good.
10
@jb
I am over it. And I feel fine.
What corporate demands are you referring to?
Does facebook demand that you have an account?
Does google demand that you use its search engines?
Does apple demand that you buy an iPhone?
@gonzo, well, yes, "Get over it" is more pleasant out-bound than inbound, certainly. As to why powerful corporations with needful services making excessive or potentially harmful requirements of consumers must be restrained by regulation lest they abuse the public, the NYT comments are not adequate to the education needed, especially for someone who hasn't understood it already. Please see history or economic sources, which are plentiful on the subject.
2
Peter Townsend of the band WHO says it best..
“Man makes machines to man the machines that make the machines.”
1
Come on, who wants privacy? Everybody wants to be a celebrity! On Facebook everybody can be a Kardashian!
Please! Someone out there.....start taking back the control we once had and the more peaceful happiness that went with it.
Please!
2
Why participate in the first place? Social media is nothing but a great time sink, and an anxiety-producing wasteland of misplaced feeling. And surfing is just procrastination most of the time.
Why bother? There are so many ways to connect with people you truly care about, very old-fashioned some of them, some maybe 20 years old even, like email, the phone, real letters on real stationery [do you know what that is?].
Get an ad blocker. Get off facebook and the rest. Get up and off your 'device" once in awhile. Go work out, or do some house cleaning or something maybe slightly productive, without your phone. You'll feel better.
8
The public is outraged over companies such as Microsoft, Google, FarceBook and others profiting from collected data. These companies are comfortable gathering and selling whatever data they can get their hands on. When questionable relationships are exposed, they offer limp apologies topped off with promises to do better next time. Repeatedly. These companies all skew social liberal/Democratic. Perhaps it isn't just conservative/Republicans who are the sneaky, greedy self-interested 1%-ers.
Should I care that Amazon knows I buy toilet paper (which it doesn't because I boycott them)? Probably not.
I do care that police are now solving cold cases using genealogical sites such as 23andMe (a company Google invested in heavily). Even though I personally have never used any of those sites, I can be tracked down if one distant relative sends in DNA. Without my knowledge or consent, I am then linked to those data bases.
I do care that medical records are all online now. What's to keep the government from searching those records to find out if I've been vaccinated? Only a single emergency declaration.
We are blithely enabling the intrusion into our lives in exchange for what exactly? The excitement of posting that photo of your dog getting a bath? Having your 'fridge remind you to buy yogurt? Saving a few dollars on toilet paper and the convenience of having a drone drop it at your door?
Big Brother IS watching and we should be very worried.
2
As someone who is resistant to always needing the latest technology, I always--at some point--succumb out of necessity. For instance, wanting to book an Airb&b, requires downloading an app. (I had a dumb phone and I didn't use apps). It also required (after dealing with the app thing) uploading my driver's license. Do I like doing that? No, not at all. I could have stayed at a hotel, but it'd be a lot more expensive for a lesser experience. We all get pulled along this in this modern techno world. Some willingly, some kicking -and-screaming, and some (some people who are elderly, some people with disabilities, some people who live in rural areas) will get left behind. I don't know what the answer is.
1
In the history of the world?
To quote president Bartlett, who are you comparing against? The visigoths, adusted for inflation?
Rather than a law, we simply need to exhibit self-control to take some of it back.
2
@Andre Hoogeveen
Amen
Agreed. There are an awful lot of idiots out there engaging in TMI on social media; publishing everything from what they cooked for dinner to their children's school report cards and their vacation plans. Which is why I don't belong to Facebook, Twitter, Linked in or any other platform that wants me to share my life with the rest of the world.
3
I agree with many points raised in this essay but do you have to use the "grok" word in every essay you write? I know it is a real word now but it just sounds pretentious.
1
But, how will I curate the purely superficial aspects of my life - and perpetually violate the privacy of my loved ones - if I don't have social media platforms to rely on?
Oh, that's right. None of these things provide any qualitative good to my life.
2
There is an aspect which I feel needs more attention. That is the effect of errors in the processing of the harvested data. If the outcome is used for the selection of ads, you will get an ad for something you are not interested in. No big deal. However things are becoming less innocent when the outcome of the processing is going to be used for more important aspects of one's life. Facial recognition is not 100% right. AI algorithms are non-tractable. So what if you, at the check-in for your next flight, are being told by the machine "boarding denied" without any reason. Complain with the airline? "Sorry sir, we get our passenger screening data from company X" Complain with company X? "Sorry sir, we get our data from company Y". Complain with company Y? Sorry sir, our algorithms are proprietary and we never comment on individual cases"...
1
@Leen
On the question of regulating cyber space, or making any regulation at all, is the tension between the state "prescribing" versus "proscribing." Prescription tells you what to do, proscription tells you what not to do.
The Harm Prevention principle is proscriptive: do no harm. Maybe the simplest approach in regulating tech and even the state itself, is to measure by harm done to the user and society at large.
We can then let the lawyers duke it out over whether "harm" has been inflicted or not.
With a simple tax on high tech, a public litigation fund could be instituted to finance complaints, and then let the courts guide us through this "wild west " of the internet.
I think the damage has been done to this first generation of Internet users in terms of privacy. The biggest mistake our government made and the mistake the companies wholeheartedly took advantage of was “opt-out”. By allowing companies to put the onus on the user to deny the company from using their information rather than the company requesting to use information, the user essentially opens the door to their house and said “come on in and take anything you want.”. Every company should be required to have an opt-in policy. Basically deny these companies the information unless you authorize, rather than giving them everything then selectively removing their ability to use it later. Plus, these companies have shown that once they have the information, they could care less if you opt-out or not. I would argue that the only way to avoid it is abstinence.
3
People in traditional families with four generations of a hundred people living under the same roof shared more with others. It’s the idea of privacy that got overextended and now seeing a pullback.
The thing I find baffling is how much of this "sharing" is based around either annoying other people or allowing ourselves to be annoyed.
What kind of business model is based around annoyance, and how sustainable is that?
2
@erhoades marriage comes to mind. :-D Just kidding. You're right! The hours my kids spend on phones. I try to convince them that they make $14/hour working part-time, but equate 4-5 hours a night on their phones as zero cost. At some point we need to realize that there is a tremendous opportunity cost to time frittered away on devices, whether they're TVs, tablets or phones. (says the guy typing into a screen)
10
Yes. We need a law. . .we've given up way too much control and I for one. .want to get it back. Thank you, Ms. Swisher for leading the charge.
1
Focus on the cookie for a moment.
What makes the "free" internet corrosive to our social health is that it is experientially free. As grandma said: You pay for everything, and you get what you pay for. In this case, we pay for our addiction with a free pass to cookies, and, since we don't actually pay for any of it, we get a lot more than we want. We have lost our leverage to say "no" by choosing not to purchase.
How is it free? ...advertising, of course! ...the original Cookie Monster! The very concept of bankrolling entertainment, communications, and media industries with funds from an entirely different industry has become so ubiquitous that we no longer see it as an absurdity. We've gone from Horace Greeley selling a few ads to bring down the cost of his daily rag, to TV dramas served up by soap companies, to a society in which virtually every form of communication, information, and entertainment is beholden to commercial advertisers claiming our attention with totally unrelated diversion. It is all free and evermore cheap. We end up with exactly what we pay for.
There is nothing wrong with advertising, but it is time to financially disconnect ads that sell trucks and toilet paper from news outlets, entertainment, and connectivity. Try and imagine a world in which content and service sold themselves, and advertisers relied only on the quality of the products they sell to gain access to our attention.
Pay for what we get, and say no the the Cookie Monsters.
4
Advertisers are in our face, on line, on TV and in the street. The fact that they can track and target us on line repulses me. Why isn't there a turn off switch for tracking consumers buying habits and posting whenever we log on.
As usual, Europe has it right!!!
6
The price for these free platforms is giving up our privacy so they can profit. What bothers me with Amazon and Facebook is that we’re not given a choice. I pay Amazon already and feel they have no right to use my purchasing data. With Facebook I have stopped using it until they offer a reasonable fee to guarantee my privacy. In general, I would prefer to have all my data in a digital safe deposit box under my control not the FANGS.
1
Any and all technologies can be weaponized, so let's not fault the technology and concentrate instead on the perpetrators of harm. As already mentioned here, tech companies aren't really interested in you the individual, it's more about big data, which regardless of your action or inaction is growing geometrically, already at thousands of exabytes. You may argue that China's surveillance technologies are Orwellian, and in its current state, I'd have to agree. But imagine a world that freely policed itself with ubiquitous, openly available monitoring technologies, complete with facial recognition please, capturing our every public activity. Such a world would demand personal responsibility of its citizens, because no bad deed would go unseen. Can we prevent weaponization of this ever-growing trove of public information? Why not? With emerging peer-to-peer, decentralized technologies like blockchain, it will become increasingly difficult to game the system. Data theft, like any other form of theft, must be scrutinized and prosecuted, but what if that too were public. Where's the incentive to commit the crime if everyone can see? Maybe you want to hide out of blind fear of the unknown, but I suspect many cry "Big Brother" in self-defense, while quietly fearing ubiquitous, transparent surveillance systems would bring their evil deeds to light and actually force them to take responsibility for their harmful ways. Digitization is inevitable and resistance is futile. Live with it.
2
@Don Swinscoe I highly recommend you read "The Circle" which hypothesizes exactly what you suggest with very dire consequences. (Read the book; the movie is terrible.) A better solution is for techies to have an ethics review process much like the medical community has that evaluates new procedures and clinical trials in the attempt to address the impact on humanity.
The medical community has a binding principle of "first, do no harm". Sadly, the technology industry--like Wall Street--is in the business to make money first, humans be damned.
