We expect professionals to behave ethically. Doctors and companies working on genetics and cloning for instance are expected to behave ethically and have constraints placed on their work. And with consequences for those behaving unethically.
Yet we have millions of software engineers working on building a surveillance society with no sense of ethics, constraints or consequences.
What we have instead are anachronistic discussions on things like privacy that seem oddly disconnected from 300 years of accumulated wisdom on surveillance, privacy, free speech and liberty to pretend the obvious is not obvious, and delay the need for ethical behavior and introspection. And this from a group of people who have routinely postured extreme zeal for freedom and liberty since the early 90's and produced one Snowden.
That's a pretty bad record by any standards, and indicates the urgent need for self reflection, industry bodies, standards, whistle blower protection and for a wider discussion to insert context, ethics and history into the debate.
The point about privacy is not you, no one cares what you are doing so an individual perspective here has zero value, but building the infrastructure and ability to track what everyone in a society is doing, and preempt any threat to entrenched interests and status quo. An individual may not need or value privacy but a healthy society definitely needs it.
I don't think there's any need to rehash the debate here. Simply, I and many others do not believe that any western government is going to use information gathered by tech companies to preempt threats to entrenched interests and the status quo. I've seen the same arguments made here for years, and none of it is convincing.
It's admirable that you are so certain in your beliefs. If you don't like what the tech sector is doing, please by all means continue to advocate. Shout it from the mountain tops, go to work for the EFF. But don't discount people that legitimately disagree with you as being irresponsible. At least some of us have made the effort to understand your point of view. The least you could do is to try to understand ours.
Which sector is building startup after startup for data mining, tracking, building profiles? This in addition to the already established companies. Then you're trying to downplay the issue to trivial actions such Facebook likes or tracking of IP addresses, a toy version of the state of the art. Finally, the sarcasm, showing how reasonable you are and putting the OP in a bad light for not being "more understanding".
It's quite simple: the topic of privacy is central to a free society and it's enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the past, we have seen a rich history of abuses, lies and deceit from huge organizations with massive resources at their disposal. Private or not.
The majority of people go on with their lives without caring, as long as they have their basic needs met. The very few that take a stand, pay the price. Otherwise, some criticism of the behavior of these organizations can be found online, but not much because of:
1) Chilling effects. Funny how I had to think before posting this message, living comfortably in a democratic country, with freedom of thought and freedom of speech.
2) "Helpful people", quick to jump to the defense of said organizations, explaining away abuses, making up excuses, muddying the waters, asking for fairness and understanding their point of view.
So thanks for keeping the balance karmacondon. They might have mountains of money, lawyers, shills, PR people and most resources imaginable really, BUT we wouldn't want to unfairly hurt their feelings. I do apologize for that.
You talk about it like it's necessarily a bad thing, by default, for everyone. Why?
This sounds more like a uncompromising proclamation instead of thorough analysis.
The ancients had it as 'power corrupts', the abuses are plentiful and that every company that engages in these practices (and the government agencies as well) do this to ostensibly make our lives easier or keep us 'safe' is very well known and advertised. If you have evidence to the contrary feel free to share it but that's where we currently stand.
Well, then logical thing would be not to give anyone any power, ever.
My point is, if you take general principles and blindly apply it with "no analysis involved", you're likely to get to a pretty ridiculous state.
Just like any other tool such insights can be (and are) abused but it need not be like that.
The conclusion to reach is not to give anyone any power ever, clearly that's not feasible. The conclusion you're supposed to reach is that you can give power to people but you'll need oversight in place. Effectively you'll end up with checks and balances, pretty much the way most governments are set up.
And what history tells us - again - is that this isn't always sufficient to prevent abuses and our newspapers and other media seem to tell us that our current set of checks and balances have outlived their usefulness in the information age.
This flows from 'power corrupts' because it appears that those placed in power have - surprise - again abused their privileges.
Think of it as a warning beamed down from historical times to our present day that does not need more embellishment and is all the more powerful for its brevity, it is something so inherent in human nature that we need to be vigilant of it at all times, no matter who we end up placing trust in.