There is a way to bring this to a screeching halt. Pass laws that give you ownership of your personal data, including those who aggregate data and claim it is now anonymous. I want to own all of my data, even if it is part of a large database. I will then negotiate a rate for its use. I'm thinking $100 per click for anything that has my data included in it in any fashion. I am guessing that I will be left alone.
20
@Bruce1253 no
Someone knows how the General Data Protection Regulation in EU affects the extent of personal data abuse by apps / companies?
My ex and I gave our third and last daughter an unusual but simple and pretty name. Alexa. Now she has to fend off people trying to be funny, or those too stupid to realize that Alexa was a name far preceding Amazon's "assistant." A real, live Alexa! Wow, a real live Alexa, whodda thunk?
As Windows Phone is no longer supported, I'm trying to get on board the Android train. Overlooking the many clumsy ways doing functions that WP did with speed and grace, oh, the intrusions! WP has location services turned OFF by default. Google sells ads, they need to know everything about you. Microsoft sold............phones.
I try to use apps that I can pay a $1 or two and turn off the ads. Some you can't. Google inserts ads all on its own during many functions, no app required.
I had a friend with Alexa. The thing. I found it amusing, nothing more. Now we know what really lurks within. My coffee maker has an on/off switch. My fridge (sadly) lacks even an ice maker. When my doorbell rings, I can see through the glass who is there.
I'm not a Luddite. But I can choose to not be a lemming. And running over the cliff just because something is new, all shiny and Must Have. Trojan horses. Some Millennials would do well to learn that story.
1
Here in San Antonio Ring donated 200 doorbells to the police department and the Bexar County Sheriff's office to give to victims of domestic violence.
1
Amazon, Facebook, Google are all creepy and collecting data. We should stop them. I started by installing /e/ OS on my phone instead of default Google Android. It is much more private, without Google account and doesn't upload my data to Google. I can still run android apps so I don't see a reason to give Google my personal data.
Alexa devices have a microphone-shutoff button. The Echo, for example, glows red and can't hear a thing in mic-off mode which is where it belongs, unless you switch the mic on and ask it to play a podcast or tell you the weather forecast.
Most of the hyperbolic privacy-invasion stories ignore this basic feature.
@Pep Streebeck How do you know the mic is really off? Do you really trust Alexa and Amazon?
6
I am still, at my age, capable of turning my lights on and off—etc.—so I don’t need Alexa or whatever else to do that for me. I fail to see the utility of these devices, especially in light of the dangers.
36
I think Alexa is too creepy, period. Also it's easily hacked.
2
Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc should do a benign test of consumer desires. Have each site split into separate screens. One provides the usual functions/features with the attendant EULA and the other offers a similar experience but without the tracking, that won’t include sites that posit cookies on your hard drive but with a pay-as-you-go plan. See which one consumers choose.
Interesting that privacy with respect to protected individual health information is sacrilegious.
We need a strong Right to Privacy amendment added to the Constitution. That’s the only way digital privacy can be addressed in a substantive manner at a national level.
4
I currently have no less than 83 Firefox cookies under the nytimes.com heading.
Some of them are, no doubt, benign.
You probably know I like the (defunct?) Copy Edit This! quiz, have a crossword subscription, and wish the comments were organized better so on an article with 3700 comments you wouldn't have to scroll for twenty minutes to see them all together.
That's all well and good.
It's the other 6 dozen cookies I'm not sure about. Some have intriguing names: vistory; chartbeat4; jkidd-l; datadome; and (my personal favorite), "purr-cache".
Perhaps our intrepid Privacy Project reporter would care to delve into the Times' own raw Cookie dough and see what it's made of.
25
@R Farr The editorial and sales departments at credible outlets are usually well separated. I doubt that this member of the editorial boars has the power to suspend reader tracking of his opinion pieces.
In any case. the trackers you identified can be prevented from operating by Pi-Hole, the popular DNS filtering device that prevents odious commercial use of your home PCs and network.
Technology is as good as the men behind the curtain. It can do much good, but its handlers are evil.
4
Lol, the DMV sells your personal information in bulk to anyone who asks. The American dream is a privacy nightmare.
2
Today my journeys around cyber world are tracked by “marketers”. But elsewhere in the world political beliefs, affiliations, protest attendance are among the data captured by governments. Tomorrow ....well I am so thankful that my NYT comments are so complimentary of our dear leader.
1
In the "avoiding armageddon tugs-of-war department," I read about a European artist who has come up with a tongue-in-cheek device -- "CounterBug" -- that when placed next to Alexa can engage in chatty conversations when homeowners are away, and evidently can scramble algorithm reporting, as well.
2
I support laws that result in standard verbiage and disclosures on all web-enabled services and software systems. Kind of like the standard surgeon general warning that must appear on all cigarette packages sold in the US. Maybe something like “This software product collects as much information about you as it can and will then sell this information to anyone that will pay for it. It also collects GPS data in a way that will allow anyone that buys it to track your daily activities and determine exactly who you are. The only way to avoid this is not to install the product on your phone or PC.” And then make the disclosure a step in the setup process where a user must opt in after reading the disclosure instead of burying it within a lengthy software license agreement.
4
Sorry, people are too dumb to care. or to read.
Why in the world would I want (for ex) my thermostat to be controlled by a phone app via the internet when, in the event of a power outage (hello california!) -it would be useless? Do I want my thermostat to be hackable? This is just a ruse to get us to buy new stuff that provides data so they can sell us more stuff.
4
Thanks to the great Justice Louis Brandeis, one of the implicit freedoms recognized in the Fourth Amendment is "the right to be left alone". I have told my daughter (Generation Z) for some time now that this 'implied right', most often mentioned in Brandeis' legacy will be the most oft discussed 'personal freedom topic' of the Bill of Rights in her lifetime. The alarming acceleration of personal (and thus group) surveillance will - and already has – affected her ability to simply and innocently 'take the world as it is' ; that is to walk freely and openly in the world she inhabits - and for the world to expect the same of her; to act deliberately and honestly without fear that her movement and speech may be accessed and judged by a silent and secret authority that she has not willed upon herself.
82
@kevin mahoney, that protects against the government I fri going on our privacy, but this information is collected by private companies, sorted, and sold on. The government accesses this data, yes. But we all handed it over to the private collators, with consent. So that “implied right” of Brandeis’s opinion does not apply.
2
@Passion for Peaches ----Passion, thankyou. I did not stress enough that 'implied' will be re-visited by the High Court, and in many arguments of 21st century America.
1
If I buy a coffee maker, I want a coffee maker, nothing more. Same for a washing machine, dryer, and virtually every other item whose purpose does not require “connectedness”.
Why should I (and millions of others, I daresay) be forced to pay for these features? It’s a form of monopoly power, a stunning rejoinder to the conservative economic concept that the ‘free’ market responds when there’s demand.