1
@Sabrina Thanks for sharing your perspective. I've read "The Circle," seen the film and found it entertaining, but myopically sensational. Ask yourself: are all the characters equally transparent? No. Instead, data's showcased again as weapon, wielded by the few. In reality, data's not the villain though, nor are the technologies that convert it. Instead, evil exists because of privileged human access and hidden abuses. Data is an unavoidable byproduct of our existence. As with our climate, if left unmonitored, it poisons us too. Ultimate transparency is critical to preserve our existence, so yes, I agree that ethics must be a guiding force in our physical and digital lives, but I think better technology is our only hope. Quite frankly, we are the "technology industry" you mention. Social media, search engines and other online tools are mere reflections of our world, extending our reach. Data and tools don't inherently cause harm though, their users do. The ethics review you seek must include everyone. Not determined by a small group of folks deliberating in a closed room, but instead by an open, transparent system of monitoring, providing the means of self-regulating our ethical conduct in all matters and maintaining a meritocracy that rewards good behavior and punishes evil deeds, openly available for everyone to see and shape. There can be no public privacy.
@Don Swinscoe I get your point but I'm not sure technology is the way out of this. I'd say we absolutely need more regulation, but sadly our legislators are woefully ignorant about how the tech works and what the possible future implications might be.
Open monitoring systems sound great in theory, but like our politics, I suspect most people would never engage as they should, which still gives those who know more about the technology or have more funding an opportunity to manipulate the system. A form of gerrymandering, if you will.
No, I really do think this boils down to a self-regulating professional industry organization for tech/data/privacy similar to the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, and the like, so that companies and their practitioners can lose accreditation for unethical behavior as deemed by the principles that body has sworn their members to uphold. Whether it's feasible to have tech industry leaders agree to what those principles are may be a different story, but I think it would be worth having that conversation.
I was given an Amazon Echo Dot as a holiday gift over a year ago. I only used it for weather forecasts and for playing music. But when, on multiple occasions, Alexa started having random conversations with me, I unplugged it. It became increasingly clear that despite the protestations of Bezos and company, this device was listening. Always. How neat a trick is it to convince consumers to install a spying device in their own homes willingly? And that's exactly what these devices are, make no mistake.
It's creepy enough that browsing a few shopping sites on my PC suddenly triggers ads for the same companies on my phone. And I'm convinced (though the tech companies deny it) that our tech providers are also listening to conversations/reading emails via our phones and serving ads, accordingly.
I'm fully resisting the push to connect all of my home appliances to the internet. Aside from the headache of trading handymen for IT troubleshooters (Lord, help us) when things go wrong, I simply don't want my every move or eating habits to become fodder for more marketing or even lifestyle intervention. I envision a day when a device named Hal locks the refrigerator and says, "I'm sorry, Dave. You've already met your calorie requirements for the day."
21
We are not going to reverse the course of new technologies. That would be the equivalent of banning cars so we can return to the clippety-clop of horses. But there is a lot we can do ourselves: Clear the cache on smartphones every day; get off Facebook; don’t Tweet; use Google sparingly; change passwords periodically; and demand that the government pass sensible regulations to curb the
excesses of the tech companies.
2
Are people not aware of the way these companies make money? They are first and foremost advertising companies - why are you surprised that they use your data to sell you stuff? At the end of the day, its about money - lack of privacy is just an artifact. As someone involved in tech since the early 80's I'm in full agreement with McNealy's observation - you've never had privacy on the internet, but until recently it was not quite so blatantly obvious. If you don't want your information harvested, then your (only) choice is to opt out.
4
Sharing my data doesn't bother me as long as it is not used to rip me off, embarrass me or cause me financial harm. Most of the information that is shared is useful only to marketers. Let them market away. For some people sharing harmless details of their lives is a substitute for actual friendship which is difficult to come by in this community-challenged age.
3
@Jay Orchard Read the other stories in this series and learn. Start with the insurance industry.
1
@Scott D
Saw it. I don't mind having my health monitored. I exercise.
1
@Jay Orchard You're very confident--do you never get sick?
1
What troubles me most are the digital zombies I seen walking down the streets and crossing streets against the light in traffic with head down and eyes glued to their iPhones. People sitting next to one-another at restaurants, each one one their phones and not talking to one another. The art of social interactions, face to face, may be dying - not to mention dying while texting and driving.
17
Scott McNealy: “There is nothing to be done about it but consumer choice.”
What he articulates here is the depressing but pervasive notion that neoliberalism capitalism in its current state is inevitable: admittedly flawed, but nevertheless the best we can hope for; that we humans and our irrational longings for a different and better world are unrealistic; that we are ultimately collateral in the face of the freedom to accumulate money.
5
@suiops
Well said.
2
Kara, it is vastly more complex than you seem to propose. First the consumer already decided that they prefer “the Internet based” information for free. At the dawn of the Internet era there were plenty of companies that tried the “for fee” model. They all went out of business. This is similar to time decades ago when we decided we wanted TV form “free” in exchange for advertising time.
Secondly, and much more importantly, capitalism and its initial funding approach play a much different role these days. These services that are “free” can only reach a critical mass by gargantuan up front funding from private investors (see Google, Facebook, Instagram, but also AinB, Uber) that build critical size and make us dependent on their services. Once that dependency is established, the private investors want and need their money back. And we now happily pay.
The above is a well established playbook of big finance capitalism. That is the way small mom and pop shops, small hotels, small bakeries, and so on went all out of business. This is the way capitalism works.
If as a society we do not like it we could have reigned in this type of economic take over by large well funded financial institutions by establishing far more restrictive anti-thrust laws a century ago. We did not. And received the rewards accordingly.
If this is or was good for society is obviously a judgement that we as a society have vastly different point of views - however as a majority through democracy we approved.
1
It's also another generational issue, as unfortunately most folks under 30 give up their privacy without even thinking about it.
A recent, strange example: the wife and I were recently looking at, well, adult goods, on Amazon. I was shocked at the thousands of reviews for each device - many including customers' full names and even photos. These customers happily left extremely intimate details about their sexual likes and dislikes regarding each device.
Now I'm all for sexual freedom and free speech. But for one of the first times, I felt like an "old man", in total disbelief of what people were willing to tell a company, and millions of strangers, about their sex lives.
1
" — and I think it’s pretty inevitable we’ll get one (a law) in the next few years."
First KS describes a critical need, then slams the EU solution, that being effective laws.
It will be a real knee-slapper to see what our system produces at the end of the process! (Laugh emoji here!) Without a doubt it will further the power of the tech giants. They are the ones in charge, not congress for gosh sake.
And regarding AI, there have are now several books screaming out the warnings. As far back as the mid-twentieth century Isaac Asimov saw the danger and produced a short list of constraints or commands to be incorporated in every intelligent robot. These seem quaint today, and inadequate, but it was a start.
We all need to remember the following lines from that old movie;
'Open the pod bay door HAL. . . HAL? HAL!!'
'Sorry Dave, I can't do that.'
I can't understand why people care about data being used for marketing purposes. We all have agency and are far from powerless to resist even the most targeted advertisements. Also targeted advertisements are a small price to pay for the free service we enjoy in the form of social media.
Any law should address the issue of third parties obtaining access to private information that can be used to harm (location, financial information etc) and also the use of information to spread targeted propaganda. (The latter being more difficult to enact given the first amendment). But social media companies should be otherwise free to market to us however they want.
2
@Timothy Pearse. I was recently on the internet looking into tours to France. My email was deluged with advertisements for tours. Worse yet my phone message machine filled up with calls from the tour companies. I’m sorry, but calling my home constently is an invasion of my privacy and peace of mind. I don’t even know how they got my phone number.
1
Just start small: legislate that products be usable without access to your GPS data. On top of the plethora of apps that demand to know where you are, the internet of things is becoming more pushy as well. Example: I purchased a smart plug last year for our Xmas lights, and the thing wanted me to give it access to my location! It was comical. I assumed it would be like a switch you control from your phone, not a blatantly obvious data mining tool. And yes, that got returned.
1
Thank you to Kara Swisher for this well-needed article, and the Times for this new series, The Privacy Project. This is the first of the related articles I've read (I've read several here over the years) and I look forward to reading the rest.
This is one of the most important issues of our time; we need to come together to resolve this regulation before AI, 5G, quantum computing, robotics and facial recognition get ahold of it all.
Being the most data-generating and data-chomped makes us the most vulnerable to exploitation.
That's something many don't really seem to get their heads around. Why do people think advertising and push-polling are such mammoth and successful industries if people aren't susceptible? As with every Constitutional right we must establish a new set of responsibilities for our age.
I find McNealy's comments out of touch. We all use toilet paper. What about the people who buy, say, adult diapers?
The comment about hindering innovation of smaller companies made me wonder if that's not why Mark Zuckerberg's said on more than one occasion he welcomes government regulation.
Still, we don't have regulation now, yet what small companies have recently grown to seriously compete with Google or Facebook that would not have done so otherwise?
That's not rhetorical, I know alternatives to Google (behemoth Microsoft's Bing, for one) but what are all these alternatives to Facebook? Most Facebook hostages I hear from don't seem to recognize any as truly viable.
3
The obvious solution is to reinvent the United States Postal Service as a "killer app" that replaces Facebook, Twitter, Google, eBay, Amazon and all the file storage and "gig economy" sites with a clean, transparent, public communications platform supported by taxes and revenues from high-volume users. The Post Office is in our Constitution for a reason. It would be expensive to modernize it, but it will ultimately cost us more to leave our communications in the hands of bad actors.
4
My new car does not have GPS nor do I link it to the internet. I do not own a cellphone, never had, nor will I ever have, a social media account such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Lately I have been thinking about buying a hijab along with a face vail so when I walk into a store they will not identify me with facial recognition! Most of the time I pay cash for everyday purchases. My emails are non personal and I use several privacy blockers on my computer along with a search engine that does not keep records of my queries. I do not understand the desire to share one's life with strangers, corporations or the government. I have frozen all the major credit reporting agency accounts to minimize the chance of credit fraud. There are days when I consider living off the grid, unfortunately I enjoy my creature comforts ( such as air conditioning) too much.
