zlacker

One thing people seem particularly blind about is that private companies holding data from their own purposes is the huge point of failure for privacy.

The government can get your gmail, facebook, verizon, amazon data because those companies keep that data about you. The NSA doesn't need to spy on you, google already does. I don't think the NSA is reading my email, but I know Google is.

Not to mention that when all these tech companies are spying on your for profit, your privacy is already destroyed.

>>rhino3+(OP)
A lot of people are not blind about this at all.

They understand fully that their data is collected and they expect nothing less than the top result of their Google, Amazon, and Facebook queries to match exactly what they are looking for.

>>chisha+n1
A lot of people have an abstract idea that information is being collected, yes. I suspect that few people realize or know what the amount of information is, who has access to it, what purposes they use it for.

Does anyone remember that angry email they sent 5 years ago where they were criticizing their boss? Google does. What kind of profile can you build from thousands and thousands of such emails, messages and queries, and location data and pictures, videos, actions on social networks?

I think some companies have a better idea about who some people are than those people themselves.

>>chisha+n1
Define "a lot" and "fully".

But more importantly, sure, there are people who think they deserve to be mistreated, there are people who are drug addicts to the point of barely being anything else and still would fight anyone who gets between them and their dealer, and of course and there are plenty of people who have no problem with all sorts of messed up things up to murder as long as they themselves are not on the receiving end of it. Yet even if 99% of all people regressed to that station, that wouldn't do one bit to diminish my own human rights. That some or even a lot of people are fine with certain things, whether they understand them "fully" or, which I find more likely, "not in the least", is the problem, not the solution.

Drive to the extreme: he right of people to do what the White Rose did will always outweigh the right of people to not be part of the White Rose. It's dissidents and persecuted minorities who define the boundaries of these things, not the people who are living in comfort in exchange for not standing up for anything or against anyone. They exist, and their opinion matters as a problem to be solved or worked around, but that's the extent of it. Some things can not be justified by anyone agreeing to them, people do not have that power even when numbering billions.

>>rhino3+(OP)
That's a big part of why restrictions on governmental collection and retention of data will never suffice. (The other big part is terrorism fears. Whether or not you or I agree with the plan -- as a practical political matter, a lot of surveillance will be done to try to identify in-country baddies.)

http://www.dbms2.com/2010/07/04/fair-data-use/

>>chisha+n1
The Tradeoff Fallacy: How Marketers Are Misrepresenting American Consumers and Opening Them Up to Exploitation

https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/publications/tradeoff-...

    ... the survey reveals most Americans do not believe that ‘data for discounts’
    is a square deal.

    ... Rather than feeling able to make choices, Americans believe it is futile to
    manage what companies can learn about them. The study reveals that more than half
    do not want to lose control over their information but also believe this loss of
    control has already happened.

>>blub+X2
And thanks to this technology, people can understand themselves better, if they choose to. It's truly bizzare that some people instead take away that the right way to "correct" this discrepancy is for companies to know less.

>>caskan+VX
Why do you find that bizarre? Given the asymmetry of resources and conflicting interests between people and the companies who know so much about them, it seems perfectly reasonable to want companies to know less. The vast majority of that knowledge is used to take from the consumer, not to give.

>>nitrog+Or1
It's not a zero sum game.

Good companies use information they collect to provide better services. Bad companies use it to rip people off. The problem of bad companies doing bad things is independent of companies having information about people.

>>caskan+qb2
The arguments for information control are similar to those for anything else -- less [x] floating around, less potential for abuse.

>>nitrog+os3
And that argument by itself is not enough to restrict anything. Less hats floating around, less potential for abuse. Less televisions floating around, less potential for abuse.