A feature overlooked by the Times’ Privacy Project is the malignant growth of commercial coercion of consumers. It’s a fertile field for future investigative reporting.
108
@Michael N. Alexander
The most dangerous piece of equipment is the connected TV with embed camera and mic. That is literally big brother in your home.
It is actually the masked face of conservative economics revealed. They never meant to give you any choice they did not want you to make. There has never ever been anything like a free market at any time in history.
What "free market" really means ls "let me make money at this until enough people find out that what I am selling is bad that I can no longer make any money at it. Then move on to something else without any consequences for selling a bad or harmful item".
.
23
@Michael N. Alexander You do not have to pay for those features if you do not want them. Walk down the small appliance aisle of your local Walmart or Target, and you will find plenty of coffee makers that do nothing but make coffee.
Some people, myself not included, like these features and are willing to pay extra for them. Others do not and will not. This is free enterprise, not coercion.
3
@michaelscody ... and TVs? Washer/driers? Even autos (just you wait!)? You are citing vestiges of a free enterprise that respects *consumer* freedom.
5
Add this to your concerns: your television screen is spying on you. Plus, if you subscribe to cable, the cable system is sucking up data about what you watch and it is used in the big fat data pile to develop a profile of you.
We bought a Vizio screen a few months back. Doing the set-up, I noticed a message that said, in effect, this: if you don't agree to have this set spy on your viewing habits, take it back to the retailer. How fast could I get the thing back in the box and back to the store? Pronto.
The SAMSUNG sets also spy but they give you the option, during set up, to op-out. I can't find that option now on the set we bought a year and a half ago but I am looking so I can disable spying.
Oh, this, too: your internet service provider has a record of every website you visit and how long you stayed there. More profiling, more data about you to be sold for a profit.
Happy New Year!
4
The word “convenience” is now a Thing. Really?
For anyone who is not disabled, is it so inconvenient to walk across a room to turn on the computer, TV, music system, stove, heating, cooling etc.? Or to open the door in person when the bell rings? Inconvenient enough to share the intimate details of your life with a blitz of intrusive advertisers, scam artists, blackmailers, porn peddlers – and potentially,domestic and foreign government security services?
Even if you say “yes,” what happens when a totally connected household system breaks down or is hacked and you’re left freezing (or sweltering) in the dark?
And BTW, where does the data from your Fitbit go? The company says it's very safe. But a University of Edinburgh study says hacking is a possibility.
"The information is essentially the human body’s “black box”. It could potentially be used by fraudsters to falsify activity records, steal personal data or even blackmail users. It could also be shared with third parties such as marketing firms or online retailers. And we are seeing data from such devices featured in police investigations and even trials."
It ain’t rocket science. Unplug. Take a walk. And just. Say. No.
5
Oh New York Times, how hypocritical to pick on my Alexa who gets my kettle boiling while I'm in the shower and updates me on the weather and traffic while I'm getting dressed (not to mention turns on my Hue lights), when the ads on my cell phone that break up my New York Times articles are obviously targeted to my browsing history.
3
I work as a forensic genealogist for complicated intestate probates where my oldest exhibits are usually from the very early 19th century, so I have a good idea how many people a tree going back several generations will contain. The Pentagon, as usual, is trying to shut the barn door long after the horse is gone. The number of individuals who gave away their DNA to GEDmatch is great enough that when extrapolated by the number of distant relatives identified in the family tree - pretty much everyone in the US except recent emigrants now has compromised DNA.
8
I have just deleted my Facebook account and will not renew it. I regret having ever gone on it. But at least I rarely posted anything on it.
I'm off all social media. I refuse to have an Alexa or anything else. Maybe I will reconsider when I become too old and infirm to turn on my lights. But not until then. It's just not worth it to me. The next thing I need to do is set up with a VPN, although I am afraid that I am closing the barn door just a tad too late.
1
@Jennifer, I hate to break it to you, it you are on social media right now.
Yep.
And I think you are fooling yourself if you think your are really off FB for good. Many years ago I thought I would sign up for FB under a silly fake name. When the system brought up possible people I knew (I did know them), even though I have provided the minimum info to open an account — and most of it fake — I bailed. I thought it had closed the account, but not long ago I did a search on that silly name. My account came up.
Nothing lasts forever...except your digital footprint.
5
@Passion for Peaches I am aware that nothing goes away on Facebook, but at least they can no longer bombard me with false ads.
And yes, I know that the NYT and Google track my every movement. So does Waze and Google maps every time I use them and since I literally can get lost going around the block I use them a lot. All I can do is take the advice of the tech people and disengage as best I can. At least I never did Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.
Like I stated before, I truly regret have gone on FB at all but at least 99% of my posts were Have a Happy Birthday.
My privacy is gone. I am aware of that. What particularly bothers me, far more than FB, is that my medical records have become an open book. Thank God that I am old enough to be on Medicare so that I can't be denied insurance.
2
Convenience is a monster. We were doomed as soon as we decided that it was too hard to get up to change the TV channel, and bought that first remote.
5
Many of my younger relatives have embraced all of these with glee. I think they are crazy. And I believe they will come to regret this actions. I gave the same advice many years ago to my college age nieces. They are now trying to get certain photos off Facebook, etc. Good luck with that.
3
I don't understand the point of having Alexa. You can pick up your phone to research a trivia question, keep a shopping list or to-do list tacked to your fridge, walk across the room and play the music of your choice. Oh well, I guess people didn't understand the benefits of television remotes when they first came on the market.
NYT, please report on the FBI's partnership with USPS that urges the public to voluntarily submit their fingerprints to facilitate mailing services. What could go wrong?
2
@Lynn in DC, you have the use of your eyes and your hands. Think of those who don’t.
I have declining vision and am often doing some kind of work with my hands. So here is how I use Alexa:
Play Audible (so I can enjoy books while working on something else)
Play news (asked when I wake, before my eyes are usable)
Play Spotify (music and podcasts whenever...even while in the bath)
Pause! (don’t have to find the device to stop sound for a moment)
Tell me a joke (she is an excellent source of jokes for kids about age 4...and me)
So, Alexa is not necessary for living, but she is pretty darned useful.
7
@Passion for Peaches
Good point. I stand corrected.
1
I went straight to the Mozilla Foundation link after reading this. Mostly for entertainment, since I am a career-long IT professional. I am not casual about protection of my privacy and that of my family.
One telling metric of the list is the rating of the NEST thermostat as only "Somewhat Creepy", even though the site states that a "software glitch could turn your thermostat off when it's really cold and you're not home and all your pipes could burst".
Some may shrug their shoulders at that. Nevertheless, we should bear in mind that the Toyota unintended acceleration problem of a few years back was attributable to a "software glitch" (Stack Overflow, in particular). I believe that one cost at least one life.