8
We do share far too much. Show And Tell has become a national pastime. I was just as guilty as the next person for this impulse. Fortunately, I quit using Facebook, and never got an Instagram or Twitter account. On Facebook I shared all kinds of photos and thoughts. While I thought I was being somewhat prudent, what I was doing was simply comparing my own Show and Tell desires with others who really went full-tilt-boogy with sharing every emotional up and down, every dog photo, every daily accomplishment like it was a major news story. Once I quit Facebook, however, I realized the real value of pulling back. Since I'd turned my back on my "audience" (aka Facebook Friends) things slowed down. If I wanted to tell or share something with a specific person, I'd just write (or even more shocking) call them. I learned to say "no". Now, I know data is out there. I'm not under any illusions that turning off social media puts the problem back in the box. However, it's a start. I have coffee with others in the morning - I mean really sit down and talk in person. I meet with friends once a week in a cafe. I've learned the value of silence with a book. I watch people walking around staring at screens and shake my head. Am I a snob? Probably, but I don't care. At least I've got a sense of what it is like in the weather as opposed to some device strapped to my wrist to tell me how well I slept. I'll take being a human any day over being a cyborg.
20
@Michael Kennedy A thoughtful and well-written comment, Michael. Ironic that my first impulse (which I resisted) was to share a link to it on Facebook.
4
An idealistic and aspirational column for sure.
Practically, however, we need a American government that answers to voters and not to the special interests with lots of money to spend. As long as political campaigns are funded by big money, the only new laws related to privacy will be ones that create profits and fund campaigns.
Can it be done? Yes. Just look at the lawsuits against tech industries IN EUROPE!
5
@dpaqcluck
I'm surprised we haven't seen similar lawsuits here, though I suppose there are many hurdles we put in place.
Tell people this is one of the policies you're concerned about and ask them to develop solutions to discuss in the coming election season.
1
Dropping out seems the only viable alternative, yet, somewhat unlike dropping out in the ‘60s, the resources for maintaining privacy are declining. A new Whole Earth Catalog doesn’t seem to be in the offing—even the old versions seem dated in a digital age.
All indications are that we’re dealing with a new form of totalitarianism, developing under the guise of “the economy.” The old Soviet Union will pale by comparison. The new totalitarianism will have “a human face”—no need for all that torture and physical oppression the Soviets used. China, of course, is showing the way.
6
Just wait until health insurance companies get their hands on your grocery bills and credit card receipts. They would love nothing better than to know which insureds eat too much sugar or have more drinks more often than the government says is "safe." The technology that is already in place could easily result in you being greeted with a "helpful" reminder at checkout that you've already had too many eggs this month.
And what about those company wellness programs, which some companies even go so far as to make essentially mandatory by levying an extra charge for health insurance amongst those who refuse to participate? Already Orwellian, can you imagine how much control they could exert over an overweight employee if they could receive information from "smart" home exercise equipment and monitor your activities to make sure that you're getting in the exercise they've decided is necessary?
We have already seen massive assaults on our freedom and privacy at the hands of technology, but it's NOTHING compared to what's coming if we don't stop eagerly welcoming into our lives the tools of our own downfall. Just like you don't need to pay for groceries with anything but cash, just like you don't need a Facebook or Twitter or Instagram account, you do not need "smart" appliances. You don't need an Alexa. Even if we've gone too far to let our phones only be phones, we can minimize their usage.
We still have a choice, but that's not going to be true much longer.
74
@Kristin
Hear, hear Kristin! I've been worried about health insurance and company wellness programs for years. So many people voluntarily surrender their data for so little in return now but I rue the day when it will be become mandatory.
5
@Kljgray My insurer is already slowly turning the "wellness program" into a scolding, warning program. It the past 30 days, I've gotten 2 mailers and 3 phone calls about the gym discount. The first caller wanted to "inform" about the wonderful program & what it could do for me. I politely declines since I can read and it was fully explained in the literature I already had. The second caller began the conversation by noting that I'd not taken advantage of the "generous" program to safeguard my health and well-being and demanded I give her 3 good reasons why. I hung up. The third caller apologized that the second call had obviously been disconnected in error and wanted to make sure that I was aware of the long term health consequences of unhealthy life choices. I hung up again. Of all the data collection entities I worry about, health insurers are at the top, and when I read that Amazon is looking to get into the mix, it makes me want to go back to stone tablets.
24
Thanks for the reminder . . paying for groceries with cash! I forgot about the days when you forgot to go to the bank on Friday and had no money for the weekend. No ATM to bail you out. No credit cards. Yeah, that was privacy bliss.
6
To me, sharing implies offering someone something they want or need.
People obsessed with being seen and read and heard on today's digital gee-gaws and do-dads are saying "look at me! look at me!"
It seems sad and lonely.
And a bit pathetic.
60
"We have to figure this out now, because more privacy-threatening technologies — such as artificial intelligence, Close X, 5G, quantum computing, automation, robotics, self-driving cars and above all, facial recognition — are all part of the next wave of innovation."
I would start by dropping the term "innovation". The privacy-threatening technologies is all about using whatever technologies to achieve private sector aims, aka profit.
When I was growing up I never considered myself to be living in antiquity. Innovations came along at a gradual pace, and were accepted at a leisurely pace. But now we are being told that we are indeed living in antiquity. A world without facial recognition, quantum computing, self driving cars, 5G, etc. is simply unacceptable.
We are being mass hypnotized to believe that the advance of civilization is dependent on the advance of digitization. For example, self-driving cars and trucks will be a massive change is in many aspects of transportation and industry, requiring trillions in investment, but who is begging for it? There is no "national conversation", even about the loss of millions of commercial and public sector driving jobs.
Its digitization, stupid!!
1
@sherm I recommend reading, The Technological Society, by Jacques Ellul. He addresses your concern that there is no conversation, gadgets and weapons of mass destruction "just happen" because we adapt without question to each new thing. (Ever been told in the workplace that this or that has to be done because that's how the computer program works?) It was written in the early 1950's .... still germane, and here we are, More of the same. It's still worth a read. A careful and thoughtful analysis of technique and technology.
Excerpts from a variety of Ellul's texts:
"Psycho-sociological techniques result in the modification of men in order to render them happily subordinate to their new environment, and by no means imply any kind of human domination over Technique.”
"There is no relation between the proclamation of values (justice, freedom, etc.) and the orientation of technical development. Those who are concerned with values (theologians, philosophers, etc.) have no influence on the specialists of technique and cannot require, for example, that some aspect of current research or other means should be abandoned for the sake of some value.“
PS: his book, Propaganda ... is also relevant.
1
if you eat something toxic, you realize that fact as nausea. you vomit, you're now wary. in psychology, this "one trial learning" is called the "sauce-bearnaise syndrome" -- because once a bad sauce makes you vomit, that one experience will put off sauce forever.
ms. Swisher is proposing that most people don't have a natural feeling of nausea with digital media, so the nausea should be legislated into their behavioral options.
consider what is really happening here: human species engineering. you don't naturally get sick by eating too much unhealthy sugar, so we'll legislate your sugar intake instead. but -- we keep eating sugar.
full agreement: digital media, in various ways, stimulates human impulses that have not evolved to resist the stimulus. it's too new for evolution, even for society and culture, to handle effectively.
the deeper conclusion is that technology in the whole -- the entire infrastructure of cars, planes, fast food, digital media, telephony, banking, credit, health care, clothing, work, opinion formation, socialization -- is making us sick in ways that don't make us vomit. because hurling is a long adapted response in a fundamental alimentary process, and banking online is -- much too recent and novel.
legislating "control" is not reducing control -- it's transferring control from technology to law. meanwhile, control is always species engineering. ask yourself, where is technological human engineering going -- for example, is it making you sick?
1
These companies don’t care about your individual data. No individual user matters at all, so you don’t need to worry about your privacy with big tech when it works as intended.
What you need to worry about is your privacy when it comes to data breaches. That’s when people who do care about what you’re doing can find out things you’d rather they not.
We’d be better off if the government spent their time worried about data security.
2
Those of us who participate in the modern world can't move without leaving digital droppings, and unless there's a collapse of the cloud, they will never disappear.
Google your name and there you are, in all your stupid glory, with the letter you wrote 15 years ago to a small college newspaper in a small town you were visiting just for the day. Check your bank records from 8 years ago, and there you are, withdrawing $400 from a cash machine at 10:08 a.m. on October 12 at Broadway and Canal. Look at your MTA records, and damn if you aren't swiping your card at 96th and Broadway at 5:04 in the afternoon on March 12, 2016.
It's already an Orwellian world. Facial recognition schemes will simply be icing on the cake.
9
In many ways our value as human beings has been reduced to your impact on the web. Are you mentioned in Wikipedia? How many times are you mentioned on the web and how many hits do you get? Etc. It has become a world obsession. At one time your value as a human being was judged by how much you contributed to your society often behind the scenes or little acts of kindness. But sometimes it seems that the internet and media has change irrevocably how we look at ourselves and our value as human beings. Truly sad.
Thank you, Kata Swisher, for sharing this.
2
Or you could just stop using social media. Any of it. All of it. Have as little of a digital life as humanly (GET IT?!?!?) possible. That might solve your problem more effectively than protesting an institution that by its very nature relies on intrusions into your privacy.
6
We don't need new laws. We need people to act responsibly.
9
@Bjh
I see, we'll just bring responsibility to their attention, and they will fall in line? Laws exist precisely because people do not act responsibly. And they injure and take advantage of others in the process. Living together with the protection of a legal system is called a functional human society.
3
Mightn’t another approach be for everyone to overwhelm the system with useless data. Instead of not participating and hiding from the technology, indiscriminately click on everything!
In related news, the inhabitants of Messier 87 objected to our recent snooping and opted out of any further data sharing with us.
4
I do not mean to quibble, but people living in small towns and in traditional societies had much less privacy than we do. Having no privacy was the normal state of affairs for most of human history, so we can used to it. Perhaps we should, if the benefits outweigh the problems. Perhaps this is not as big a problem as the author feels it is.
