To me, what's missing from that set of recommendations is some method to increase the liability of companies who mishandle user data.
It is insane to me that I can be notified via physical mail of months old data breaches, some of which contained my Social Security number, and that my only recourse is to set credit freezes from multiple credit bureaus.
I’m completely sympathetic to making companies more liable for data security. However, until data breaches regularly lead to severe outcomes for subjects whose personal data was leaked, and those outcomes can be causally linked to the breaches in an indisputable manner, it seems unlikely for such legislation to be passed.
I forgot where I saw this, but the US govt recently announced that they see mass PII theft as a legitimate national security issue.
It’s not just that you or I will be inconvenienced with a bit more fraud or email spam, but rather that large nation state adversaries having huge volumes of data on the whole population can be a significant strategic advantage
And so far we typically see email+password+ssn be the worst data leaked; I expect attackers will put in more effort to get better data where possible. Images, messages, gps locations, etc
They’d need a lot less security if they stopped spying on us and saving all of our most critical ID data, period.
Then instead of regulating the companies, make SSN easily revokable and unique per service. I don't understand why Americans are so oppposed to a national ID despite the fact that every KYC service use SSNs and driver licenses.
The expansion of KYC and the hegemonic dominance of our global financial intelligence network is a recent infringement on our privacy that would not necessarily pass popular muster if it became well-known.
Most of our population is still living in a headspace where transactions are effectively private and untraceable, from the cash era, and has not considered all the ways that the end of this system makes them potential prey.
The fact is that the market is demanding a way to identify you both publicly and privately, and it will use whatever it needs to, including something fragile like a telephone number 2fa where you have no recourse when something goes wrong. It's already got a covert file on you a mile long, far more detailed than anything the intelligence agencies have bothered putting together. The political manifestation of anti-ID libertarians is wildly off base.
Because they're the mark of the beast or a step towards fascism or something.
I don't think it would take much to convert real IDs into a national ID, they are as close to as they can get without "freaking people out".
"What fraction of the FBI and CIA do the Communists have blackmail material on?"
> To me, what's missing from that set of recommendations is some method to increase the liability of companies who mishandle user data.
As nice as this is on paper, it will never happen, lobbyist exists. Not to be tinfoil hat but why would any lawmaker slap the hand that feeds them.
Until there is an independent governing body which is permitted to regulate over the tech industry as a whole it wont happen. Consider the FDA, they decide which drugs and ingredients are allowed and that's all fine. There could be a regulating body which could determine the risk to people's mental health for example from 'features' of tech companies etc. But getting that body created will require a tragedy. Like why the FDA was created in the first place. [1]
That's just my 2cents.
1 : https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-history/milestones-us-food....
I agree. Let me tell you about what just happened to me. After a very public burnout and spiral, a friend rescued me and I took a part time gig helping a credit card processing company. About 2 months ago, the owner needed something done while I was out, and got their uber driver to send an email. They emailed the entire customer database, including bank accounts, socials, names, addresses, finance data, to a single customer. When I found out, (was kept hidden from me for 11 days) I said "This is a big deal, here are all the remediations and besides PCI we have 45 days by law to notify affected customers." The owner said "we aren't going to do that", and thus I had to turn in my resignation and am now unemployed again.
So me trying to do the right thing, am now scrambling for work, while the offender pretends nothing happened while potentially violating the entire customer base, and will likely suffer no penalty unless I report it to PCI, which I would get no reward for.
Why is it everywhere I go management is always doing shady stuff. I just want to do linuxy/datacentery things for someone who's honest... /cry
My mega side project isn't close enough to do a premature launch yet. Despite my entire plan being to forgo VC/investors, I'm now considering compromising.
>Why is it everywhere I go management is always doing shady stuff.
Well here's a cynical take on this - management is playing the business game at a higher level than you. "Shady stuff" is the natural outcome of profit motivation. Our society is fundamentally corrupt. It is designed to use the power of coercive force to protect the rights and possessions of the rich against the threat of violence by the poor. The only way to engage with it AND keep your hands clean is to be in a position that lets you blind yourself to the problem. At the end of the day, we are all still complicit in enabling slave labor and are beneficiaries of policies that harm the poor and our environment in order to enrich our lives.
>unless I report it to PCI, which I would get no reward for.
You may be looking at that backwards. Unless you report it to PCI, you are still complicit in the mishandling of the breach, even though you resigned. You might have been better off reporting it over the owner's objections, then claiming whistleblower protections if they tried to terminate you.
This is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer, I am not your lawyer, etc.
I did verify with an attorney that since I wasn't involved and made sure the owner knew what was what, that I had no legal obligations to disclose.