Enjoy Responsibly.
4
This is why I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for internet browsing and sometimes Tor.
1
If you’re like me and carry an older model iPhone (6S), it will constantly be out of power. So no one can track you. A secret benefit!
On a more serious subject, when I saw the shocking clip of someone hacking the “security” camera in a little girl’s bedroom (the hacker says to the confused girl, over the speaker, “I’m Santa Claus!”), I had to wonder who in the world places a camera in their little daughter’s bedroom. It was even aimed at the beds in the room. A baby monitor aimed at a crib I can understand, but that child was old enough to expect some privacy.
(On the other hand, I got a giggle from the widely shown clip of the dog cam being hacked. The two dogs, enjoying their armchairs, trying their best to be invisible.)
4
Pretty soon Alexa will have to give us reasons to get out of bed in the morning.
1
"Privacy, after all, is a collective problem." Not at all. If someone is dumb enough to fail to think through the implications of a spying device on their person or in their home, who am I to tell them how to live?
3
I found a shower head in my new home that connected to wifi. I dismantled it, smashed it with a hammer to smithereens and tossed it in the trash. Same with the Amazon Dot I was given; unplugged, smashed and tossed.
I don't want to connect my toaster or my crock pot to wifi, I don't need to see what's going on in my home when I'm at the grocery store. I remember going to the grocery store without a telephone, too. I lived through it.
When laws are in place that prevent companies from figuring out when I cook a pot roast, I might consider these items. Until then, no. way.
13
My husband and I are lucky to be retired, no longer interested in looking for serious work, not concerned about privacy on social media, and easily able to monitor our few financial accounts. The convenience and fun of having electronic tools that tell us the temperature, open our window coverings, operate some of our lights, and let us hear music and play TV easily, are worth the risk for us.
14
@Janna I am glad you feel OK with all this. A close friend has a serious disease. From just her contacts, which she has allowed to be shared, to her calendar, which again she has allowed to be shared, they figured out she has cancer. How? Which doctors she was seeing-calendar, how often she was seeing them, which labs she was suing for testing, again the calendar. They also know her familys email. Someone has been sending her, via email, and her family many suggestions about cancer treatment. They start out: Does anyone in your famiuly have breast cancer? That specific. Her daughter finally figured out it was her Mother they were talking about. Then the phone calls came, you give out your acrive phone number don't you? Her family gets calsl about cancer treatment, how to plan your funeral, do you have a will and on and on. They wanted to take a vacation, but were asked to provide a letter from a physician stating her health was good enough for you to travel. Now how did they figure this out? And here is another freak out, her daughter and grand daughter BOTH got email about the BRAC 1 and BRAC 2, the breast cancer genetic test. Now both of them feel they have been "branded" as potentially getting breast cancer. And they are wondering just how this may effect them in the future. So those devices do listen and transmit info. as do phone apps. Would you like your family to be branded as potential "cancer" carriers and then refused all sorts of stuff?
58
@Janna
Per Axl is right. You've made a pact with the devil. The moment you come down with a serious disease, you'll be bombarded with messages from all the vultures eager to profit from your misfortune.
24
@Janna
You should never give up an opportunity to get up and move.
15
Doesn't this need to be balanced against the immense value that these devices can provide to people? For example, my 89 year-old mother who uses Alexa to choose any music she cares to listen to, most recently all kinds of variations on Christmas music, and also gets her news and weather whenever she wants it. It saves her from having to get up use her walker and slowly move across the room to turn on a radio, which wouldn't necessarily even provide what she's looking for. Not to mention the bragging rights that she receives from all the friends of hers who were impressed that she is so connected. Or the blind or bedridden people who find the device to be incredibly helpful in managing their lives, providing entertainment and communication. Maybe the reporter should do a story on those kinds of uses, to balance out the distress and paranoia of this particular column.
39
@kate j These devices would never have been created only for the handicapped who might benefit from them. They need to be sold to "the army of the upright" -- most of us -- in order to be profitable in future sales, data and money.
"Army of the upright" is not a new militia. It's Virginia Woolf's term for the able-bodied population of which she was many times not a member. But somehow she got along without Alexa.
I'm glad your mother had Christmas music to listen to.
23
@kate j
Your older relative doesn't need Alexa: Get her an iPad or a smart phone with radio apps, or just move her unconnected-to-internet radio to a table beside where she normally sits, so she can just reach out and turn a dial.
I'm amazed at how much Americans have supinely bought into this Internet of Things scam. Most of us simply do not need these devices or functions.
54
there are subtleties to these issues that you don't understand. She has an iPad, but she finds it confusing to use. Remember this is an 89 year old who was born in 1930. We could move a radio closer to her but she lives in a remote area where their signal is not particularly good to begin with. The internet radio solves that problem. I'm not being simplistic here, the Alexa device solves problems for her that are not solvable in other ways.
26
The lack of privacy is the makings for a new holocaust. All that is needed is a right wing leader supported by evangelicals to become President and/or the leader of the free world.
8
We need an overhaul of our privacy laws, but there are things you can do to protect yourself and your home.
If you use iOS or iPad OS devices from Apple, Purify can cut a lot of this stuff out. A cross-platform solution to consider is Ghostery.
On the desktop, the EFF offers the Privacy Badger that works on Chrome- the most popular desktop browser. Ghostery, previously mentioned, offers a desktop product that works on Apple's Safari browser.
Upstream, you can protect not only the tablets, phones, & desktops, but the smart home cameras, smart TVs & other devices that can be compromised. The eero browser offers a subscription-based service that leverages Z-Scaler products otherwise unavailable to the consumer market.
Of course, you should lock down your devices in the settings first & foremost. I would also recommend a good firewall that works with your laptop & desktop devices and invest a little time into learning how to use them properly.
I would also suggest you check out Cliqz, which is a privacy-enhanced browser built by the same company that makes Ghostery. It is built upon the Firefox project & is cross-platform.
Finally, when you are out and about, some ISPs offer a secured - rather than open - WiFi network that you can use to connect. Comcast offers one under the Xfinity brand to its customers that allows secure connections in many places around the country. The app installs a profile on your mobile device and gives you the ability to avoid open public WiFi.
4
No question we need laws respecting privacy as the world becomes more digital and more and more personal data is sucked up but in the meantime we are left to fend for ourselves. I would make a clear distinction between the internet of things and computers and cell phones. The internet of things are designed to obtain data about how we live in our homes. This is a new level of intrusion and can be ultimately used to control how we live in our homes by controlling how everything in our homes as well as own bodies are optimized. This level of control will give advertisers the ability to predict with almost 100% accuracy what we will buy for the sake of optimization. In other words, our lives will to controlled by algorithms on remote servers. To avoid this possible future of behavior being remotely controlled it is necessary to keep as much in our homes as possible from being connected to the internet. Don't connect should serve us well in an effort to maintain control over our own lives as the tech corporations temp us with various benefits such a convenience in order to move in to every corner of privacy in our lives .