When privacy began to erode, I expected I would be upset by it. I find I do not care much. Then again, I am not on Facebook or other social media, because they do not interest me. Still, anyone can find me or contact me. No one has done that in a way that bothers me. Based on what I have seen when banks, Amazon.com and other institutions show me their records, they do not know anything more about me than I would volunteer if they asked.
2
Taking items without permission is stealing. Confidential documents on paper or electronic, what difference does it make? Then using that digital footprint to create "my life's digital narrative" to others is wrong, on so many levels. It's not allowed in the non-digital world (am I allowed to say "real world") so shy should it be allowed in the digital world?
And god forbid the narrative contains errors. People certainly shouldn't have to struggle to correct these lies and slanders created by anyone.
Life is more than a digital footprint and a lawyer having your back. We are allowing the digital world to replace everything. Technology in the wrong hands is a dangerous thing, and we see this on a daily basis.
4
Perhaps you will despair slightly less about your, "relationship with that iPhone," when you are reminded that does not, in fact, span decades. The first one dropped in 2007/June. Hard to believe but true. Just twelve years ago. Which makes what you write all the more intensely meaningful.
3
There doesn’t seem to be much discussion about the benefits of data collection to small business. Without the ability to target advertisements to consumers on the internet who are interested in specific things, it will be harder for smaller businesses to advertise. Most likely the only ones able to afford ads will be big businesses who can successfully advertise to the general public.
1
The ubiquitous spying on humanity through our ubiquitous technology is arguably the greatest threat to humanity, because it can be weaponized by hostile actors, whether
by private companies, crime syndicates, nation states, hostile states, or individual hackers. The problem is the permanency of digital data. It just does not go away. So as long as mankind has enemies, our data can be stolen and exploited, to our peril. Companies like Google seek to aggregate ALL information (incredibly reassuring us with “Don’t be evil”) which ultimately gains them power approaching an omniscient God. But they now want to mate this Orwellian mining of our privacy with computerized “Artificial Intelligence” which aims to exploit that “Big Data” in ways that will surely lead humanity into deeper abuse, even wars, not “God.” Read the ancient story of the Tower of Babel to understand that man’s quest for supreme power apart from the true God and understand that such misguided projects flawed by our sinful reasoning will not turn out the way it is being sold today.
1
It's true that we have control over much of what data we expose to the world. We don't have to do commercial DNA tests; we certainly don't have to do the daily mind and soul dump so popular on Twitter, Facebook et al. And the police and banks use cameras that help to protect us and our money, I'm all for it.
But, I am convinced we as individuals ---and our data deserve protection from AI. constant mining of our innocent online activities and oversight on how, what and why the techs collect and analyze our personal data.
They want total access to our every random thought and Google search because we are the coal and they are the big guys scrapping off the mountain tops to get to it and then sell it and us to the highest bidder.
The E.U. is right in suggesting that our right to control our personal data is a right just as important as our right to clean air, safe cities and access to health care.
I rarely use social media, but when every simple search I make ends up in somebody's marketing plan, I am mightily annoyed and want my government to stop it just as they stop old fashioned crooks from breaking into my house.
And, Yes it can be done; we're getting shined on when they tell us they can't do it. Can't do it today? Then get on it and do it tomorrow,smarties.
2
The dopamine surge has reprogrammed people's brain at this point. The corporations and advertisers are even crafting the call and response system implicit in social media to drive our behaviors with a greater level of precision.There's always something given away in the when someone becomes an addict. In this case people have given away their privacy to the influencers and the corporations and the intel establishment and potentially to hackers. People have given up the outrage and have accepted it for the temporary high of getting a like on their photo of last night's dinner plate. It's been fullyrationalized and normalized by popular culture despite wherever this thing might head. The digital horses have left the barn.
10
Do a product search on the internet and you are inundated with ads from companies selling that product. The internet service providers are obviously selling your search results and address to those companies. We should be able to enter a binding Do Not Track order.
5
I have penned thousands of comments to the NY Times, the Washington Post, and dozens of other publications because I want to be heard, I want to be criticized, and I want my narrative and thinking on the issues to improve over time. I use my full real name like perhaps 20 percent of the other digital commentators.
I have difficulty understanding why 80% prefer the anonymity of pseudonyms, initials and first names. A few of the names are funny or politically descriptive but I presume all share the desire to separate their real identity from the real people that will read their words. For most, it seems that a desire to protect their identity extends beyond their bedrooms and bank accounts, because of discomfort with the unknown and fear that someone may want to cause harm in some way. It is also quite likely that many feel their identity, their life, their opinions are not important enough to willingly take the small risk of giving up some privacy.
My current digital footprint includes the intersections and tolls where my car moves, the subways, trains and planes I take, the purchases I make, my emails, photos and personal papers stored in the cloud and countless other data. My smart phone is just another tool and less fun than my several kinds of Alexia’s I enjoy.
I have faith that ingenious attorneys will sue private businesses that abuse my privacy and create a genuine risk of harm. I see no good reason for the government to interfere.
3
@Eugene Patrick Devany - i love people who use their full legal names to propose that corporations won't hurt us -- and, if they do, a bit of legal tussle will straighten them out. my counterproposal is that you get your lawyer, and the corporations get their team of white shoe lawyers, and let's see who wins in court. i mean, the court of judges who used to be white shoe lawyers. "ingenious lawyers" bill by the hour and by document page generated by interns: if you can afford to go up against a corporation, good on you. me, i have to trust that law enforcement is subpoena restrained; if not, we're all doomed. but corporations? oh, beware, little red riding hood, the wolf in grandma's paid superbowl ad is eager to eat you.
1
The die was cast back in the 90's, I believe it was. Rather than pass laws requiring a specific "opt in" statement from each individual before their data could be collected, our bought-out politicians allowed big data to get away with a toothless "opt out" law, whereby all data could be collected (even without the user's knowledge) unless/until such time as the individual filed a specific "opt out" statement with each and every firm collecting the data.
5
Today I read an opinion piece in the New York Times by Kara Swisher and commented on that piece. The NYT took tracked my activity and “customized my experience” based on my actions. It rents my mailing address to “reputable third parties” so that they could bombard me with advertising. It shared my information with third party advertising services to provide custom selected ads on my browser. The NYT collected my browser information, IP address, and location and it transmits that information to third parties so that they can show me targeted advertising on OTHER SITES than the NYT. It puts cookies in my browser that allows advertisers on other sites to recognize and act on my news reading choices.
You, Ms. Swisher are part of the problem. And more than a little hypocritical.
18
@Tone - while it is true NYT does some of the tracking, others like WaPo (and who owns that?) and my local paper and weather people are FAR, FAR worse. first use a PC instead of that damn phone a your default device.
I use script-blocking and have zero of my searches from elsewhere follow me anywhere. I block 7 of the 10 NYT scripts and it reads fine. since I'm paying $300/yr btw digital and paper, I absolutely have the right to do it. you can too. download a script blocker and learn to use it, ie which are req'd and which will have to be left like *.cdn's. and go to your browser turn on blocking there, empty your search history regularly and it'll cut down tracking by 80%. it'll take awhile to get used to but the track fewer-not-entirely experience is worth it.
3
@Tone You've explained why the financial incentives all lead to more intrusive tracking -- and why laws are the only solution.
Absent laws, you are asking every corporation (including public corporations required to serve shareholder interests) -- as well as every individual -- to leave money on the table while their competitors grab it. Is that likely or practical?
@sam - Unfortunately blocking scripts will not prevent the NYT from harvesting your IP address or tracking you by your login credentials. It will not prevent the NYT from renting your mailing or email address to "reputable third parties", nor will script blocking prevent the NYT from loading you up with cookies that will be recognized by third party sites. Your login status is tracked by a session cookie, and without it the NYT will not recognize you as a paid-up subscriber.
@Bill Camarda - One ethical approach would be for the NYT to offer higher priced digital subscriptions that do not track or share your information and habits with third parties or NYT advertisers. The premium subscription price would offset the revenue lost by not selling your info. If the response to this opinion piece is any indicator, there is significant demand for such a premium product.
2
As normal, I will use two of my strongest character traits -- ignorance and stupidity -- in the following remarks, which, despite all, have the virtue of candor and a simple man's way of life. (Perhaps too simple? Perhaps.)
Life's too short to worry about every damned thing. The list of serious, moderate, and mild dangers to a person's life would be tediously long. Which ones should I dedicate much of my brief time here to fretting about? I couldn't agree even with myself on this matter, even if I tried. And the list would require constant rethinking and priority shifting.
Just not doin' that. You are? And I'm a patented fool? When it comes down to it, aren't we all?
I've made countless mistakes in life, some were beneficial, most were not; but I could have never foreseen which were which.
Yes, in general, don't drive the wrong way down a one-way street, drink from a water pool that has a skull and crossbones sign posted, challenge a policeman to a death match, or vote Republican. But I'm not counting calories, praying five times daily, or rejecting the latest technology.
It's kinda nice to know that someone is neurotic enough to want to know about my personal activities; it's about the only attention I get. Most people just ignore me.
So, hello to all my watchers at Google, the government's Big Brother squad, and merchants all over the world. Stay in touch: I might do something unique any minute, say go to Walmart instead of Target for my bread machine wheat flour.
19
@Jim Muncy - While I don't agree with your cavalier attitude about your personal privacy or your apparent belief that just because someone's not doing anything wrong they shouldn't worry about every single move they make being recorded, tracked, and exploited for profit, your post was still a delight to read and brought a smile to my face. Thank you!
4
@Kristin
I guess I'm too cavalier about many things, despite being a born-and-bred worry-wart.
Anxiety has made my life a pretty massive failure. Even double the dose of Celexa can't prevent my anxiety attacks. So, consciously, I try not to worry much about anything, like my two young grandsons. What if they're kidnapped, shot, run over, catch a serious disease, drown, injured and crippled, etc.?
Then there's my adult children and their spouses, and my extended family.
