http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...cts-users-cant
I guess this was inevitable. :shakehead2:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...cts-users-cant
I guess this was inevitable. :shakehead2:
Argh!! :bang:Quote:
We're unable to locate the page you requested.
Hmm. Weird. This one should work:
Google tracks consumers’ online activities across products, and users can’t opt out - The Washington Post
Everything is the same but there's less to read. The horror!
They were already tracking you everywhere it was relevant to track. All they've done is made one document that covers everything.
Now that one won't load. :paranoid::help:Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneironaut Zero
Ok it loaded now....
Well, yeah I think this is terrible.
Even if it's not used in any nefarious ways, it limits people to their own little section of the web in a way.
People will rarely see other's view points if all their search results are tailored to them.
Also, I hope this uses accounts instead of IP addresses. Because I use different account for Google, gmail and youtube.
One more reason why I'm anxiously awaiting Anon+
Anyone else going to start closing their Google et al accounts?
Nah. Just remember it's not a secure line of communication. But I like having something trackable, as well, just to give the coppers a little misdirection.
lol true.
But I think I'll delete my gmail account and start anew.
Well, I pretty much never use my gmail account, and I'm not signed in to Google+ currently, so I'm not sure how this affects me. I sign in on my YouTube account with my Gmail account though.
Just been searching through their transparency website, was eye opening the first time I saw it. But just found this.
IMO governments/police just shouldn't be able to request this information. It's so ridiculous. It's like if I'm a member at a bowling alley and they go there and ask for all the information the bowling alley has on me, even though there's no proof whatsoever that that has anything at all to do with the case.Quote:
Observations on User Data Requests
The number of requests we receive for user account information as part of criminal investigations has increased year after year. The increase isn’t surprising, since each year we offer more products and services, and we have a larger number of users.
The statistics here reflect the number of law enforcement agency requests for information we receive at Google and YouTube, the percentage of requests that we comply with (in whole or in part) and the number of users or accounts specified in the requests. We review each request to make sure that it complies with both the spirit and the letter of the law, and we may refuse to produce information or try to narrow the request in some cases.
We hope this tool will shine some light on the appropriate scope and authority of government requests to obtain user data around the globe.
I'd really like to be able to see more information on the information which is requested too. At least a description of it.
Google is an american company and therefore subject to the patriot act which covers a wide variety of criminal investigations outside of terrorism. Anyone who believes in the future of this nation and the world would be strictly non-compliant, though.
I don't see the problem. Google has been doing this forever. This is a perfect example of journalists trying to blow things out of proportion.
You should attack Facebook long before you attack Google, when it comes to privacy related matters.
On paper Facebook has the same attitudes toward privacy as Google do.
Okay I may be opening a can of worms here but... Why should we be unhappy with the patriot act? The world is heading towards zero privacy anyway, and if you've got nothing to hide why should you be unhappy?Quote:
Originally Posted by Omnis Dei
From: Google Thinks I'm a Middle-Aged Man. What About You?
Re: https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/onweb/Quote:
“See, this is all we’re concerned about in this whole tracking business. It’s not even detailed enough information to distinguish a middle-aged man from a girl technology reporter. To us, your profile is just a series of random digits, nothing more. And if you don’t like it, we are making it so easy to opt out that you have no excuse not to.”
Privacy is a good thing to have. While "and if you've got nothing to hide why should you be unhappy?" seems logical, it is very much against our nature to have everything we do recorded and analyzed. Google's and Facebook's privacy policies are not particularly nice, and I would love to see them reworked to be less intrusive, so to speak. This recent change by Google doesn't really change anything though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pensive Patrick
I despise this "nothing to hide" argument and greatly wish it would be dragged out the back and summarily executed, and proponents of it beaten with large pointy sticks. My business is not your concern, just because I have "nothing to hide". My personal life is likely not something anyone would be particularly interested in, but people still have a fundamental right and expectation of privacy regardless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pensive Patrick
Further, EVERYONE has information they want to keep secret, or at least limit who has that knowledge. A classic but fairly trivial example is claiming you have plans to avoid an invitation from someone without hurting their feelings where obviously you do not want them to find out it was a lie.