One word "skynet"
OK maybe slightly too far but not really if you bothered to think about it.
The real question here is why are these people so lazy minded?
The only folks benefiting here are the corporations collecting your data and monitoring your no longer private life.
Regardless of how much you think this sort of tech helps you it is hurting you.
2
Unless you are a celebrity or maybe a victim of a stalker, who cares? Americans are so narcissistic. I mean why do you think your life is so interesting and important that "someone" would want to constantly watch and track you? Out of hundreds of millions of people in the US, why would "they" care about what Aunty Mary does during the day?
7
Fifty years ago one or more neighbors knew all the following about you:
If you were cheating, if you drank too much, if you drove recklessly, if you kept the doors unlocked, if you were loud and abusive, what religion, how much money, if you had been fired, if you were a right wing whacko or a left wing whacko, if you went to church, if you were flashy, if you were understated, who you rooted for, if you were from somewhere else, if you were a native, if you had a pot belly, if your kid was anorexic, if you were OCD, bipolar, or schizophrenic, if you were a veteran, where your family shopped and what they bought, if dinner was served at the same time, whether you read more or watched TV or went to the movies and on and on.
You'll say that that was different because it was only a neighbor or two. But back then, when there was so much juicy stuff, gossip was widespread. What fun is it knowing the dirt if you can't share it?
There was no privacy back then. There's no privacy now. That's pretty much the whole story.
8
I am particularly confused by the furor over police use of DNA databases to identify suspects in crimes. If a cousin of mine was a rapist, I would prefer that he be caught and taken off the streets, and if my DNA sample was of assistance in that effort I would be happy that I was able to help.
Are people so insular that they would prefer a criminal be left at large rather than discovering that he was a relative? I, for one, do not understand that attitude.
8
@Maggie Please give me an example of the police misusing DNA data.
1
Why is the fight to take back our privacy not a top priority of any candidate for president, and why has it not been a priority for any debate moderator?
Admittedly Liz Warren has given lip service to breaking up big tech, but at the end of the day, this is only a first step.
5
“Spying” on customers is not limited to devices like Alexa. I just learned a few weeks ago that our car insurance company is “verifying” by checking the mileages on our cars through the service history of cars. I do not recall that I gave any of the involved companies the permission to retrieve this data. Sure - that’s a somewhat harmless example but it underlines a general issue: the insurance company assumes that we are trying to cheat on our contracts - therefore questioning our honesty and quite frankly integrity. That’s the main issue with the “spying”: they are checking against the “standard” defined by mass data. If you do not fit that standard then you are immediately “suspicious”. How could it be that this significant threat to freedom seems to be no issue in a country where buying a gun is considered to be a right? Yes - the machines are inherently “communist” and “totalitarian” and “racist” and are right now “normalizing” us without making us uncomfortable. That is stunning for a country that is supposed to be about “freedom”. Time to protect privacy and freedom....
3
@Thorsten Fleiter Yes, when State Farm revoked my low mileage discount, I questioned it and was told they knew mi mileage from service records. I was concerned, but did raise enough of a stink, and that's my fault. My guess is that the data is shared by car dealerships as opposed to local shops like lube outfits. Then again, moat new cars come with Sirius and apps like Ford Pass, let alone the geo-locator apps.
1
There is plenty to worry about here. Those who continue to assert that their lives are an open book and so it is not problematic if there is a camera and a voice transmitter and financial info collector in their home must know little about human history. Freedom and privacy have not always been universal benefits. You cannot predict who wants to know and what they might want to know about your life.
Also psychologically one's behavior is altered if one is aware of an audience. This can be a good thing-better not hit your children, or not so good-what about love and intimacy...
I bought the last available not smart T V at Best Buy. It has good picture quality and was discounted. I'm 67 and I hope it outlasts me. I'm annoyed at the person who flies their drone over my swimming pool. I close all of my curtains at night. I still have a flip phone and it serves me just fine. It's fine with me if they photograph everyone who gets on a plane as there is justification. But lots of the rest of it is very disquieting and is not benign.
6
Another example of our useless representatives doing nothing to protect us when they can, because they are hooked on Silicon Valley money and preening their perfect hair in front of their mirrors.
1
Who came up with the sexist headline about Aunty Mary?
5
@Stephen Merritt
sexist - characterized by or showing prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.
“Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can’t put it back”. Meaning society can’t turn back the clock on technology, we can’t unknow what we know. We can however push lawmakers, companies and ourselves to limit and mitigate the bad impacts created, and make good choices.
69
@DR
read the book Giving up the Gun by Noel Perrin. The Japanese did put the toothpaste back in the tube and then "forgot" how to make toothpaste. Technology is not inevitable.
4
@DR People keep saying "You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube", like it's the ultimate truism ... you clearly can put the toothpaste back in the tube, you just need to be smart enough to use the correct tools. After all, that's how the toothpaste got into the tube in the first place, smart people using correct tools.
As an educator I get to work with teens who believe technology has made them freer. However, after reading Orwell's '1984' and considering their smartphones, device cameras, social media, etc, ... they begin to realize how little freedom in the form of privacy they actually have.
"When everything is worth money, money is worth nothing." David Byrne
102
@James Siegel
Were we any more safely private with radio?
Or with black and white TV with three networks that ceased operations in the overnight sleeping hours?
The sky is always falling as long as new technology races ahead of our legal, moral, intellectual, political and socioeconomic ability to adequately weigh individual and group costs and benefits.
2
@Blackmamba
You are being silly. Radio didn't listen to users. TV wasn't spying on us. Of course we were safer and had more privacy then
16
@sjs Are you sure? A speaker is a microphone with the polarity reversed. Although a TV or radio doesn't automatically broadcast, once they are connected through cable, there is a two-way communication. Not saying it was done just saying it could have been.
4
I heard that (from other sources. So this is not an Original Thought on my part) there is a Forth-coming "Male" Alexa. It doesn't Listen to Anything.
30
When the long-nosed and long-fingered Big Brother invades one's kitchen, the bell has rung to go back to the immortal books by Taillevent, Alexandre Dumas père, Escoffier, even Julia Child, without mentioning the modern chefs Joël Robuchon and Alain Ducasse.
1
@Tuvw Xyz But wasn't Julia Child was a member of (the precursor of CIA)? The US Foreign Service. AAR I Know this to be True b/c of Three indelible Sources. a) Movie: Julie and Julia. b) The International Spy Museum in Washington D.C. c) Most Important of All: The Internet Itself. :) :) :)
Most of you are aware that recently there's been reports of people hacking into WiFi-enabled security devices, like Nest and Ring. It was only reported because the hacker made their presence known by talking to the homeowners, and describing what the occupants were doing in real time. One such episode had some creep talking to a little girl in her bedroom.