Often it is best to leave it all to god or fate, hope for the best, and deal with the problem when it confronts you. Especially because our destinies seem written beforehand: karma? For example, the dedicated health nut gets run over by a beer truck while jogging; the overzealous security nut locks himself out of his house or car for the seventh time; the guy who fears rejection from the opposite sex, because of the pain, suffers with loneliness, which is even more painful. Such cosmic and comic ironies are endless.
So in many things, we must leap before we look -- because we can't examine, for instance, every building's blueprints and completed safety inspections before entering, or every bridge we cross, or every bite of food we take, etc.
The media makes a pretty good living by stirring up our fears. It's like shooting fish in a barrel: Life is loaded with dangers of all kinds and degrees. What we focus on makes all the difference in the quality of our lives, no?
So I go with: What, me worry?
2
@Jim Muncy
I had to laugh at the inclusion of "vote Republican" in your list. It will be passed along to several friends. Thanks.
3
"Deeply felt relationship with my Iphone." That sounds like addiction.
10
@Anne
Indeed. I predict that in about 500 years, babies will be born holding smartphones. And staring down at them.
2
@Frank J Haydn Or, we will all be wiped out by brain cancers caused by our cell phones. Ha!
1
There is no such thing as privacy. Drive around any city/town and you will see cameras everywhere. Go into any building and there are cameras everywhere. Go to your doctors office where they are taking your medical history and have the ability to give that info to any doctor you visit. Give your DNA over to the likes of any genealogy testing and you are now in who knows how many databases. Use any bank and you have forfeited any rights to keeping that information from prying eyes. Get on any social media platform and you give up your right to privacy. Use your phone and get tracked by numerous entities that have taken/ purchased the rights to your whereabouts. Go to a hospital to have a baby and there are cameras recording the birth of your child surreptitiously without your consent. There is no such concept of privacy, they have the means and you are just a algorithm for companies to monetize. I suspect that you could escape society and try to live off the grid and someone, somewhere could pinpoint your exact location and hunt you down. We handed over, mostly unwittingly, our right to privacy when we bought into the lie that it was for our safety and national security. And people on FB? Don’t even get me started with the stupidity of people sharing everythingggggg on their platform. Facebook is the biggest scam of scamming social media, convincing people that they were the good guys just trying to facilitate family/friends relationships. Privacy, how quaint.
3
I find this article bizarre. First, 40 years late. Many people and orgs, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation for the past 30, have been running around with their hair on fire about this and people continue to simply shrug and count their FB "friends."
Second, it argues against itself -- need strict regulation, but not what the Europeans have because that is too strict; can't ask tech cos to police themselves but government shouldn't intrude; we should wean ourselves from our tech obsession but I, myself, can't live without my iphone; want rules but don't want to impede "innovation" (that is, better and faster intrusions into privacy).
Finally, selling information about consumers is the business model for tech companies. That is what they DO. That is why they exist. You might as well tell auto manufacturers we would like to replace all roads with bike paths and hiking trails.
If you want Amazon to deliver to your door, they have to know where you live and what you buy. If you want to post photos of your kids on FB, they will be subjected to facial recognition software. We have created, and love, the Big Brother that enslaves us.
3
forget technology spying on us. how about health insurance companies. they are datamining all of our old medical records, looking for key words to pin a diagnosis on us to get more $$$ from medicare. diagnoses that dont impact our day to day health. they look at your pharmacy, bills, medical records, everything. that is spying.
People need to either grow up or accept the fact that people with no good intentions are spying on you and your family.
If you don’t mind having your every movenment being recorded tracked keep doing everything on line . The negative facts have been on the record for years now ignore at your peril.
The only online presence people should have is responding to articles and comments to the New York Times or any other legitimate newspaper. These newspaper have a reputation that is pro democracy and publishing the truth. The comments section allows you to voice and provide an educated opinion, they may use your thoughts to further write about the topic but they aren’t trying to pry into your life.
So give away your life if you want to government regulations can’t protect you from yourself.
You lost me at "grok". Yes, I know what it means. Would it have been so hard to write "understand" or "realize"?
1
Blah, blah, blah... Like the NRA "anti-guv-ment" folks, the "Privacy Now!" folks don't seem to understand that each of us ALEADY has an enormous personal data base constructed for each of us that innumerable government and private agencies/businesses ALREADY have access to - and "they" aren't going to get rid of it/them/those EVER. The idea that "passing a law" is going to change things... Like that law regulating the tides - good luck with that. Unplug your devices, pick your path in life, and live as long as you can. It's been "game over" since at least the early 90s. Next time there's an election, pick someone who isn't a complete creep and hope that "decent" person doesn't allow you and yours to become Soylent Green in the next few years... It IS now an eat or be eaten world - at least until humans lose the ability to generate electricity for a century or two... Then "it" will just start over - people being what they are. Have a nice day.
2
Taxpayers should have the right to know who is collecting data on them. They deserve the right to know who is selling it and who is buying it. Most of the major tech companies have become giant vacuums of your personal data. Their business models have become much more about selling personal data than anyone could have imagined.
What is someone has a serious illness...say Parkinsons. They are probably going to go to the internet to learn all they can about the disease and possible treatment plans. Before they tell their children certain tech companies are tracking them and collecting their data. The tech company could sell this data to the highest bidder...say health insurers. If they are precluded by HIPPA from selling the data directly it doesn’t matter because unabated data is free flowing. It will find its way into the hands of those who could use it against us. This is where we are headed. Guardrails must be established and intelligent regulation must be put in place. Hopefully our lawmakers, many of whom probably still use dial up, would be assisted in this by digital and data natives.
I’m a fan of yours, Kara, so I say this with respect... but the iPhone was released in June 2007 (“my deeply felt relationship with that iPhone that spans decades now”); “spans” gets you off on a technicality, but that’s an unnecessary stretch, because you’re writing about how fast these privacy challenges have arisen.
And, honestly, using “grok” without reference in the NYT is really over-reaching for Millennial readers, don’t you think?
1
Very amusing that the NYT is devoting so much space to privacy at the same time posts an article on how great it is to use Google Photos. By advocating the use of Goggle Photos, which uses and analyzes all your data, NYT is not really interested in the privacy issue despite the large number of editorials.
1
About a month ago I was searching for facts about CBD oil.
I used the internet. I never offered my email address.
Within days, my inbox was filled with emails soliciting for CBD, plus weight loss, hair growth, keto diets, flat belly, cognitive decline, and ... lovely Russian women.
I never open them and I've been designating them as spam but they keep on coming.
There oughta be a law.
2
@Gluscabi
I think you just need to adjust your computer's privacy settings....
The consumer choice to which Mr. McNealy refers, is not limited to choosing among existing options presented by tech companies. Consumers can use our power to demand corporations attend to these concerns and create the kind of digital rights and respect we need.
Don't be a wuss on this issue, we need to take ALL of the control of our data back. 'Opt out' should be illegal, the only mode should be 'Opt in', and that means explicit 'opt in' for every type of data. The digital relationship can and should be the same as the non-digital relationships. The current abuses by Google, Facebook, etc. are criminal invasions of privacy and socially extremely dangerous, and they do it solely to make a buck selling your data.
3
"GROK !" i love it from one of the most important books of my life Stranger in a strange land Robert Heinlein
People don't care because there is nothing so terrible about seeing ads that are more relevant instead of seeing ads that are less relevant.
1
"Just machines to make big decisions, programmed by fellows with compassion and vision..." Donald Fagen, IGY
We have put ourselves, most unwittingly, at their mercy, so we have to hope for those fellows of compassion and vision. Or, we can just put the gun down. Somehow, I doubt many will choose to do the latter.
Building consensus around such legislation is a tough slog. The average member of the public, aided and abetted by dark web social degenerates and other vermin, display runaway exhibitionistic tendencies, and a gargantuan appetite for gossip and personal intrusion across all of cyberspace. But there could be light at the end of this tunnel. Notice Mark Zuckerberg's recent snail's pace evolution. He famously lectured us that privacy was an antiquated concept from a bygone era, at Facebook's conception. Then, about eight years ago, he promised to improve privacy and buttress in-house rules and regulations for Facebook's use. Today, he is comfortably curled in a fetal position and making unsolicited declarations that Facebook needs better regulations and privacy enforcement, from elsewhere. It must be tough being him, the all knowing social media saturation guru, now forced to acknowledge that he is clueless on this subject and cannot effectively govern his own creation. He can help this cause now, by voluntarily stepping aside to make way for wiser leadership that can.
Hey, blame this on Ben Laden and the Patriot Act. Safety comes at the loss of privacy...I bet everyone feels safer when they catch a murderer in less than a day because there are cameras everywhere. We chose to have cameras everywhere and we want to be connected. The citizens of Arizona didn't want cameras on the highways and demanded that they be removed. And so it was.
Yes, get over it.
When the quality of American life is controlled, monitored, censored, exploited, and suppressed by corporations rather than served and supported by its government, ‘democracy dies in broad daylight.’ People over Property!
1
We will continue to take it. And happily pay for it.
Gun rights advocates should be more concerned with Government infringing on their individual rights and personal freedoms by misusing tech than by legislating any sensible gun safety laws.
But then again, you can’t shoot a bad guy with with an iPhone.
Yet.
"Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy ... said that there are still enough alternatives to allow consumers to escape being hostages of Google or Facebook or Amazon, and that if people are concerned about those companies' data collection, they are free to stop using their platforms."
How many people posting comments on this article appreciate the fact that the New York Times, like countless other sites across the internet, required them to use Google's reCAPTCHA service in order to authenticate themselves? Or that reCAPTCHA requires the user to agree to an opaque series of cascading adhesion contracts designed to be unintelligible? Or that the reCAPTCHA process enables Google to uniquely identify an individual posting a comment through a technology called browser fingerprinting?
In quoting Mr. McNealy, is Ms. Swisher suggesting that if we don't trust Google we should stop visiting sites like this one?
This isn't a trivial question. Indeed, it extends well beyond our engagement with the internet. As Emily Bell wrote in a recent piece at the Guardian:
"Google is upping its presence in a less obvious manner via assorted media initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic. Its more direct approach to funding journalism seems to have the desired effect of making all media organisations (and indeed many academic institutions) touched by its money slightly less questioning and critical of its motives."