The problem isn't society or profit motivation. It's people. Humanity itself is corrupt. There aren't "good people" and "bad people". There's only "bad people." We're all bad people, just some of us are more comfortable with our corruption being visible to others to a higher degree.
> We're all bad people, just some of us are more comfortable with our corruption being visible to others to a higher degree.
If the GP's story is true (and I have no reason to suspect otherwise), then there are clearly differences in the degree of "badness" between people. GP chose to resign from his job, while his manager chose to be negligent and dishonest.
So, even if we're all bad people, there are less bad and more bad people, so we might as well call the less bad end of the spectrum "good". Thus, there are good and bad people.
The DOJ has just launched a corporate whistleblower program, you should look into it maybe it covers your case:
https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-division-corporate...
>As described in more detail in the program guidance, the information must relate to one of the following areas: (1) certain crimes involving financial institutions, from traditional banks to cryptocurrency businesses; (2) foreign corruption involving misconduct by companies; (3) domestic corruption involving misconduct by companies; or (4) health care fraud schemes involving private insurance plans.
>If the information a whistleblower submits results in a successful prosecution that includes criminal or civil forfeiture, the whistleblower may be eligible to receive an award of a percentage of the forfeited assets, depending on considerations set out in the program guidance. If you have information to report, please fill out the intake form below and submit your information via CorporateWhistleblower@usdoj.gov. Submissions are confidential to the fullest extent of the law.
Why would you resign? You could have reported it yourself and then you would have whistleblower protections - if the company retaliated against you (e.g. fired you), you then would have had a strong lawsuit.
Because I don't want to be associated with companies that break the law and violate regulations knowingly. I've long had a reputation of integrity, and it's one of the few things I have left having almost nothing else.
So you would rather be known as someone who had an opportunity to report a violation, and chose not to? From my perspective it seem like you decided against acting with integrity in this situation - the moral thing would have been to report the violation, but you chose to look the other way and resign.
I wonder if I was part of the database that got emailed.
Very unlikely, this is a very small operation with a tiny customer base.
As in.. his actual Uber driver? He just handed his laptop over?
Yes. The owner is old, and going blind, but refuses to sell or hand over day to day ops to someone else, and thus must ask for help on almost everything. I even pulled on my network to find a big processor with a good reputation to buy the company, but after constant delays and excuses for not engaging with them, I realized to the owner the business is both their "baby" and their social life, neither of which they want to lose.
Regulation is key, but I don’t see it as likely when our society is poisoned by culture war bs. Once we put that behind us (currently unlikely), we can pass sane laws reigning in huge corporations.
I get a feeling that liability is the missing piece in a lot of these issues. Section 230? Liability. Protection of personal data? Liability. Minors viewing porn? Liability.
Lack of liability is screwing up the incentive structure.
I think I agree, but people will have very different views on where liability should fall, and whether there is a malicious / negligent / no-fault model?
Section 230? Is it the platform or the originating user that's liable?
Protection of personal data? Is there a standard of care beyond which liability lapses (e.g. a nation state supply chain attack exfiltrates encrypted data and keys are broken due to novel quantum attack)?
Minors viewing porn? Is it the parents, the ISP, the distributor, or the creator that's liable?
I'm not here to argue specific answers, just saying that everyone will agree liability would fix this, and few will agree on who should be liable for what.
It's not a solvable problem. Like most tech problems it's political, not technical. There is no way to balance the competing demands of privacy, security, legality, and corporate overreach.
It might be solvable with some kind of ID escrow, where an independent international agency managed ID as a not-for-profit service. Users would have a unique biometrically-tagged ID, ID confirmation would be handled by the agency, ID and user behaviour tracking would be disallowed by default and only allowed under strictly monitored conditions, and law enforcement requests would go through strict vetting.
It's not hard to see why that will never happen in today's world.
> It's not a solvable problem
Lawnmower manufacturers said the same thing about making safe lawnmowers. Until government regulations forced them to
https://i.imgur.com/mXU28ta.jpeg
Specifically, 1970.
>Protection of personal data? Is there a standard of care beyond which liability lapses (e.g. a nation state supply chain attack exfiltrates encrypted data and keys are broken due to novel quantum attack)?
There absolutely should be, especially for personal data collected and stored without the express written consent of those being surveilled. They should have to get people to sign off on the risks of having their personal data collected and stored, be legally prevented from collecting and storing the personal data of people who haven't consented and/or be liable for any leaking or unlawful sharing/selling of this data.
If you aren’t directly harmed yet what liability would they have? I imagine if your identity is stolen and it can be tied to a breach then they would already be liable.
The fact that my data can be stolen in the first place is already outrageous, because I neither consented to allowing these companies to have my data, nor benefit from them having my data.