Here's what's creepier than that: The ones that say nothing, possibly recording video of children undressing for bed to sell to other predators.
If material belongings are more important to you than the privacy of your family, you have a backward notion of security.
11
For my sibling who abused our mother and tried to strangle me, now I have a great idea for a next birthday gift: I will do my own DNA test so that the authorities can track her down when she attacks her next victim.
6
@Eddie Fortunately, I don't think the government is (yet) accepting DNA donations from private citizens who gather DNA of others. Big Brother isn't that big at the moment.
The DNA of siblings is similar enough that a brother’s data can implicate another close family member.
4
Contact your senators and congress member to demand they enact the strongest possible privacy laws. We must stop 1984!
1
this data collection is EXACTLY what Andrew Yang is talking about, and most people either aren't listening, or are incapeable of understanding. This country is still having arguments about healthcare policy and social rights and constructs long settled in the rest of the world, while China and India, with their billions of data sets (aka people) are surpassing us at rate we cannot catch, and with data collection we simply wouldn't accept. Trust me, Alexa or Siri cant legally collect the amount or types of data the Chinese government can.
Wake up to the reality, your privacy is gone, and unless w catch up, we've already lost the future... 20 years ago.
Not in my house or the home of any of my family or close friends. Not all of us are sheep.
7
For people using DNA to find relatives, privacy is exactly what they DON'T want. You might also find great-uncle Herbert, who died in 1997, had an illegitimate child.
You might also disrupt family legends, perhaps learning you are not descended from a European monarch or a great American Indian chief. You might find that you're descended from a mix of races and religions. These are legends that deserve to be shattered.
DNA data bases can be used to solve crimes. Please tell me why this is a bad thing.
DNA data bases have helped adoptees identify their heritage.
We have the GINA law, not quite perfect, to prevent use of DNA information to discriminate in insurance.
Please keep these privacy protections away from DNA.
1
That's a lot of mights. All you need is a dollar and a dream, right?
1
My Honeywell thermostat was burning through my satellite internet data, I turned off the WiFi, I can walk ten feet to change the temperature.
9
I guess I should capitulate and get a Smart Phone. Several years ago I was in a bar in Corktown, Detroit. My companions headed back to Ann Arbor, I to my hotel downtown, so I needed a taxi. The bartender, when I asked him to call a cab for me informed me that I could use uber. I informed him that I did not have the app, and I whipped out my flip phone. Some hipster at the bar saw it and said: "Cool man, I nwant one of those."
6
@Steve Beck Unfortunately my 10+ year old flip phone died so I now have a sort of smart phone - but have not put much in the way of "apps" on it. Yes, those flip phones are cool - they actually make phone calls.
1
Having friends in the so-called tech surveillance industry they have informed me of just what exactly they know and can find about me. All I can say is staggering. You have run many an article about this. One said the sad thing though was that these very same people who work for these companies have really no idea what people know about them, and then he said it, and how this exact same information is used against them. This usage happens in the Board Room all the way to the loading dock. We are judged on a daily basis, used to fulfill some information quota. They even do not know what to do with all this information yet.
2
I appreciate that Alex Kingsbury's optimism in saying, "Some day, my child will look back aghast and ask: 'Wait, Dad, that was all legal?'", however, there doesn't appear to be a clear path to a time when our privacy might be reclaimed.
Instead, there is a seemingly inexorable trend towards the routine scavenging of the small bits of our privacy that remain. Ubiquitous facial recognition likely will be the next wave, as US law recognizes the legal right of our photographic images to be captured at will in any public space. A quick browse shows that facial ID cameras are available at low commodity prices.
As it happens, I am a neuroscientist, and much of my research for years has concerned the surprisingly well-developed technology of Brain Reading. We can expect that soon our thoughts will be read with sufficient accuracy and low enough cost to support their commoditization.
To my knowledge there is no serious effort underway to re-capture our basic rights to personal privacy. Even the EU GDPR laws are weak and thwarted easily. I appreciate deeply the Privacy Project's work at the NY Times, but it too is little more than hand-wringing in a context where lawmakers are both painfully naiive about the impacts and technologies of modern computer science and are also subject to the powerful interests of business lobbies that gain massive profits from the digital crumbs we leave behind with our smartphones, credit cards, and internet-of-things lifestyle.
8
@Mark Cohen
The longest journey begins with a single step
What many of the comments reveal is how poorly informed the commenter's are about the consequences of surveillance by state or corporate sponsors through our devices.
It would be beneficial if the Privacy Project research were compiled and incorporated in a high school curriculum.
9
@Braino
I'd start off with a simple message in grade school. The minute kids start using smart phones, they need to be exposed to the importance of privacy.
5
I gifted my son a DNA kit and we were very interested in the results. He naturally had no interest in setting up the internet account through the DNA company that allows you to "find your relatives". I assumed our family's privacy was not compromised because he did not "share" the results. Is that so?
2
@Juniper
No, it isn't so.
2
@Juniper
No.
I suppose all these modern electronic devices allow us to spy on our neighbors. Problem is that they can also spy on us. They can't learn a lot from my flip phone but then they can read this post.
I think the term "privacy" doesn't quite capture what's at stake here.
13
I also want to mention how/where all the data is stored, and the fact that the bulk of it goes unused.
I was horrified to learn of data processing/storage facilities that waste energy by requiring extreme temperature control and cause noise pollution. Will the earth be consumed by useless data storage facilities?
7
@ALLISON
Only because they haven't figured out how to make money with it. Would be terrible to throw it away or not even collect it and find out they could have manipulated you into buying something else you don't need afterwards.
2
I don't understand how this became a thing. Has nobody in the United States seen Terminator? Because networking all your electronics together so that they can talk to each other behind your back is literally Skynet. I got an Alexa as a gift a few years ago, and threw it immediately into the trash, and then I took the trash outside. I genuinely don't understand how anyone can use those things.
12
I really like my Ring, but it stops there. Alexa is big brother (or sister) tracking your every move. WI FI appliances, I don't think so.
Wi Fi fridge so you and Amazon can see what's in there to remind you to go to Whole Foods. However WIFI range/ oven might not be bad idea, you could make sure you turned it off while your on vacation.
@mbrody Off the top of my head: having no wifi ovens was fine before, should be fine going forward. I'm not aware of an epidemic of left-on gas.
12
Just remember: if you can turn your stove or oven off remotely, a hacker could turn it on.