Free choice, for most of us, simply isn't a realistic option anymore.
3
Is the information accurate? We have no editing capability. An online search may be about a friend, business effort, or another person using your interface. It may be a misinterpretation by a algorithm. Is the information collected mistranslated in another language?
How do I edit or change data held by a third party? Why if my identity has been stolen, partially or fully? What if the source of the data, say medical information was a typo?
There is no single, direct and basic means to view, correct or block changes to collected data, and this will proliferate with the volume of data collected over time.
2
Oh yes, I remember the privacy law the Europeans passed last year. Immediately following, I was swamped with email from every entity I have ever engaged with online articulating the changes to "their" privacy policy and I had to "click here" to accept or, heaven forbid, not accept, and be forever barred from doing business with them. In other words, in order to do anything online we all had to "agree" to allow these entities to circumvent the law the Europeans had just passed so they could continue abusing our data while they will claim we have read and understood their revised policies. Nobody has time to read the "terms of service" online entities demand that we agree to, and what's the point anyway, because you have no power to negotiate them. It's "take it or leave it". I say "leave it."
3
"We’ve given up too much control over our digital lives."
Madam, speak for yourself. Anyone who uses a computer to go online is in full control of what links he / she clicks on, what he / she uploads, or types onto the keyboard. One would have to be utterly foolish to click on Facebook advertisements or anything else that is designed for mass appeal.
Its like saying big pharma is responsible for the opioid crisis. In my opinion, human beings are in full control of what they put into their mouths and ingest.
3
@Frank J Haydn
You are delusional if you think you have full control over anything. At best, you are led to believe you choose from among the options advertisers, manufacturers, doctors, drug companies, stores, schools, churches, and every other broker in our economic and cultural life have pre-selected for you. And you do so without full knowledge, or often any knowledge, of the pros and cons.
To take your specific example, drug companies giving incentives to doctors to prescribe opioids, consumer focused campaigns about the right to "full" pain relief, prescriptions with no information about a drug's addictive potential, poverty that fuels street sale of drugs for a quick high, lax health insurance oversight and regulations that permit reimbursement for excessive prescriptions, the greed of drug manufacturers, and myriad other factors seriously compromise a sick person's "full control."
Same goes for computer access. It comes with a whole lot of mandates and pre-selected "choices." It is specifically designed to give users the illusion of control with no actual agency or power at all.
3
Have always believed my basic details are owned by me, and I'd like to take them back now, please.
Just as changing climate is a force multiplier impacting every sector of our economy so too is unlimited data and it’s use a multiplier in the collapse of our systems of checks and balances. Why do we close our eyes to our own destruction and right for self determination. Is it because we live in a world where profit always “trumps” productivity for the good of the whole?
2
With all of that said, It misses the point that we are the one's that mistake the vast majority on social media for community. It is not. It is artificial sharing of possibly trivial and untrue information that will last long after we are dead.
It is time to wake up to the fact that the #1 need of human beings is belonging. I think Maslow meant meaningful, real belonging. The fact that people have 200 likes of a post is really meaningless, because readers have no ability to determine if it is reality.
Belonging and community is the real interaction with real people. that is where the interchange of growth, love, work, help and support really is. Let's put our phone's in our pockets on sleep and find out who the real people and groups are in our surrounding environments. It is time to return to physical humanity.
9
Maybe we should start with a different question. Why is privacy important? The surveillance in China is so ominous because behind every digital algorithm stands the good old-fashioned state’s monopoly on violence. If I say something the government doesn’t like, the police will show up on my doorstep. But what if Amazon knows exactly what brand of shoes I like? They have no power to compel me to buy their product. Nobody is going to throw me into a concentration camp because I waste my time watching cat videos. My data are for sale? Good luck finding a buyer. Unless somebody steals my identity or empties out my bank account - and we have laws against this already - what difference does it make that individuals and corporations know things about me? The value of privacy is overestimated. Do you really want to live your life in a dark corner, unknown and unseen? The problem with surveillance arises only in the context of a totalitarian government that can use spying to punish dissidents or enforce political conformity. Otherwise, get over it. I already have.
2
@Mor. Why do you think only governnents can use ill-gotten information against you? Maybe you won't be jailed, but you might lose job opportunities, loans, whatever. Private entities often have more power than government in hyper-capitalist America.
@Harvey Wachtel The only real power is violence. Only the government has this power (unless you happen to live in a failed state like Somalia). So I’ll lose a job opportunity because somebody knows what I post on Twitter? Too bad but I can find another job. I won’t get a loan from bank A? Bank B will be happy to oblige. Private entities, as you call them, cannot deprive me of my freedom or kill me. I’d trust Apple or Amazon before I trust the state apparatus, especially if it is ideologically motivated. It seems that the issue of privacy has become simply another way to badmouth capitalism. Ironically, since it is the socialist or quasi-socialist states that have made the worst use of data-collection.
McNealy is a billionaire so perhaps he is able to get along nicely without Google or Amazon. Not so much for the great unwashed masses. The tech giants need to be regulated or broken up or both. Exploiting dominant market power while playing fast and loose with people's data is a toxic combination.
4
I am no longer surprised, but am always a bit taken aback, by the hypocrisy that runs rampant among the rich and powerful.
Last time at Davos, for example, the mega-wealthy agreed that income inequality threatened the very fabric of the United States, but were shocked, shocked, I tell you, at the thought that they might have to pay higher taxes to alleviate it. That would be bad, they said, very bad.
Not only that, one of them said, but show me one country where higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations has ever been successful.
Answer - the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.
Regarding privacy, I note that Mr. McNealy is all for it, but doesn't want laws to enforce it.
I have a flip phone, order stuff on Amazon, and talk on two or three comment threads. Beyond that, no social media, no Alexa, no smart devices in my house. I never had them, so I don't miss them. I don't have as much privacy as I did when I was young, but I treasure what little I have.
29
@Vesuviano
Alexa is not welcome in our house, either! And we use only "stupid" devices. "Social media" is limited to the NYT comments and some Twitter. We do order essential stuff from Amazon, but we also try to buy some stuff secondhand to lessen our carbon footprint and for nostalgia's sake. We also use cash at the grocery store so that our chocolate consumption cannot be tracked.
3
The future of human privacy, freedom, in the world?
It appears the human race with its technology, particularly computers, internet, surveillance technology, is on course to undergo a process roughly analogous to the biological creation of the human eye and other senses and of course brain to interpret incoming information.
As we speak the most advanced sectors of especially the most advanced economies around the world presume themselves to be the future brain and are forming by technology eye and ear and no doubt in future sense of smell, taste and touch systems all throughout society and the purpose of millions of people, whatever else they do, is to increase this process and access to the heights of the system, the brain, will be on a need to know basis, meaning for millions not only freedom, privacy, and self-determination will be lost, they will have no future in probably the saddest understanding of the concept: They will be known and plotted on pre-planned course their whole lives, much like a muscle in the eye has no function other than to serve the eye and can be replaced if not functioning correctly for whatever reason.
In this future world a person such as myself will no doubt be what in fact I am today: A splinter in the eye, a problem, someone unwilling to be anything less than at the forefront of society, with the total view, but who for a number of reasons is deemed unsuited by the powers that be for such, and therefore to be eliminated without a tear.
3
Why don't people who worry about privacy on social media platforms simply stay off the platforms?
41
@William Case
They do but you never hear about them. They don’t complain because they have control of there lives.
8
@Tony
Kara Swisher doesn't stay off social media platforms.
2
@William Case--------------Yay! Thank you, William; I see I'm not the only one. I do what you suggest, but many people think that I must have a character wound. They assume that I must be damaged and, kindly, they refer me to psychologists.
I stand my ground, though.
4
Its not that Amazon, for example, has compiled vast amounts of information about me and my buying habits—it’s about what they are doing with it outside of predicting my reading preferences. Do they sell that information to other entities? Do they leverage that information with their suppliers for better prices that increase their profits without passing along those cost savings to me?
As for FB and GOOG, isn’t selling that info to advertisers and then putting those ads in front of our every screen view their sole raison d’etre?
Why not tax them a $10 a year rental fee for every customer on whom they have personal information?
3
@John C
Why not charge each entity which wants her/his data pay the person whose data is being used $10/month?
3
@John C Speak for yourself. My data is worth more than that. I want an opt-out.
1
How about if the law uses AI against the AI-ers. The field of Artificial Intelligence uses generic algorithms to improve itself. Simply put, these algorithms learn by themselves the same way as genetics works: survival of the fittest. Random changes are given a trial, the ones that result in improvement become part of our DNA, the ones that don't are discarded. Darwin taught us that. So suppose the law institution starting passing individual "little" laws against data gathering companies, e.g. maybe one that says "it is illegal to track toilet paper purchases" and many other similar laws. Some would be effective towards curbing abusive data tracking and some not, some would be enforceable and some not. Monitoring the results would yield which are the most effective laws. It's AI. We don't have to gather our legal minds together to study the problem for 20 years and to come up with the great data protection law in the sky; use AI, pass many little laws, and let the generic algorithms select the fittest of those.
2
I'm trying to opt out of intrusive technology as much as possible. That's hard to do when even your kitchen appliances are "smart" and possibly reporting on your failure to cook and your snacking to companies who claim they only look at your data in aggregate.
But there's a point where the personal cost of using technology becomes higher than the convenience. That point is different for different people, but there should be baseline standards that the vast majority of people agree are too privacy-intrusive.
Technology isn't the only privacy-invader. The "financial services" industry, including the big 3 credit bureaus, has invaded your privacy for decades, crunching and selling your data in lots of inscrutable ways to people who want to lend you money or sell you something. They make it really hard to "freeze" your credit and you only get one free copy of your credit report each year. The deck is heavily stacked in favor of companies whose "services" involve helping themselves to as much of your hard-earned money as they can possibly skim off in fees and interest rates. Any privacy regulations should also address this industry.