It's like if you go to an AirBNB and the owner sneaks in at night and takes photos of you sleeping naked and keeps those photos in a folder on his bookshelf. Would you be okay with that? If you're not directly harmed, what liability would they have?
Personal data should be radioactive. Any company retaining it better have a damn good reason, and if not then their company should be burned to the ground and the owners clapped in irons. And before anyone asks, "personalized advertisements" is not a good reason.
That's the big problem with relying on tort law to curb this kind of bad corporate behavior: The plaintiff has to show actual injury or harm. This kind of bad behavior should be criminal, and the state should be going after companies.
I don't think thats a proper parallel.
I think a better example would be You (AirBnB Host) rent a house to Person and Person loses the house key. Later on (perhaps many years later), You are robbed. Does Person have liability for the robbery?
Of course it also gets really muddy because you'll have renting the house out for those years and during that time many people will have lost keys. So does liability get divided? Is it the most recent lost key?
Personally, I think it should just be some statutory damages of probably a very small amount per piece of data.
The particular problem comes in because the amount of data lost tends to be massive when these breaches occur.
It's kind of like the idea of robbing a minute from someone's life. It's not every much to an individual, but across large populations it's a massive theft.
Sure and if you pay a statutory fine times 10 million then it becomes a big deal and therefore companies would be incentivized to protect it better the larger they get.
Right now they probably get some near free rate to offer you credit monitoring and dgaf.
This version loses multiple parts of things that are important
1. I have no control over what was stored 2. I have no control over where the storage is
The liability in this case is the homeowner/host, as you should have and had full ability to change out the locks.
To make it more similar, I think you'd need one of the guests to have taken some amount of art off the wall, and brought it to a storage unit, and then the art later was stolen from the storage unit, and you don't have access to the storage unit.
It's not as good as the naked pictures example because what's been taken is copies of something sensitive, not the whole thing
> I think a better example would be You (AirBnB Host) rent a house to Person and Person loses the house key.
This is not a direct analogue, a closer analogy would be when the guest creates a copy of the key (why?) without my direct consent (signing a 2138 page "user agreement" doesn't count) and at some later point when I am no longer renting to them, loses the key.
I'm still much more interested in the answer to who is liable for the robbery.
Just the Robber? Or are any of the key-copiers (instead of losers w/e) also?
> before anyone asks, "personalized advertisements" is not a good reason
The good reason is growth. Our AI sector is based on, in large part, the fruits of these data. Maybe it's all baloney, I don't know. But those are jobs, investment and taxes that e.g. Europe has skipped out on that America and China are capitalising on.
My point, by the way, isn't pro surveillance. I enjoy my privacy. But blanket labelling personal data as radioactive doesn't seem to have any benefit to it outside emotional comfort. Instead, we need to do a better job of specifying which data are harmful to accumulate and why. SSNs are obviously not an issue. Data that can be used to target e.g. election misinformation are.
So you're saying it's all vastly valuable and that's why it is right that it is taken without consent or compensation?
I mean it's pretty clear that you are directly harmed if someone takes naked photos of you without your knowledge or consent and then keeps them. It's not a good analogy so if we want to convince people like the GP of the points you're making, you need to make a good case because that is not how the law is currently structured. "I don't like ads" is not a good reason, and comments like this that are seething with rage and hyperbole don't convince anyone of anything.
What is the harm? It is not obvious to me, if the victim is unaware...unless you are alleging simply that there is some ill-defined right to privacy. But if that is so, why does it apply to my crotch and not my personal data?
These are exactly my questions. If I never, ever know about those pictures and never, ever have my life affected by those pictures, what is the actual harm to me?
If the answer to them ends up being "Well, it's illegal to take non-consensual nudie pictures.", then my follow-up question is "So, why isn't the failure to protect my personal information also illegal?".
To be perfectly clear, I do believe that the scenario kibwen describes SHOULD be illegal. But I ALSO believe that it should be SUPER illegal for a company to fail to secure data that it has on me. Regardless of whether they are retaining that information because there is literally no way they could provide me with the service I'm paying them for without it, or if they're only retaining that information in the hopes of making a few pennies off of it by selling it to data brokers or whoever, they should have a VERY SERIOUS legal obligation to keep that information safe and secure.
> to fail to secure data that it has on me
Just want to point out that the company is usually also doing what it can to get other information about you without your consent based on other information it has about you. It's a lot closer to the "taking non-consensual nudie pictures" than "fail to secure data" makes it sound.
> it's pretty clear that you are directly harmed if someone takes naked photos of you without your knowledge or consent and then keeps them
Sure. In those cases, there are damages and that creates liability. I'm not sure what damages I've ever faced from any leak of e.g. my SSN.