If you have nothing to hide, then publicly post all your personal information and all kinds of aspects of your life for the world to see. Not going to? No, I didn't think so either.
Right I see what you're saying. But whilst I do have personal stuff I wouldn't like everyone to know, if everyone knowing that stuff would literally save lives or make society a better place I would gladly give up my petty privacy. It's the way society is heading anyway, despite all the "privacy is a right" people, and I'd like to think that in the distant future society will be full of people who a) gladly give up all privacy, and b) don't really care if everyone finds out their flaws or humiliating little secrets.Quote:
Originally Posted by Photolysis
Who cares if you get a little embarrassed or hurt a few people's feelings, maybe lose a few friends. Be proud of who you are, and understand that total openness is one of the keys to a harmonious society.
Ok that sounded really preachy but please don't hate me.
FUCK this argument. I'm so sick of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pensive Patrick
What happens when the government or police decide something you have done is illegal? Like looking up porn which is too "risque", for example,
or looking up how to grow Cannabis, or whatever else.
I've probably committed every "conspiracy to" law in the books through my internet searches. When mostly I'm just curious.
Seriously, if you really believe what you said, I literally am scared for the future.
Obviously China is doing very well without human rights, we should aspire to be more like China. We can only hope that this country will start handing out 12 year prison sentences for conspiring to start a union. It is our job to blindly assume that the government, and elite class which owns it, are looking out solely for the interests of the working class along with any sort of evolution that disrupts their power structure. It is insane to believe the government, and therefore the most powerful interests in the world, would exploit people for their own personal gain.
Google hasn't really changed anything. All they've done is combine your google services accounts into one shared google-account. This is logical, and doesn't have any impact on privacy, as far as I can tell (they were all kinda liked anyhow). I don't know why people are getting so worked up.
Even if privacy is the same, read what I said before. Coz that's exactly what we're heading for. It's not a guess or a prediction, it's a fact. That's what they're trying to make happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by khh
No you haven't.Quote:
Originally Posted by tommo
In a society where people are already being denied employment, because job owners are judging them on completely unrelated, outside of work activities, that are evidenced on Facebook? Right. Good luck with that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pensive Patrick
People need secrets for the same reason that I said - in another thread - that I wouldn't put my DV activity on my resume; because most people are not that open-minded to the quirks of others. And being progressive does not mean stripping people of their privacy rights, to try to force that kind of open-mindedness on the populace....mainly because it won't work, and people are likely to become resentful. In your view of a 'harmonious society', do you think we should allow the government to put video cameras in our homes? Think of all the domestic violence cases and burglaries it would help prevent! :-?
Absolutely! Total control and surveillance. But obviously for that to work both people and the government need to be generally a lot more open minded and considerate. And like you say, that can't be forced just by suddenly taking away privacy. But in my opinion, gradual degradation of privacy is the first step towards everyone becoming more open minded, more considerate, and more focussed on a goal of a suffering-free society.Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneironaut Zero
It's quite ironic how you think the people and governments have to be much more progressive before something so totalitarian and Orwellian can occur, given that they're the antithesis of each other.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pensive Patrick
It could be possible to have a society with total surveillance but where everyone is happy. I don't know if you've heard of Iain M Banks, but in his books he writes about a society so advanced that there is no money, you can have anything you want, and no one commits crime (or very rarely) because a) they know it is damaging for society, and b) they know that they are constantly under watch and the crime would be almost impossible to commit, and if they did manage then they would be assigned a drone for the rest of their lives to stop them from doing it again (an enormous humiliation). The society works because it is 'run' (although there is no heirarchy and the society is a total democracy) by super-intelligent 'minds', which are far beyond AIs and infinitely more intelligent and sentient than humans. Yet the minds look after the humans and give them anything they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone.Quote:
Originally Posted by Photolysis
What I'm trying to say is that there can be a perfect society where there is no privacy, no locks on doors, no information that can't be found out, but where people still respect eachother and there is no, or little, suffering.