12
Let's all take a moment to appreciate the irony of Ms. Swisher's position. She's covered the rise of the companies responsible for the problem for over two decades, and it appears she's just now preaching legislation to help us take control of our data. Happy to see contrary evidence, but this made me laugh a sad little chuckle as I watch ad for my things my partner bought weeks ago show up on the Times, my mobile devices, and everywhere else.
13
While I share the author’s privacy concerns, I am very skeptical about legislation. Much of the tremendous dynamism in the technology industry, from which we all have benefited, has come from the ability to collect and use data. Many people are quite happy to make that trade-off; many are not. The problem with legislation is that it tends to be one-size-fits-all and will likely stifle innovation. The best solution is for each individual to use his judgment to determine what is personally acceptable.
4
A federal privacy law is a SAFETY law.
Did our national safety belt law hinder innovation in cars?
Of course not.
4
We need to innovate our way out of this. There is a huge demand for privacy that a savvy entrepreneur can exploit.
Who will be the first to build the digital tools that give control of my data back to me? Allow me to be paid for the information I generate? Or, allow me to actively choose to give it away in exchange for a service? And - all the while, accounting for all my bits and bites?
Government has a role here for sure - by it is not the ultimate solution.
2
When powerful, rich companies and their lobbyists contribute to political campaigns (aka "legal" bribery), it's hard to believe that the current crop of politicians would side with the public.
6
It seems to me that the first logical step is to follow HIPAA's lead. Healthcare has established rules in Data sharing that, although specific to Healthcare Information, could be used as a foundation for other verticals. It may not be perfect but it does provide "tangible" rules to build upon.
3
An answer to protecting privacy starts with requiring people to opt-in to surveillance as the default rather than opt-out or no choice as it is today.
The public needs to be given back the ability to control their lives. I believe we already have this right in our Constitution, the 4th Amendment and its interpretation should be reviewed and enforced through the courts.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
3
The Fourth Amendment applies only to searches and seizures conducted by the *government* -- the problem here is that we have ceded control over our privacy to for-profit, and largely unregulated, industries.
2
@jenn
I know that is how it has been traditionally applied. I also know these Amendments are subject to interpretation by the courts and have been, including restrictions such as not permitting yelling fire in a movie theatre as a limit on the First Amendment.
I'm suggesting, after reading it carefully, the Fourth Amendment can be interpreted differently.
Our privacy is being compromised by unreasonable search and seizure of our private information.
There is no probable cause in place to gather this data.
There are those who follow the law and those who don't. The Chinese security state won't follow our laws and ask permission to include us in databases. Putin may well already know our voting preferences. Our own security state mushroomed after 9/11, and its agents are actually following the law when they capture our data. Security cameras are spreading like measles in an unvaccinated community, and the NYPD is testing facial recognition software in NYC traffic-- and they have access to our images or other date every time we use an ATM or a subway turnstile. Where will it end? Will I start getting more glowing accounts from cemeteries as I pass a birthday? Will I care? I'm glad Kara Swisher cares and hope she can help to clean up our world of annoying busybodies.
4
If our telecommunications agencies won't do anything about the spam, robocalls and entities like Equifax can't / won't prevent hacking, it will be a very long time before our "Consumer Privacy Act" will be enforced and improved upon, or just keep up with the current times.
Consumers are not given a choice regarding our own credit reports and yet left exposed to the hacking, left to defend for themselves when our data is stolen.
Our government agencies are outdated as is our need to have government agencies comply quickly to the issues. Even our politicians are ignorant of the current technology but sit in hearings and reveal their total lack of understanding.
6
A.I. depends on big data. Big data is most valuable when it includes all sources. Sadly, the groups/countries with access to the most data will likley lead the world in A.I. - the new space race.
1
Easy to get digital privacy but won’t happen. The masses want laws passed and assurances never happen Everyone just stop
Using social media, pay bills by mail , use cash and go to brick and mortar stores for a start. Changes in our behavior will bring about greater privacy. Never happen
3
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak warned several years ago about the dangers of all of our data being in the cloud. He made the case there’s virtue to having an isolated computer not connected to the web. He was and is correct.
91
@Once From Rome
Should every home have a Virtual Private Network if privacy is desired? I wouldn't know where to go buy such a thing.
@Once From Rome Oh brother. It's like saying we were safer when we rode horses, doctors didn't actually cut people open, or sent telegrams.
1
Are we sure the problem is that we just don't have enough stifling, politically correct, boredom in our lives?
Social media is tremendously popular and very profitable. One reason is that people like having a place where they can discuss things that are important to them without some tiresome scold erasing their opinions and canceling their concerns in the name of "sensitivity."
If you want a soft safe playpen app, there are plenty of platforms that provide it. Leave the real thing for the rest of us.
this article is fundamentally flawed. the "discussion" on digital privacy never took place. we didn't consciously choose to cede this territory. we were just swept up in the wave of new technologies (.com bubble, smart phones, apps, etc) and trusted that the companies behind this technological growth were trustworthy. they aren't. and as much as I hate to say it, it seems abundantly clear to me that we need to regulate technology companies to build meaningful privacy options into their products. if you don't want them, leave them off. but the rest of us shouldn't have to suffer.
136
@dj -
In defense of those companies and indeed of all of us - we didn't know! Did anyone, even Steve Jobs, every imagine a tightly integrated data-driven lifestyle brought to us by the .com, smart phones, apps, etc that you mentioned? No!
Even now we do not fully comprehend the scale of disruption. And many of us think that disruption is also benign. Like Mr McNealy, many of us think there is more good to it and we have enough laws to counter the negative effects. The truly golden bits of private data remain things like social security number, data of birth, address, and the combination of those things that can jeopardize your identity. Those should remain locked, and do remain locked for the most part.
@dj
This is the discussion. Better late than too late, and as with the environment it may not be too late if we start paying attention to and participating in this discussion now.
Who regulates things? Government. And it has to get "bigger," as they say, to do this, because as they are comprised now they don't have the skills or the manpower.
So find out from your state and federal representatives what their plan is to regulate data mining and data sharing and tracking and such, and to change the defaults for all of this from opt-in to opt-out.
Ask them what approach they favor and why it's better than other approaches being discussed.
Ask them what department in government will do this and if they plan on increasing the budget to address this in a timely and efficient manner.
Tell them that companies that make money by selling your data to third parties should have a special tax on the transactions that goes toward this regulation, and should be fined for doing so without your consent.
" .. And maybe we put in place some rules — rules that have real teeth — on big tech companies .."
Oh, please, stop. More than 45% of Americans are *not* on FB. They had the common sense to ask, "why bother?"
The solution is that simple. Really. It is called "the power of the market." Don't like AMZN? Stop buying their intermediated cheap stuff from China.
And "over-sharing?" Of course -- it beats working and facing serious issues. Just turn on the TV ..
I agree with those who say there should be a requirement that all data collection of a personal nature is done so only with our knowledge and permission. I opt in or else there is no collection of data.
And I would change our laws making the stalking of celebrities on the streets illegal. While it would be fine to take a crowd photo, if one chases someone down the street to get a picture of them or their family, that would be an illegal invasion of privacy.
The NYTimes articles showing what China is doing are frightening. At a minimum, let me charge for my data, since those who collect it are making money on that same data.
Hugh
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Privacy is a Human Right. It was recognized as such by the UN General Assembly Resolution 217 A in 1948. The United States voted in favor of the resolution.
The problem we have since then is that we have decided this right can be traded away with ‘consent.’ In theory, this consent is informed. But in the modern age nobody really understands what they’re consenting to, even if they are asked to click the “I agree” button. In Europe, GDPR attempts to solve this by putting the explanation of the consequences into plain language. But there’s a power imbalance even with GDPR - the onus is on you to be informed, to make choices, to op-out. The model assumes it’s your fault if you don’t pay attention.
We don’t follow this model of blaming the victim when we regulate of food, or health, or aviation. We have regulation for safe management of the tools and systems that provide medicines and food and airplanes.
Given what we now know about the consequences of unsafe use of data - harassment, crime, hacking infrastructure, influence of elections - its time we placed a threshold on the minimum acceptable uses of personal data. One that can’t be traded to third-parties with ‘consent.’
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I wish Ms Swisher had given at least one example of how she things this can work.
Here is a situation. A few weeks after I started going to a place of worship every Sunday morning, I noticed a popup on my smartphone. That Sunday morning my phone told me that I would get there in 20 minutes. It was creepy to realize that my phone knew that because it was Sunday I would be going to a place different from my place of work. Note that I had done nothing different except use the Google Maps app.
Another situation - I visited a restaurant after a long time. Google told me exactly when I had gone there last. Creepy.
I can see how Google knowing where I am ever moment of the day is an invasion of privacy. However, I am not able to figure out exactly what we as citizens can ask our government to require Google to do in these scenarios.
One thought is that such information should be saved locally in the phone's data bank and should not be uploaded to the cloud. Another is that we as consumers should be able to purge the data - and all copies of it - from the cloud. And, be able to verify that the data has indeed been purged.
Ms. Swisher - are these the types of things you have in mind? What are some others?
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@na
It's the cellphone, na. You can live without it.
McNealy's comments illuminate the bitter irony that libertarian ideology is, in the end, fundamentaly incompatible with any meaningful notion of universal human freedom.
It isn't just governments who can shape and limit your effective choices against your will. There never was such a thing as perfect freedom, but at least I voted for my public officials, participated in my community, and contributed my bit to its local social norms. Who elected Google? The market? Who gave *them* that job?
39
I also disagree with mr McNealy. I welcome regulation of info, just as I welcome the driving regulations of the road or building codes. One only needs to look at the White House to see some folks can’t figure out right from wrong. Add to that list Mr Zuckerberg and his side-kick ms Sandburg, who seems to think FB’s problems are merely public relations problems.
6
Libertarians are the political equivalents of Revolutionary War re-enactors.
2
Well, for most of mankind's history, there was no privacy.
You lived in a village, and everyone knew everything about you. Everything.