I mean most people won't until that day they find out theirs a house in Idaho under their name (and yes I've seen just this happen).
The problem here is because of all these little data leaks you as an individual now bear a cost ensuring that others out there are not using your identity and if it happens you have to clean up the mess by pleading it wasn't you in the first place.
>I neither consented to allowing these companies to have my data, nor benefit from them having my data.
I think both of those are debatable.
Go ahead, post your phone number here. It's not directly harmful.
1-800-call-FEDS
This is the traditional way of thinking, and a good question, but it is not the only way.
An able bodied person can fully make complaints against any business that fails their Americans with Disabilities Act obligation. In fact these complaints by able bodied well-doers is the de facto enforcement mechanism even though these people can never suffer damage from that failure.
The answer is simply to legislate the liability into existence.
That's the whole problem with "liability", isn't it? If the harms you do are diffuse enough then nobody can sue you!
The same way you can get ticketed for speeding in your car despite not actually hitting anyone or anything.
Surveillance apologist.
This is exactly why thinking of it in terms of individual cases of actual harm, as Americans have been conditioned to do by default, is precisely the wrong way to think about it. We're all familiar with the phrase "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", right?
It's better to to think of it in terms of prevention. This fits into a category of things where we know they create a disproportionate risk of harm, and we therefore decide that the behavior just shouldn't be allowed in the first place. This is why there are building codes that don't allow certain ways of doing the plumbing that tend to lead to increased risk of raw sewage flowing into living spaces. The point isn't to punish people for getting poop water all over someone's nice clean carpet; the point is to keep the poop water from soaking the carpet in the first place.
Safety rules are written in blood. After a disaster there’s a push to regulate. After enough years we only see the costs of the rules and not the prevented injuries and damage. The safety regulations are then considered annoying and burdensome to businesses. Rules are repealed or left unenforced. There is another disaster…
Tangentially, there was an internet kerfuffle about someone getting in trouble for having flower planters hanging out the window of their Manhattan high rise apartment a while back, and people's responses really struck me.
People from less dense areas generally saw this as draconian nanny state absurdity. People who had spent time living in dense urban areas with high rise residential buildings, on the other hand, were more likely to think, "Yeah, duh, this rule makes perfect sense."
Similarly, I've noticed that my fellow data scientists are MUCH less likely to have social media accounts. I'd like to think it's because we are more likely to understand the kinds of harm that are possible with this kind of data collection, and just how irreparable that harm can be.
Perhaps Americans are less likely to support Europe-style privacy rules than Europeans are because Americans are less likely than Europeans to know people who saw first-hand some of what was happening in Europe in the 20th century.
> The report found that the companies collected and could indefinitely retain troves of data, including information from data brokers, and about both users and non-users of their platforms.
As a non-user of many social media platforms, is there anything I can do to prevent companies from collecting data about me? It feels wrong that companies you do not sign up for are still finding and processing data about you.
Behind the ball by 15 years to start taking this seriously and beginning to think about pushing back, but better late than never.
Next please reign in the CRAs.
I think Snowden was bang on when in 2013 he warned us of a last chance to fight for some basic digital privacy rights. I think there was a cultural window there which has now closed.
Snowden pointed and everyone looked at his finger. It was a huge shame, but a cultural sign that the US is descending into a surveillance hell hole and people are ok with that. As someone who was (and still is) vehemently against PRISM and NSLs and all that, it was hard to come to terms with. I'm going to keep building things that circumvent the "empire" and hope people start caring eventually.
> and people are ok with that
I've seen no evidence of this. People mostly either don't understand it for feel powerless against it.
There's also a vast amount of people that were just too young to be aware of Snowden's revelations. These people are now primarily on TikTok what not, and I doubt there's much in those feeds to bring them to light while directly feeding the beast of data hoarding.
> I've seen no evidence of this
Over 99% of Americans point a camera at themselves while they take a shit.
And I'd bet over 99% of those people have never once considered that said camera could even be capable of saving any data without them operating it.
Very doubtful they've not considered it. When I go to coffee shops, I see maybe a quarter-to-half the laptops have a shade over the webcam. But when I see people using their phones, I've never once seen them use a shade, piece of tape, or post-it note.
They use the front-facing camera of their phone so often that the temporary inconvenience of removing a shade outweighs the long-term inconvenience of malware snapping an exposing photo.
But do you think they're taking a measured inventory of the possible consequences, both personal and societal, and saying, "No, I don't value that" ?
Extremely few decisions that people make are deeply calculated with cold logic. Most decisions are primarily unconscious, automatic, and emotional.