However Iain Banks himself has said that for this society to arise from our current one, there would have to be much genetic engineering to basically make sure that everyone is nice and selfless, and will gladly give up privacy for the greater good of a large and prosperous civilization. And I'm sure lots of people would be happy with genetic purging so it's probably not going to happen, at least not by choice.
David Brin wrote a lot a few years back about information transparency and the extinction of privacy being inevitable, and I think he's probably right. His point was that it applies equally to public figures like politicians and corporations as it does to private citizens--more so, in fact, because more people are watching the President and Mansanto than are watching Joe Blow in Poughkeepsie. It's not totalitarian if it cuts both ways. Only if an imbalance of information exists--through, for instance, an imbalance of technology--is the disappearance of privacy a threat to liberty.
Politicians are in the public spotlight because they are servants of, and accountable to the public in a democracy, and there is a need-to-know basis for certain information because they're representing your interests. As a result they give up some privacy, though they are still entitled to a private life. It would be totalitarian if it went both ways because there is no valid justification for creating such symmetry. I need to know certain aspects of a politician's life, they do NOT need to know certain aspects of mine. Likewise, in certain cases this might be reversed, depending on the context and reasoning.Quote:
Originally Posted by Taosaur
It's also an imbalance of information if one party gets information from many other parties. If a politician's activities are public, it's not an equal exchange for them to find out everything from all other citizens; the information imbalance is extreme in such a case.
Corporations... again there is usually a strong element of public interest here because once you get to a certain size you inevitably start influencing things for the rest of the public. A couple of examples would be effects on the environment and shared/public resources, and the effects of lobbyists. In these cases they have to give up privacy because of the impact on public affairs. Where this does not apply then they have the same right to privacy as anyone else.
Yeah, this is what people don't get, mainly anyone arguing for zero privacy. Nobody is the way they present themselves IRL. We know this because of the internet. But employers will always judge people, even though they know this to be true themselves, and for themselves.Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneironaut Zero
Nobody will ever understand and accept everyone's activities or the way they choose to live.
Now, it could be argued that if someone sees you are a DV member, for example, and doesn't understand it, thinks you're a crazy cult member or whatever, then it's best you not work with/for them anyway. But that wouldn't always be the case. It could have been the perfect work relationship except for the fact that the employer had not heard of lucid dreaming and did not understand what was going on.
You'd need to know everyone's entire life story and even then you probably wouldn't know why they said some certain thing or are a part of a certain group.
I posted an article, where Richard Branson recently said we need to end the drug war, on my facebook. And this guy from my university said "YES! Exactly! Just get cops on the street 24/7 in cars, patrolling and allow random searches and arrests , we would only need to do this for 10 years to get rid of all drugs".Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneironaut Zero
Branson was arguing for full legalisation btw.
But I find it incredible that people actually want that kind of lack of privacy and safety. I think it's because they think they're not gonna be attacked next (and this guy was gay too, he'd be the first to be killed or arrested after all the drug dealers were gone(even though that can never happen anyway)).
Maybe less privacy would be good, but we're basically at that point now anyway, and people give it up willingly on social networks.
But it's not going to be good for very long when we still have power hungry people in charge who are not looking out for us at all.
And if we have full openness, it's going to be a fucking nightmare....
I'm not talking about "should" here, I'm talking about "will," as in "Information will be free." As media companies are having so much trouble learning, law is not enough to make data stay where you want it and behave. As long as channels of transmission continue to multiply (or even if they stayed at current levels), information will get out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Photolysis
Whether or not we're "entitled" to privacy as a "right," it's entirely possible that we no longer live in a world where it's a possibility.