Even in Brooklyn at the turn of the last century, you lived on a block and everyone knew everything about you. The neighbors saw who came and went and what they did.
Even in my childhood, the grocer, the butcher, and everyone on the block knew everyone and pretty much all there was to know.
One morning walking to school, my friend Jacky was mightily impressed when a milk-delivery truck drew up to us and slowed, and a woman leaned out the door and shouted at me, "Put on your sweater!" Jacky said, "Wow, your mom has spies everywhere."
Privacy is a relatively modern concept resulting from the anonymity of urban dwelling and from people watching TV instead of looking out the window.
What you want secret you keep to yourself. Emails, selfies, texts, Facebook, whatever, just don't send it.
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@B. The thing is before in tight knit communities sure everyone knew pretty much everything there know. Nowadays that is still true, and a bunch of corporations know a whole lot more, and the corps that don't own it can buy it. Oh and that fine grained information can be used to influence what you think and how you feel in much more effective and targeted ways.
21
Of course corporations know. But we can write comments here, and send innocuous emails (I would never text or email what I really think about most politicians), and purchase stuff online, and in the main not divulge anything more than we used to when we had individual department store credit cards or paid for things mostly by check (and the banks knew where you shopped and what you bought).
My point is that privacy has always been a rare commodity, and that nowadays young people particularly give over more information than they need to.
And that an aging cousin bought an Alexa and tells "her" to turn on a lamp that's only steps away seems, to me, wasteful and absurd. If people can't imagine that a microphone, or a camera, is a two-way street . . . .
(For the record, I have Arlo security cameras around the outside of my house -- never inside my house. And the mikes are turned off anyway.)
6
@B.
Respectfully, but there is a vast difference between you neighbors knowing your lifestyle and corporations having access to your private conversations. Privacy laws really came into effect not because of our new found introversion, but because of the telephone. People never thought of the operator or the phone company in general when the made calls, the government tried to listen in through the operator of the company, and courts suddenly had to deal with what to do when a person has a conversation that inherently goes through a third party. For a cute example of how this became a problem, think of the housekeeper from "White Christmas."
That has been exemplified by a million in the era of text messages and social media. Your messages are stored in perpetuity by whatever transmission source you use. It is... well, it's not the end of the world, but it certainly needs to be discussed, or my children will grow up in a world where 1984-style monitoring is acceptable.
17
I agree data sharing legislation might improve privacy but there are additional options which are to not cooperate with systems that too often expose personal data.
Switch to a flip phone and toss away the smart phone. You life will improve markedly by not having needless social media or "alert" intrusions. Contrary to the common retort, anyone can conduct business using flip phone calls and/or simple text. The smart phone is merely a convenience, not a necessity. Additionally, on all computers and mobile devices, always deny "location sharing" and data sharing options.
Use cash instead of credit whenever possible. You'll be surprised how often it is possible. For large purchases, use a personal or bank check. Along a similar vein, deny any request for phone numbers, zip codes or other supposed "market data" at time of purchase. Whenever you buy something via the Internet with a credit card, unless you always read all user agreement conditions, chances are you've just given away lots of personal data.
Try this experiment. Switch to a flip phone, use cash and checks plus other "old school" consumer methods for a month and see if your life improves in unexpected ways in addition to you managing your own privacy better.
14
@Question Everything if you are older and grew up without technology, you already did all of this for decades. I did but maybe it is new for you. I like today's technology. Besides, for some of us older people who worked for the government, the biggest breach of security and personal information did not happen on social media - it happened when the OPM database was breached in 2015 for over 21.5 million information used to get security clearances going back a couple of decades well before social media reached critical mass.
Facebook is a cakewalk compared to that breach. It is all relative I guess.
@Question Everything, Kids want fancy phones mostly due to peer pressure. They ask for a phone all the time, but suddenly find no need for a phone if you give them a flip phone. There are times they need to make a phone call. It would nice if schools keep a payphone booth.
1
Relying on government, which is run mostly by old white men who are clueless about technology and its advancements, is a recipe for failure.
While it might be nice to think that government can save us from the ever-worsening privacy nightmare into which we are thoughtlessly descending, unfortunately government's role here is always going to be reactive due to the fast pace of technological change.
What we have to do is educate ourselves. We have to make informed decisions, and reading the ToS is both impractical and unrealistic. Companies often break their own ToS's in order to collect more data on us.
Ultimately this is going to be a tradeoff between convenience and exposure. Like any decision, you can't really make it until you're informed.
I made the decision to ditch my smartphone entirely. That may be extreme for many, but I've found it works wonders for me. Don't want to go that far? Install the adblock browser. Remove apps you don't use. Learn about how signing into other apps through facebook gives facebook access to everything you do in that app.
Ultimately we are the ones who control our own data. No matter how insidious these companies (or governments for that matter) ultimately become in their efforts at breaching our privacy, we have to opt-in.
21
@Ben I set all the highest privacy settings Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have offered me, and instructed them all not to serve personalized ads. I rarely use my smartphone and even more rarely browse the web on it. I always sign out from Facebook as soon as I finish with it, and never use Facebook, Google, or Microsoft logins on other sites. I went to the Digital Advertising Association's AdChoices site and opted out of all the personalized advertising there (which led immediately to a flurry of personalized ads telling me how wonderful personal digital advertising is).
So last week I did a web search on a specific business topic, and 8 hours later, ads related to that topic started appearing in my Facebook feed.
I guess I didn't do enough. I should have run an ad blocker that hurts web publishers. I should be using Duck Duck Go. Or maybe Tor. It's clearly my own fault.
19
@Ben. Old white men? Ageism is ugly in any form.
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@Thomas Smith
I count myself in that demographic - it was meant to be self-effacing :)
2
We can do better. First, McNealy’s statement that regulation would “hinder innovation, and ... the costs of compliance would hurt small companies” is robotic. It’s what the oligarchy always says at inflection points like this which directly promotes stasis in the public square. But regulation puts a floor under all actors giving them all the same advantages or disadvantages. So it hurts no one. Of all of the billions I see VC’s investing in the equivalent of electric powered turtleneck sweaters, I think we could use a little less “innovation”. The fact is that we’re at the end of the tech boom and lots of useless stuff is hitting the market. Second, regulating the tech companies gives state actors free rein to continue doing bad stuff and even invites them to become the data providers of last resort, a chilling prospect. Therefore, we need a treaty, equivalent to The Law of the Sea or the Geneva Conventions on War to begin the regulation process. Fold it into the WTO so that non-compliance threatens a nation’s legitimate interests and then you have something.
57
I’m struggling to find something informed to add to this thoughtful letter. But it says it all. Readers....reread it and take a screen shot.
3
@Skutch Thanks so much!
1
@Denis Thank you! This answers McNeely's knee-jerk anti-regulation response brilliantly. And I think you're also making a powerful argument for Federal (or even international)regulation rather than leaving this to states. This is a perfect example of a problem that the Federal government is uniquely situated to solve. A crazy quilt assortment of 50 different laws, regulations, agencies, etc. to police tech companies will be ineffective and ultimately, both more cumbersome for companies to comply with and easier for them to evade. The privacy rights and needs of a person in California are no different from the person in Nebraska. There's no reason for already over-burdened states to take on what the Feds ought to do, and a can do more effectively.
2
There's an assumption individuals had a choice here? How many people do you think would opt out of all these technological gimmicks that are designed to take information and permit corporations and the government to track everything they do? Where are the people we have elected to represent us and protect our rights, in particular, the right to privacy? This is another example of an unregulated market where consumers have gotten ripped off and will continue to.
135
@John Q. Public
" How many people do you think would opt out of all these technological gimmicks that are designed to take information and permit corporations and the government to track everything they do? "
I have done so, and I work with computers for a living. That fact is one of the things that made me decide to give up my devices. The gimmicks aren't worth it. I honestly don't care how many steps I've taken in any given day - instead I just go to the gym. While I'm there I forego listening to my own music and if I'm doing cardio I read an actual paper book. I print out maps and occasionally hail an actual taxi instead of using uber or lyft. I'm old enough to remember what life was like before we relied so heavily on the apps in our phones. We got along just fine.
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Nice Ben, but they’re still watching you. Your efforts are only cursory.
5
@Ben
And when the cloud blows up and it will, we will have a generation of kids wandering around like zombies. They will not be able to survive in an analogue world for long. They won't even be able to hand write, do math or read a map without being connected. Their brains are being re-wired to not think, just react.
28
I think computer programming is a language, and it becomes more and more valuable than a natural language. In contemporary days, computer language helps people to understand electronic devices and programs in many ways.
I don’t understand why you said: “ I fervently believe that foreign language learning is essential for children’s development into informed and productive citizens of the world.” In my perspective, learning a foreign language is not necessary. For instance, when we decide to have a trip to another foreign country, it is not needed for us to spend a lot of times in learning that country's language. We can use a more convenient approach to overcome the language problem: using translators in the phones. Moreover, computer language try to become a oral language in last few years. Thus, I believe that computer language can help people communicate with others all over the world in the future.
Some research shows, many countries in Europe and Asia have already consider English as their second language, which means nearly all the European can speak and understand English. This phenomenon implies that the unified language is the trend of modern living. If you can speak English well, why don’t you spend some time on computer language learning? Thus, it is more important to learn a computer language rather than a foreign language.
@Qingtian Zhou, maybe. However, if you really want to learn about other cultures, other ways of thinking, other options on how to live, there is no better way than learning another language. In this sense, the computer language may help you, too. However, it is still poor when compared to the centuries of learning, knowledge, history, and experience that any other human language brings. In fact, most of the principles of computer language were extracted from language studies. People should not devalue what is richer from the start.
7
Privacy issues are important concerns for a society showing no signs of parting ways with modern technology.
It is also worth mentioning that an equally fundamental component of modern technology - patented computer code - poses an even higher threat to life as we know it.
If outright legal ownership of an abstract business idea continues to be condoned, regardless of how much brainpower went into writing it, we'll likely see ourselves living in a world we'd rather not share on Facebook.
3