Example: A persons hears it's good to have a webcam cover, so they get one. Nobody mentions doing it for their phone, so they never even think about it. Then someday a friend does mention it, but that would be an inconvenient change, so the person's gut puts up resistance against considering it too strongly. They give in to their emotional response, instead of doing the hard work of changing their emotions based on the knowledge they have.
At no point in the above scenario would the person state "I don't think mass surveillance is a bad thing." For me, that's why I mean when I say people "aren't ok with it."
If one's definition of people being "ok with mass surveillance" just means they tolerate it, that they don't sufficiently resist it (and what level of resistance is sufficient? For a person with a webcam cover but no phone cam cover? Does adding a phone cam cover mean they've declared their opposition to mass surveillance?), then how can you say people aren't okay with literally everything evil or wrong? Most people just won't summon enough activation energy to fight any given injustice around them, no matter how egregious it is. That's not a reflection of their morals and values, it's a reflection of how fucking tired we all are.
I would challenge you to offer up in detail how strongly you have worked to resist mass surveillance in your life. You're logged in and posting on HN, so my guess is, you haven't worked hard enough at it according to someone's metric. Do you have a cover on your phone camera? Just the front one or both? Do you have a cover on the microphones? Do you let others add your number in their contacts or do you refuse to ever give out your real phone number?
The cover over the webcam might not be for security per se. It could be they don't want anyone at work - or home? - to accidentally see where they are. If you cover the camera you don't have to worry any such accidents.
My gut says that for most people is the reason.
Snowden couldn't convince people that the privacy he was talking about meant a limit on government power. Not sensitive data. And honestly, nobody cares about anyone taking a shit.
You can advocate for limiting govt. power ("LGP") without leaking any NSA docs. I don't think a single story about "LGP" changed due to the leaks. Everyone knows the government can do a lot of violence on you. So it's very hard.
If you're a high drama personality, yeah you can conflate all these nuanced issues. You can make privacy mean whatever you want.
I've seen no evidence people aren't ok with that. Most people around me didn't care about the Snowden revelations. It was only tech people who tightened up security.
This is my experience as well. I talked to a LOT of people after the Snowden debacle (techies and otherwise) and the general attitude was "so what? they aren't using the information for anything bad!" or "I have nothing to hide!" (in this thread, for instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41594775)
I think people don't really understand what an enormous sleeping dragon the entire thing is.
> I think people don't really understand what an enormous sleeping dragon the entire thing is.
Isn't that what I said? Mostly we're debating semantics. My deeper point is that it's counterproductive and borderline misanthropic to argue "People just don't care about evil being done!" whereas the argument that "People seriously have no idea yet what they're 'agreeing' to" opens the door to actual solutions, for one inclined to work on them.
But won't you think of the children!
(EU is trying to implement chat control again...)
We need more real-world analogies... "see, this is like having a microphone recording everything you say in this bar"... "see, this is like someone ID-ing you infront of every store and recording what store you've visited, and then following you inside to see what products you look at. See, this is like someone looking at your clothes and then pasting on higer price tags on products. ..."
>and people are ok with that.
All the propagandists said he was a Russian asset, as if even if that were true, it somehow negated the fact that we were now living under a surveillance state.
>Snowden pointed and everyone looked at his finger.
This is a great way of putting it.
> it somehow negated the fact that we were now living under a surveillance state.
There's long been surveillance programs and also numerous laws outlining the responsibilities of telecom provides to enable wire tapping.
There's really nothing new from Snowden besides the names of a bunch of people to go kill cause they're spies.
FISA [1] isn't a private law either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
Note: 2006 (Klien) predates 2013 (Snowden)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...
>There's really nothing new from Snowden besides the names of a bunch of people to go kill cause they're spies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disc...
You are dense. Imagine a government authorizes 10B for a bridge and then in 5 years a bridge shows up.
Now instead, imagine in 1978 [1] a government authorizes "United States federal law that establishes procedures for the surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence on domestic soil" and in 2008 [2] amends it to not be a big deal if they're foreign or not and then 5 years later it turns out they're doing just that.
These bills are not secret. Were not secret. Have never been secret. It's not my fault you didn't read them but it doesn't make Snowden novel.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...
>You are dense.
Well, maybe you're one of those propagandists. If you can't attack the idea, attack the person, right?
Hand waves, nothing new to see here, carry on.
The bills aren't what were exposed, it was more the techniques and scope. Like PRISM and XKeyScore and circumventing laws by sharing intelligence on US citizens with allies who aren't restricted by US laws. Spying on allied governments, etc. You know, that stuff.
You should really click on the link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_and_Mitchell_defection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
Et cetera. These aren't new issues. The obsession with Snowden as a messianic figure is unhelpful in contextualizing the information.
