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?
In the modern era it is information asymmetry that we should worry about. How to prevent such a thing pragmatically is tricky.
This only works in the US and even there I have no illusions at all about the ability of a present day militia being able to fight off a trained army, it's a pacifier for overgrown toddlers. The only people that have to fear from citizens with guns are other citizens (with or without guns), the military would have absolutely no problem whatsoever dispatching those if it was decided that their lives and the resulting PR fall-out are less important than whatever objectives they were given.
> In the modern era it is information asymmetry that we should worry about.
Note that there are always provisions in the law to protect the lawmakers from having the laws applied to them.
> How to prevent such a thing pragmatically is tricky.
I think it can't be done unless you simply outlaw it wholesale and are prepared to follow up on it. And from a practical point of view this is now a rear-guard action, fall-back bit by bit and try to push back the point in time where we will have to conclude the battle was lost. This is not a problem that will simply go away, it has already gone way too far for that.
I'm less pessimistic about that. I'm a big fan of gun control laws but I also think that the one positive thing that has come from the ongoing middle-east conflicts is that a determined militia can be genuinely problematic.
> Note that there are always provisions in the law to protect the lawmakers from having the laws applied to them.
To my original point about asymmetry, this is what we should be devoting our energy fighting.
> simply outlaw it wholesale
Outlaw what wholesale? I'm personally of the opinion that the long term end state will fall more on the side of honesty (combined with increased acceptance) than secrecy.
Any kind of abuse of power. The penalties for that should be severe. It's one of the few cases where I think that the penal system should be used as a means of discouragement rather than as one of education and rehabilitation.