[sudo-discuss] Freedom of name: the Big Stinking Skunk that everyone seems to miss:

[revphil]

Thanks for the essay! I didn't expect to read it to the end but your
rant was right on target.

I went to the EFF's presentation at NoiseBridge yesterday and tho I
might have personally benefited more from learning about 3d Printers I
feel slightly pissed at myself for my level of security. I am lazy and
I have given up; I dont believe that the powers that be have anything
to gain by listening or altering my messages.

Winston Smiths aren't we all.

rev

ps iPhone mobile security? like a piece of black tape and a zip lock bag?



On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 2:56 AM, Patrick Schmidt
<psbschmidt at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Speaking about corporate cellphones where you cant take out the
> battery and dont know who
> controls the mic:
>
> Would be awesome if the Hacker Community finally comes up with Open
> Hardware Mobile Phones and awesome Open Hardware Cameras.
>
>
>
>
>
> 2013/3/16, Anon195714 <anon195714 at sbcglobal.net>:
>>
>>
>> Yo's-
>>
>> There's a big stinking skunk in the room, that everyone seems to miss,
>> including a lot of people at SudoRoom and other hackerspaces:
>>
>> The biggest threat to freedom & privacy is not the government, law
>> enforcement, the intelligence agencies, etc.
>>
>> The biggest threat is the corporate sector.  And many of us are
>> willingly serving ourselves up to them on a silver platter, with
>> condiments included, and dragging our friends into it with something
>> less than fully informed consent.
>>
>> What government can do to you with the data they collect:  Prosecute you
>> for a crime or disappear you to Gitmo.  Some day, though at present it's
>> merely a paranoid fantasy, perhaps order a drone strike to shoot you on
>> the street.
>>
>> What the private sector can do to you:  Get you fired from your job,
>> deny you the ability to get another job, or an apartment, a mortgage,
>> health insurance, a bank account, or plain-vanilla consumer credit.
>>
>> Which set of consequences is more likely to happen to you?  Which set of
>> consequences causes more fear today?  Which set of consequences
>> realistically makes you look over your shoulder?
>>
>> On a day-to-day basis, are Americans talking about their fear of going
>> to prison, or about their fear of losing their jobs, losing their homes,
>> losing their health coverage, etc.?  Do you know anyone who has a kid?
>> Ask them whether they're more afraid of going to prison or of losing
>> their job and the roof over their head.
>>
>> Round-ups of dissidents make news.  Political prosecutions make news.
>> Suicides of young guys who were being aggressively prosecuted for
>> hacking, make news.
>>
>> Someone getting fired (or not getting hired) because their boss found an
>> "objectionable" comment by them somewhere online, or an embarrassing
>> picture of them on Facebook, doesn't make the news.
>>
>> As far as the media and public opinion are concerned, losing your job
>> and losing the roof over your head don't make you a persecuted
>> dissident, they make you a "loser."  And when you rant about getting
>> fired or denied an apartment because of your politics or your lifestyle,
>> you're not just a "loser" but a "whiny loser."
>>
>> There is no more effective means of enforcing servile conformity than to
>> offer mundane rewards and punishments, that individuals internalize.
>> There is no more effective way to get people to comply, than to sell
>> compliance as "convenience."  As a science fiction character of mine
>> said in the 80s, "Why put a person in prison, when you can put prison in
>> the person?"
>>
>> But there's something even more insidious about this.
>>
>> It creates a culture of internalized compliance, conformity, and
>> submission.  A culture where dissent and nonconformity are "tolerated"
>> (because overt repression would trigger more dissent), but where the
>> vast majority does what is expected of them.  A culture where today
>> people say "privacy is obsolete" and "there is no more privacy," a
>> culture that's one step away from "freedom is obsolete."
>>
>> The biggest risk is not that you'll personally be targeted, lose your
>> job, and end up homeless.  The biggest risk is that the culture as a
>> whole won't give a fiddler's fig about those who are quietly
>> dispossessed, because everyone is too busy falling in line to chase the
>> latest consumer baubles, or to keep from being eaten by the latest
>> economic alligators.
>>
>> Big Data is the feed-in to that system.
>>
>> Do you have any idea of the totality of tracking that's going on now?
>> Keyword search "flash cookies" or go to http://www.eff.org and search
>> their website for their write-ups about 'em.  Look up "super cookies"
>> and "LSOs" or "local stored objects" while you're at it.
>>
>> Depending on your operating system & browser, take a close look at the
>> files & folders on your machine that store these things.  Open the
>> folders and watch what happens when you turn up the privacy settings on
>> your browser, or click the options to clear your cache, cookies,
>> browsing history, etc.  What you'll see is that these f---ing bugs
>> instantly regenerate themselves: like cockroaches they are almost