> There's long been surveillance programs and also numerous laws outlining the responsibilities of telecom provides to enable wire tapping.
Laws which the telecoms were knowingly and willfully breaking for years.
You do remember that Congress gave them retroactive immunity? [0][1] You do know that this was only granted because people COULD sue (and were suing) them because of the information made public by Snowden and others?
[0] <https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/retroactive-tele...>
[1] See Title II of the this bill <https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/house-bill/6304>
Over ten years ago I wrote about the root of the problem: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169
And here is a libertarian solution: https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-chang...
It makes me irrationally angry that I suddenly started getting spam emails from Experian. Like motherfucker I never consented for you to have my data, then you leak it all, now you're sending me unsolicited junk email? It's just such bullshit that I'm literally forced to have a relationship with these companies to freeze my credit or else I'm at the mercy of whoever they decide to release my information to without my authorization.
Yep. It sucks. Zero consequences of any import for those companies as far as I'm aware too. Tiny fines end up being "cost of doing business". Then they get to externalize their failures onto us by using terms like "Identity Theft", which indicates something was stolen from ME and is now MY problem.
In actuality some not-well-maintained systems owned by <corp> were hacked or exposed or someone perpetrated fraud on a financial institution and happened to use information that identifies me. It's really backwards.
PSA: If you haven't already, go freeze your credit at Experian, TransUnion, Equifax and Innovis. It will make the perpetration of this type of fraud much more difficult for adversaries.
PSA pro tip: they will try to steer you toward “locking” your account. Don’t fall for it. Freeze your account.
My pet solution has been to make the credit reporters liable for transmitting false information to the CRAs.
Chase tells Experian I opened a new line of credit with them, but it later is demonstrated that it was a scammer with my SSN? Congratulations, $5,000 fine.
Of course this all gets priced in to the cost and availability of consumer credit. Good! Now the lenders have an incentive to drive those costs down (cheaper, better identity verification) to compete.
Can you describe how you make them liable in this arrangement?
You can challenge entries your credit report today. Win the challenge, whoever reported the entry is liable to the Feds. Maybe add a modest bounty for the injured taxpayer.
The solution is much simpler. Put all of the consequences of being defrauded by a borrower onto the lender.
If a lender wants to be repaid, then they need to show the borrower all the evidence they have for proof that the borrower entered into the contract.
If all a lender has is the fact that a 9 digit number, date of birth, name, and address were entered online, then the borrower simply has to say “I did not enter that information”, and the lender can go pound sand.
Guarantee all the lenders will tighten up their operations very quickly, and consequently, so will the loans that appear on one’s credit report.
Right. This is a problem between the lenders and the people who stole from the lenders. The person whose name/number was used shouldn't even be part of the transaction or part of the problem.
They call it "Identity Theft" instead of what it should be called: Bank fraud. The term "Identity Theft" 1. needlessly pulls an otherwise uninvolved person into the mix, suddenly making it their problem too, and 2. downplays the bank's negligence.
If someone uses my name to take out a loan, and the bank stupidly lets them, this shouldn't even remotely be my problem. I shouldn't even have to know about it. This is the bank's problem from their own stupidity.
"Put all of the consequences of being defrauded by a borrower onto the lender" - that seems a bit strange.
Imagine saying "put all of the consequences of getting robbed onto the bank, not the robber"
Who bears the consequences of their home being robbed? Or mugged on the street? Or a contractor taking payment for services and then disappearing?
Why are we subsidizing lenders’ by putting this ridiculous burden on people who have nothing to do with the lender’s business?
The lender can pay to appropriately verify their borrower’s identity, or go to court and sue for damages like everyone else has to.
Lenders hand over bad loans to collection agencies (“accept the consequences”) all the time. Cost of doing business. That an innocent person’s credit is destroyed is just collateral damage from their perspective.
For a while they were sending emails about my account that I was actually unable to unsubscribe from[1]. I knew it was illegal at the time, and when I finally noticed an unsubscribe button it was because the FTC finally intervened[2].
https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/udy8rz/exper...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/08/...
That's not an irrational reaction.
The long term consequences of 9/11.
Lina Khan has been on a tear. She actually seems to care about online human rights.
I think this effort is positive, but a bit misdirected. Think data breach liability. Facebook and YouTube are willing and capable defenders of sensitive customer data. Watch the AshleyMadison documentary. Arrogant disregard for customer privacy and almost no culpability. These smaller, irresponsible players are where consumers are most vulnerable.
Let’s add automaker to the list as well with all the cameras and microphones spying in auto cabins.
This portion is particularly problematic:
> many companies engaged in broad data sharing that raises serious concerns regarding the adequacy of the companies’ data handling controls and oversight.