11
@mbrody
You contradict yourself :)
I am not sure what all the upset and buzz is about. I use social media and I also know that the government tracks me and likely eavesdrops on my conversations. Being a very modest person, I will say only that I am kind of a Big Deal. I'm very well educated, extremely good looking, physically fit, charming, a wonderful conversationalist, financially well-off, and generally the type of person that most of society envies and strives to be. Having consumer products companies design around my preferences only enhances products and services for all of the masses who lack the refined taste to make the right selections for themselves. As far as the government eavesdropping on me, the country can only hope that our leaders learn from me and reflect deeply on how on to best emulate my approaches to leadership. There simply isn't enough of me to go around so I am happy to compromise my privacy to help the rest of the world - Be Like Me.
35
@Questioner I no longer feel alone. I no longer feel the burden of the perfectly integrated "sapien" rests on my humble shoulders alone. I applaud you for your sacrifice.
8
@Questioner
ROTFL - That's the spirit!
4
@Questioner this is an exercise in irony, right? I’m falling off my chair laughing. Perfect.
2
Ive long been of the opinion that anyone wanting to do these off the shelf DNA tests should get their family's full permission. Everyone...not just the Sibs and parents, but all the cousins. You're not releasing just one person's DNA, but your creating a epi-center of DNA for law enforcement,etc to drill down into. You become blinking light, from which others can circle and find someone else.
9
@Boregard Our DNA is readily accessible, and law enforcement is the least of our worries.
@Boregardyou do you realize that a portion of the population has DNA taken, starting in 1992, and it is stored for 50 years? That is the US Armed Forces. Millions of people. This DNA can be used in law enforcement operations and in the interst of national security. So if you have anyone in your family that has served, their DNA was taken. Additionally, The Department of Veterans Affairs is gathering blood from 1 million veterans and sequencing their DNA. At the same time, computer scientists are creating a database that combines those genetic sequences with electronic medical records and other information about veterans' health. There is no getting your family's permission with these programs.
@Boregard For DNA, I'm less worried about law enforcement (although I'm worried) and more concerned about health insurance companies get access to that data...
"The best thing to do is push for new laws, with teeth, to stop wireless companies and app developers and other corporations from abusing your personal data.”
The recent passage of the TRACED Act, imposing high fines on many robocalls, is an example of what Congress can do when it wants to. Trump hasn't signed it yet, but he has said he will.
4
@Sequel
"but he has said he will"
Yeah, with his track record you can take that to the bank.
13
It will be quite useful if Mozilla lists the country where the R&D for the software on the device and the cloud is done.
For example, a Huawei device is listed as safe and yet our very own government is suspicious of it.
6
A start would be to start calling these "tech" companies by what they really are, advertising companies.... advertising companies that use technology (to gather data to sell) as a means to an end.
Google, Facebook (and Instagram, and What's App, and etc.), Twitter, TikTok, etc. are all advertising companies.
Here's a question, if an advertising company called you and asked for your name, age, gender, sexual preference, work history, the names of all your friends and family, spending habits, the schools you attended, the places you've worked and copies of all your eMails, chats, text messages and phone conversations, would you give it to them?
If you answered no, then why are you using these "free" services from these advertising companies?
86
@M Hardie: Answer to your question: because the bait looks so tasty!
3
I have an Echo Show 8.
Great in watching videos and seeing music lyrics while playing music.
I just turn the camera switch off. The button is on the top right of the device.
Now no one is spying on me.
@Richard Pontone The camera is the least of your worries. What you watch is tracked too, who you are, all kinds of personal details are synced up with other collectors.
5
@Richard Pontone Assuming the button actually turns off the camera ... How would you know?
8
@Richard Pontone No one is spying on you...except (at the very least) that someone knows when you're at home and everything you watch or listen to via the device. And how do you know that the camera is always off when the switch is set to off? (Remember, it's known that cell-phone apps often track your location even when location tracking is turned off.)
4
Marketers and advertisers have always tracked people through census data, voting records, retail accounts, etc. So what. So technology has made it easier for them. So what. I think those who fear privacy have a) an exaggerated assumption of their own importance in the world; b) a delusion of some sinister force with some kind of agenda or c) perhaps a criminal record?
4
@Ellen
So naive.
It's the ubiquity and sharing of all this data that makes it different from the former, relatively benign, information in the past.
Look at China and at our political situation. It just isn't safe. People have a right to their privacy, even if or not if a, b, and c.
9
@Ellen I'm not worried about the advertisers - at most that is a minor annoyance. The data is very tempting for employers and governments to use for tracking and social control. Do you want them to have that much control over you?
5
I searched on Google to find a Warby Parker eyeglass store near me. Now I am getting inundated with ads for eyeglasses from Google. I also have a smart tv. The tech at Spectrum advised me not to set it up so that it can send data to "whoever" so they can monitor what I am watching. It seems that the days of personal privacy are pretty much over.
13
@susan Start using DuckDuckGo as your search engine rather than Google.
@susan You could also get an ad blocker.
An Alexa was gifted to our home, actually regifted to us, a year ago. I stuffed Alexa in a dark closet (i.e. where the sun don’t shine).
38
@Suburban Cowboy
I find a common hammer to be an effective response to Alexa.
9
@Suburban Cowboy
Sounds like the start of a horror movie. She may re-animate, unsupervised in a dark closet. No telling what she may be plotting, but in a movie, you and your family would probably be the first victims. Invest in some silver bullets or special stakes.
2
I'm only too happy to see articles like this. I've been the tinfoil hat wearer since at least 2012 that everyone said was paranoid. Unfortunately some are still too blind to see what's happening, but others are finally waking up to see "The Cloud", Big Tech, Silicon Valley, "Internet of Things" and free apps for the evil that they truly are. It didn't have to be this way, but this is where Silicon Valley and FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) have chosen to bring us, to the brink of slavery and the end of true democracy.
22
The “helpful emoji guide that gets more and more freaked out by how creepy the devices are” isn’t based on the device’s privacy policy or history of vulnerability to hackers, it’s based on random internet users who go to the page and rate the device as creepy or not.
Popular opinion on what’s creepy isn’t a helpful guide, it’s like the results of a clickbait buzzfeed quiz.
8
Another thing people can do is protect their networks. The program "Pi Hole" can be run as a local DNS server, and any request to send data to a tracking site, adware and so on is first checked against a list of known bad domains. If the request is going to one of these, it gets stopped. No connection. No data sent for collection. It also lowers the amount of traffic on your network. Since it serves the whole network, your computer, Wi-Fi connected cell phones, or other devices are all protected.
4
Privacy aside, why does a kitty litter box or pressure cooker need to be connected to the internet?
186
@David Bible
To gather information about the purchaser and sell it to any entity willing to pay for it?