>> impossible to kill off entirely.
>>
>> Using open-source OS & browsers doesn't fix this.  You can write a
>> custom script to route them to dev null and it won't stop them.  They
>> are designed to thwart your security measures and keep on sending data
>> to their owners, no matter what you do.  They are arguably a criminal
>> violation of anti-hacking statutes because they circumvent security
>> measures on machines, but so far nobody has raised a lawsuit about that
>> (I have pestered the folks I know at EFF about this and will keep doing
>> so, but their docket is pretty jammed as it is).  "Privacy policies"
>> that destroy privacy are arguably "contracts of adhesion" that are not
>> enforceable.  And yet....
>>
>> Everywhere you go online, everything you do online, is being collected
>> with a degree of completeness that would cause you to crap your pants if
>> you knew how far it goes.
>>
>> The ostensible goal is to sell advertising.  But I have a question:
>> what's the actual return on investment for that?  How many goods &
>> services are actually sold because advertisers can "target" you for
>> "personalized" messages?  How often have you bought something because
>> you got a targeted ad?  I'm willing to bet: not enough to justify the
>> amount of money being spent on all the tracking, spying, and digital
>> flashlights shoved up our collective colon.
>>
>> The purveyors of all this neo-surveillance are basically scamming the
>> business world when they say it's "necessary" to "remain competitive"
>> and all that nonsense.  One could make the same claim for telemarketing,
>> and the only ones who get rich on it are the telemarketers themselves.
>>
>> So here's where fellow Sudoers and other friendly folks end up turning
>> themselves into FOOD for Big Data, and dragging their friends into it
>> with something less than informed consent:
>>
>> Facebook, Google, texting, and smartphones.  And very soon, Verizon and
>> other cable TV services, about which more some other time, keyphrase
>> "watch you cuddle."
>>
>> Most of us here despise Facebook, except we'll give someone a pass for
>> using it if they're a public or quasi-public figure who wants to use it
>> for publicity purposes.
>>
>> But very very many of us here use Gmail addresses and Google Voice
>> telephone numbers.
>>
>> Google is the paradigm case of Big Data.  Even NSA is envious of Google,
>> and NSA recently adopted a Google database system for use in their new
>> facility in Utah.
>>
>> When you use GMail or Google Voice, you are being subjected to the same
>> kind of keyword-recognition collection & analysis system that NSA uses
>> for intercepting overseas traffic.  The difference is that you don't get
>> to vote for their boss every four years.
>>
>> When the only way to reach someone by email is at their GMail address,
>> and the only way to reach them by phone is by calling their Google Voice
>> number, they are effectively saying to their friends:  "If you want to
>> write to me or talk to me, you have to submit to intensive
>> surveillance."  If you value the friendship, you submit.  Or you say
>> nothing on the phone and nothing in email, other than "let's meet in
>> person."  Thereby throwing away all the potential value of over a
>> century of communications technology.
>>
>> What Ithiel de Sola Pool called "technologies of freedom" in 1983, have
>> become technologies of control that rival _1984_.  As Winston Smith said
>> to O'Brien, when O'Brien switched off the telescreen in his apartment,
>> "You can turn it off!", and O'Brien replied, "We can turn it off.  We
>> have that privilege."  Try taking the battery out of an iPhone.  Try
>> taking the battery out of the forthcoming, and ironically named,
>> "iWatch."  They watch.  You can't turn it off.  Interesting, that.  So
>> when you hang out with someone who's carrying an iPhone, wearing an
>> iWatch, or worst of all Google Goggles, once again, you're submitting.
>>
>> Facebook is a surveillance machine.  Google is a surveillance machine.
>> Twitter is not only a surveillance machine, it was designed as an
>> intelligence collection platform.  I know someone who developed intel
>> collection & analysis software for use on Twitter.  I'll tell that story
>> in person.  "Texting" in general, like Twitter, is an intel collection
>> platform.  And "smartphones" are surveillance devices you carry around
>> with you.  Do you really trust software you can't inspect?, that
>> controls a camera, a microphone, and a GPS tracker, that you carry
>> everywhere you go?
>>
>> There used to be a pretty strong cultural attitude among geeks, hackers,
>> etc., that using AOL for email, was for losers.  Cool People didn't go
>> anywhere near AOL.
>>
>> AOL's big sin was censorship.  They tried to "moderate" their little
>> corner of cyberspace.  In the end they failed, and at this point (I had
>> to check that they still exist at all) they are nothing more than
>> another dumb "aggregator" page.
>>
>> But make no mistake about this: Surveillance IS censorship.
>>
>> When people are being watched, they behave differently.  They submit,
>> they conform, they comply.
>>
>> And in the end, "convenience" is a dumb-ass excuse for compliance.
>>
>> -G.
>>
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