It would be wonderful if the staff report recommendations were taken seriously by our legislators. I think I'll send a copy of this to my reps and say hi.
Yes thank you for listening BRAVO BRAVO BRAVO
A little hypocritical when it comes from various government organizations all over the western world. Surveillance companies are essential for police to be able to easily gather data when needed fast. It is a happy accident that surveillance is so lucrative for advertising and also so effective for policing.
Different parts of government might disagree on the best course of action but I wouldn’t call that disagreement hypocrisy per se.
It’s also not true that it’s an irresolvable conflict. Yes the cops can and do buy your phone location data, but even if we said that was fine and should continue, that doesn’t also mean that any schmuck should be able to buy real-time Supreme Court justice location data from a broker.
2016 Schneier on Security "Data is a Toxic Asset": https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_tox...
See also: "How advertisers became NSA's best friend"[1].
[1]https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/12/5204196/how-advertisers-...
Surveillance is cancerous. It keeps on growing, feeding on justification for every data point "just because", and then eventually it kills you.
Please make it so my kids can watch a YouTube video required by school without watching 20 YouTube shorts after. That's all I want.
Download the video?
Simple questions:
Should ad prices be lower or higher?
Should YouTube be free for everyone, or should it cost money?
Having ads does not require mass surveillance --- that's really just something that social media companies have normalized because that's the particular business model and practices they have adopted and which makes them the most amount of money possible.
Well put. Targeting and more specifically retargeting is the problem.
Most companies can't afford to not do this when their competitors are. Hence the need for regulation.
Those are useful questions but I don’t think they’re the only ones that matter. Here’s another one for consideration:
What is the minimum level of privacy that a person should be entitled to, no matter their economic status?
If we just let the free market decide these questions for us, the results won’t be great. There are a lot of things which shouldn’t be for sale.
> What is the minimum level of privacy that a person should be entitled to, no matter their economic status?
This is an interesting question: maybe the truth is, very little.
I don't think that user-identified app telemetry is below that minimum level of privacy. Knowing what I know about ad tracking in Facebook before Apple removed app identifiers, I don't think any of that was below the minimum level.
This is a complex question for sort of historical reasons, like how privacy is meant to be a limit on government power as opposed to something like, what would be the impact if this piece of data were more widely known about me? We're talking about the latter but I think people feel very strongly about the former.
Anyway, I answered your questions. It's interesting that no one really wants to engage with the basic premise, do you want these services to be free or no? Is it easy to conceive that people never choose the paid version of the service? What proof do you need that normal people (1) understand the distinction between privacy as a barrier to government enforcement versus privacy as a notion of sensitive personal data (2) will almost always view themselves as safe from the government, probably rightly so, so they will almost always choose the free+ads version of any service, and just like they have been coming out ahead for the last 30 years, they are likely to keep coming out ahead, in this country?
I didn’t mean to evade your questions, but my opinion is as follows:
Yes I want YouTube to be free, but not if that requires intrusive surveillance.
People who pay for YouTube aren’t opted out of surveillance as far as I can tell. So I reject the premise of your question, that people are choosing free because they don’t value privacy. They haven’t been given the choice in most cases.
On a tangential note, you previously asked if ads should be more expensive. It’s possible that ads should be less expensive, since they may be less effective than ad spend would suggest: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-w...
The issue to me is that these companies have operated and continue to operate by obfuscating the nature of their surveillance to users. This isn’t a system of informed consent to surveillance in exchange for free services; it’s a system of duping ordinary people into giving up sensitive personal information by drawing them in with a free service. I’m almost certain this model could still exist without the surveillance. They could still run ads; the ads would be less targeted.
We really need e2ee social media that's designed to protect, not addict people.
“E2ee social media” isn’t a coherent concept. E2ee has to do with how information is transferred not what is transferred.
Sure it is: https://peergos.org/posts/decentralized-social-media
It is social media where only the end users' devices can decrypt the posts and comments. Then surveillance is not possible. Targeted ads are not possible.
the full report[0] is a good read don't just read the summary..
>>> But these findings should not be viewed in isolation. They stem from a business model that varies little across these nine firms – harvesting data for targeted advertising, algorithm design, and sales to third parties. With few meaningful guardrails, companies are incentivized to develop ever-more invasive methods of collection. >>>
[0]: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Social-Media-6b...
Imagine the respect the government has for your intelligence publishing this while purchasing said surveilled user data.
The government is large and consists of multiple organizations with different goals.
There is no single "the government".
Instead "The Government" is like a huge community. They are all supposed to adhere to the same code, but like any community there are those members that look for a way to bypass the law, without quite going over it.
That's what said purchases are. And even parts of the community in the same branch of a government department, may do what other parts are not even really aware of. Or agree with.