20
@David Bible ... For your convenience, of course. The litter box will alert you whenever it needs to be cleaned. The pressure cooker will heat to the temperature you specify, then turn itself off and let you know that your food is ready. You should also let your phone know which calls you want regularly to accept. You should equip your front door lock and camera to recognize people who should be allowed unrestricted access. Put a GPS tracker on your dog's collar. Put a device on your cat's collar to allow her to go in or out of the cat door.
Embrace technology for efficiency and convenience! Why deprive yourself because the NYT is pretending that convenience is terrifying?.
2
Or anything for that matter?
4
Another missive in the Times "Privacy Project" to foment rebellion against efficiency and convenience!
The currently fashionable, irrational fear of electronic surveillance and tracking is based on the conceit that our petty movements and inane conversations are of interest to others. They aren't! They are, however, highly significant to our phones, cars, door locks, doorbells, music players, televisions, thermostats, and coffee makers. Electronic control of these devices makes them efficient and convenient, not sinister!
Electronically-controlled devices need to be aware of our identity, habits, and intentions if they are to serve our needs and protect us from intrusion. The Times, in alleging China's purported spying on citizens, could find nothing more sinister than facial recognition used to control entry to apartments blocks. In a densely-populated area, identity verification is a critically important security measure.
The international terminal at Atlanta airport now uses facial recognition to facilitate baggage drop, check-in, security verification, and boarding. One can travel Atlanta to Beijing without displaying identity documents or negotiating queues.
Quell your fears of electronic progress by recognizing that the greater the volume of electronic traffic, the more difficult it becomes to ferret out tidbits of irrelevant, but embarrassing, personal information like your pantry and bra sizes!
4
that's interesting, and I agree. I recently flew a domestic flight in the US, and as I boarded my plane I was advised by Delta that each passenger was going to be photographed as they got on the plane. Can you decline the honor of being photographed, if you need to get on their plane to get from point A to point B? I don't think so. I think people who are focusing on the Alexa in their living room as a creepy device that is spying on them are blinded to perhaps some of the bigger ways that society actually is spying on us.
6
As with anything else, convenience has a price. We (not me, because only a dunderhead would use anything but an encrypted email or messaging app [that, SHOCKER! - you might have to pay for]) did sign up for this.
Everything FREE in fact does come with a price. In this case, your privacy. Users of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Venmo, etc, etc, etc, long ago surrendered their privacy. Willingly! And for what? Cheap or Free services.
How do people think those "Free" things are paid for? With ads, and preferably specifically targeted ads. You know the prompt: "Turn on location services for a better experience" - or other such gobbledygook. And that's just one of the ways.
The real employees of Facebook are the USERS. They create the data and give it Facebook (for free) and they 'mine it' and make billions of dollars. And you, well, you get maybe a free cookie at Starbucks, or something.
America was doomed as soon as SBUX opened drive throughs. Imagine being so lazy that parking and walking into a shop is an "inconvenience"
The toll road of convenience is long and dangerous. The price? Your privacy. You wanted convenient and free and you got it.
13
@Raven Drive through restaurants have been in existence since the mid-20th century. Not sure how Starbucks incorporating this trend portends the doom of society.
3
@Raven you do realize that the first drive thru restaurant opened in 1947....Red's Giant Hamburg in Springfield, Missouri.
Drive-through Starbucks doesn’t have anything to do with the loss of privacy.
Easy peasey, for people who want privacy in their lives, just unplug!
7
Things have been going downhill for human civilizatiion and privacy ever since human beongs learned how to make fire then domesticated animals and plants.
While we hoped and imagined that the universe was revolving around and focused on our every move via supernatural deities who liked us instead of natural forms of force and matter aka spacetime which are indifferent to our existence.
4
Way back in the mid-90s, I bought a Gateway computer which came with AOL, and I can recall the wonder of online chat rooms and being able to talk to strangers thousands of miles away. I worked for a telecom company that was talking a lot about “convergence” where your entertainment and information would all come from the Internet. It seemed fantastical and ripe for possibilities. It was exciting in the 90s and early 2000s to consider the potential.
25 years on, I’d love a time machine to go back and warn our wide-eyed selves that what we would sacrifice would not be worth it. Because we have been convinced that the convenience of surrendering our data is the price we have to pay to participate in society. But what has it really gotten us?
Social media is being leveraged to undermine democracy. Big tech companies can track our every move to monetize our every action. School children from kindergarten through college and being tracked and sorted by programs like Google Classroom and student tracking apps (See the recent article in the WaPo about universities’ use of student tracking software; it’s chilling.) We are creating generations of people who are perfectly complacent about the constant surveillance.
And this is to say nothing about insipid Internet culture, which makes celebrities out of the banal.
And for what? Convenience, for the most part. Society survived for centuries without the Internet. Today, I’m not convinced it will not at all survive the Internet.
41
@EWood But, what lovely decadence we shall enjoy just before the demise of society!
Ah, the joys of social media and the internet! All that gossip and pornography. Ah, the convenience of programmable gadgets! Ah, the security of our homes, our children, our pets, our workplaces, and our cars with round the clock electronic surveillance!
2
just say NO. no to alexa. no to siri. no to smart tv. no to smart refrigerators. no to doorbell cams. no to ancestry tests. no to gps mapping in your car. none of this stuff is necessary.
90
@butlerguy You had me until GPS in your car.
I don't see the convenience of any of the other technologies - but GPS is huge.
27
@butlerguy So, because of some bad actors, we have to go back to the days of having no idea how long it will take to get somewhere (anywhere) because the only traffic updates we have access to are on the radio/TV (and honestly, not timely enough to be useful in most cases). Good luck with that.
1
@butlerguy Sounds like a dull, burdened life indeed!
Why deprive yourself of efficiency and convenience out of fear that your belt size may be exposed?
1
It's sad, but I think we're going to have the same divide that existed when the FBI under Hoover was outed for routinely performing warrantless wiretaps, black bag jobs and surveillance of a pretty much anyone that Hoover wanted to. I had my parents and others simply say that they didn't care. If you weren't doing anything wrong you had nothing to hide. It will be the same kind of rationale given for the current crop of intrusions, the scope and scale of which would've even made Hoover blush. People are effectively addicted and entertained by this new set of technologies. They really don't understand the impact of having massive troves of data on themselves loose in the world. They won't anyway until it actually hurts them and it very likely will.
18
So let’s say that some decent laws are passed regarding the privacy, use and collection of our data. I’ve never heard anything about how they would be enforced. Who is going to police these companies, and how exactly do you do it? Wouldn’t these data mining/selling companies be able to easily cover their tracks or find ways around the laws? It’s a constant game of whack-a-mole with privacy. I have not knowingly purchased any smart devices yet, like doorbells or toasters or TVs (I realize my car is tracking me in various ways, but I purchased a used one that pre-dates the worst of the data collection that is rampant today), but I am afraid I soon won’t have any choice. The option to disable transmission of data is a farce, a head fake, so to speak, and soon we will be obligated to allow collection or the device won’t work at all.
11
@Frau Greta
The law needs to be written so that the fundamental rights are enshrined - transparency, control, consent - rather than technical minutia for which work around can exist.
Second, penalties need to be severe. GDPR exacts 4% of global revenue. You better believe people are on the hunt for noncompliance with that kind of bounty.
Third, there are ways that one might cause implementations to become transparent such that a company could not surreptitiously change it without obtaining consent again.
The problem that isn’t solved is for people to understand what they are giving up. The information asymmetry is vast.
4
@Eric
Thank you for those very thoughtful points. I hope all three can become reality here. They are very much ahead of us in EU.
As for your last point, I couldn't agree more. I think the answer begins with the younger generations, who have enormous buying power, and hence, behavioral clout, as they reach their 20s, and even before that.
2
@Frau Greta
"and soon we will be obligated to allow collection or the device won’t work at all"
The cornerstone of any effective legislation must be the ability to disable internet connection and collection of data when it isn't essential to the core function of the device.
The quest for evermore profits, where the absence of extreme sales growth is considered object failure, is now the norm.
So yes, we track toddlers cared for by grandmothers in their homes, both the baby’s parents at work, feverishly running on treadmill to nowhere, while missing the most magical moments of their lives.
Humanity’s ability to deny, ignore and self-delude has turned entirely to farce with Trump, a modern-day Nero, fiddles while Rome (the world) burns (literally) to the ground. He is hardly to blame of course, more consequence than cause, a rotten Chernobyl cherry on top of a sundae made of biohazard landfill.
Tracking and recording us in our homes seems just one more indignant trespass to add to the stack. Somehow, even the word, “insanity” doesn’t seem to describe it.
.
14
Let me submit that the constitution does not explicitly include a “right to privacy”, though it has been construed as somehow implied lately in various ways.
When America was founded privacy was for nobility and kings in the old world and as such suspect. Instead this side of the Atlantic the Protestant value of accountability in a free society was more important. In the main, America wasn’t founded by people who were hiding stuff.
Privacy protection in America thus may be overrated. After all, as free citizens what all do we have to hide anyways? In America I can speak as I please without threat of persecution. Not so in many other parts of the world, including even Western Europe, where they have hate speech laws and subjects have to register with the police when they move.
8
@Wolf Bein Let me submit that Americans have the right to be left alone. Choice matters.
Anyone who devalues privacy is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
17
@Wolf Bein
" the constitution does not explicitly include a “right to privacy”". There is an undefined word in that sentence, "explicitly". Depending on how one defines it, one could say the Constitution does not "explicitly" say anything.
3
@Wolf Bein
"I, for one, welcome my new robot overlords."
12
Another reason for the UK to remain in the EU is the data protection laws (GDPR). Now we will join with the US and thus expose ourselves to mega-corporations.
54
@Roy Will GDPR sounds great, but how many people will actually contact the myriad of companies that have their data and ask them not to re-sell it or to delete it? Most will simply accept the terms of service without reading them, allowing for business as usual to go on.
2
I think we need a Constitution amendment establishing a "Right of Privacy" that includes the explicit recognition that a person's data belongs to them, and cannot be taken without just compensation. Further, unless there is a 'paid, no data collection' option, the usual "Privacy policy" is a one-sided and unfair contract. If you can't pay Facebook to use their services without data collection - if you only options are data collection or no Facebook - then they are unfairly compelling all the users to give up their data without just compensation. Either pay the users a cut of the profits, or offer a paid no-data option, or you are taking the data without just compensation. If Facebook generates $20 a year profit per user, the users must be able to buy out of the data collection by paying $20, or Facebook must pay the users just compensation (half would be a good start) of the profit earned from their data. Similar to a farmer leasing a field to grow crops, or an oil company paying a mineral rights holder for the oil pumped... A Right of Privacy would recognize that *my* data belongs to *me*, and merely offering the use of your service, without a paid no-data option, is not fair compensation for the data I own.
59
This is a double-edged "sword" if ever there was one. Through the same technology you can track your political representatives wherever they go; and arrange for them to be confronted with challenges to explain themselves. If the Republican senators have to explain their defence of Trump at every "doorstop" interview they will introduce legislation to curtail non-government surveillance next year.
5
@Philip Brown
"they will introduce legislation to curtail non-government surveillance next year."
More likely they will introduce legislation to curtail surveillance OF the government (and its elected representatives) the next year. National security, eh?
1
I have to ask, though, how much tracking is performed by the NYT, especially those who comment?
145
Probably as much as you can imagine and more. For instance, you have a subscription in order to post comments. You probably established a user name. You probably have a IP address, a credit card for payment and an email attached to your screen name and user name. So, it can all be sifted, combined, analyzed and tracked. Since your credit card name is related to your subscription and your subscription is related to your comments, there is no doubt NYT can know who is saying what on its comment boards.
3
@NYT via Menssabutt
That wasn’t a rhetorical question. NYT’s, we await and deserve a response.
15
@Mensabutt
Not so much about what the NYT is tracking. Very much about who they are selling the data to.
14
As much as this and other countries' Big Data Businesses hate GDRP, it is making a lot of sense to literally bludgeon abusers of this crime of snarfing up unsuspecting user data, all for enormous profit on their part.
I doubt the lawmakers of this country will have enough ethical thinking to ever pass such a law, especially with the obscene amount of money these companies are making off this, and the inevitable lobbying to keep at least parts of this open territory for them off the law books.
Yet almost everyone we talk with expresses the alarm, the concern and the need for restoring our privacy. How can (except through adequate bribes) this be overlooked and ignored by our lawmakers?
Perhaps this is the year to get this done, inundating our elected officials who make laws with the demand that all collection be an opt-in, and clear 'forget me' clauses that are honored.
To have an opt-out decision come in from a user and then be ignored while their data continues to be gathered and sold, should be subject to company-destroying fines and holding the CEO and the company's board criminally liable.
This may sound draconian, but this is a time in which the consumer must force our Congress to act.
Will we end up paying for what everyone now expects for free? Sure, but it is worth it in the long run.
28
Regarding "...from abusing your personal data": if personal data are collected, stored, or sold without explicit consent, "abuse" has already occurred. It would be easy for politicians to pass a universal privacy law banning unwarranted surveillance, thus returning privacy to the pre-2000 era. Until we hold politicians accountable for not having done so, violation of privacy rights will continue due to the ability to profit from it.
90
@RC
"Explicit consent?" It was given. Why do you think the fine print is so fine? If I had a dollar for every person who always read the fine print in its entirety, I could probably buy a bottle of screw top wine.
3