Although you have a valid point, I object to your calling it a community because communities don't have constitutions and cannot throw people in jail if they break the community's rules. Also, a community has much less control over who becomes a member of the community than a government has over who it employs.
Shocked, gambling, establishment, etc.
Wait till the FTC discovers Full Story
instead of stupid recommendations, which are laughable, the government should actually enforce them.
“The government” isn’t a singular entity, and the FTC is an independent agency.
Facebook Employees Explain Struggling To Care About Company's Unethical Practices When Gig So Cushy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DiBc1vkTig
an onion parody/satire video, lol
I love the cognitive dissonance on display within the federal government.
One arm: "everyone is a criminal; spy on everyone"
Other arm: "hey you shouldn't really harvest all of that data"
The cognitive dissonance is in the voters and users.
Even right here on HN, where most people understand the issue, you'll see conversations and arguments in favor of letting companies vacuum up as much data and user info as they want (without consent or opt-in), while also saying it should be illegal for the government to collect the same data without a warrant.
In practice, the corporations and government have found the best of both worlds: https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-purchase-location-data-wray-... Profit for the corporation, legal user data for the government.
HN is filled with folks that wrote the code in question, or want to create similar products. And they hate to have it pointed out that these tools may cause harm so they thrash around and make excuses and point fingers. A tale as old as this site.
I often have to remind myself who hosts this board and that I am hanging out on a site for successful and aspiring techno-robber-barons.
> I am hanging out on a site for successful and aspiring techno-robber-barons.
that’s how we first arrive here (all of us). Time pass tho and most around fail then we become proper people capable of reasoning
Explaining that modern technology is user-hostile and destructive to the society is nowhere else more on-topic than Paul Graham’s ego blog. While it might be true to say the site is “for” robber barons, There are a lot more users here than the ones you described.
Complete with egotistical and ironic appropriation of the word hacker.
>The cognitive dissonance is in the voters and users.
People really need to learn to say “NO” even if that means an inconvenience “Your personal information might be shared with our business partners for metrics and a customer tailored experience” no thanks, “what is your phone number? so I can give you 10% discount” no thanks, “cash or credit?” Cash, thanks, “login with google/ apple/ blood sample” no thanks
There isn’t a single intellectually honest harm associated with the majority of app telemetry and for almost all ad data collection. Like go ahead and name one.
Once you say some vague demographic and bodily autonomy stuff: you know, if you’re going to invoke “voters,” I’ve got bad news for you. Some kinds of hate are popular. So you can’t pick and choose what popular stuff is good or what popular stuff is bad. It has to be by some objective criteria.
Anyway, I disagree with your assessment of the popular position anyway. I don’t think there is really that much cognitive dissonance among voters at all. People are sort of right to not care. The FTC’s position is really unpopular, when framed in the intellectually honest way as it is in the EU, “here is the price of the web service if you opt out of ads and targeting.”
You also have to decide if ad prices should go up or down, and think deeply: do you want a world where ad inventory is expensive? It is an escape valve for very powerful networks. Your favorite political causes like reducing fossil fuel use and bodily autonomy benefit from paid traffic all the same as selling junk. The young beloved members of Congress innovate in paid Meta campaign traffic. And maybe you run a startup or work for one, and you want to compete against the vast portfolio of products the network owners now sell. There’s a little bit of a chance with paid traffic but none if you expect to play by organic content creation rules: it’s the same thing, but you are transferring money via meaningless labor of making viral content instead of focusing on your cause or business. And anyway, TikTok could always choose to not show your video for any reason.
The intellectual framework against ad telemetry is really, really weak. The FTC saying it doesn’t change that.
The intelligence agencies literally use ad data to do "targeted killing" what are you even talking about?
Ex-NSA Chief: 'We Kill People Based on Metadata'...
Can you define a harm suffered by the people that the FTC represents? What about the EU beneficiaries of the GDPR? This is sincere, it is meant to advance to a real and interesting conversation.
I think privacy violations are a harm in themselves, but you seem to have already dismissed this issue, so I'll move on. How about behavioral manipulation via microtargeting, economic harm via price discrimination, reselling of the data via monetization to unscrupulous aggregators or third parties, general security reduction (data and metadata sets could be used for APT, etc), or the chilling effect of being tracked all the time in this way?
> How about behavioral manipulation via microtargeting...
I don't know. Ads are meant to convince you to buy something. Are they "behavioral manipulation?" Are all ads harmful?
> ...economic harm via price discrimination...
Should all price discrimination be "illegal?" This is interesting because it makes sense for the FTC and for anti-trust regulators to worry about consumer prices. Price discrimination in software services - the thing I know about - helps the average consumer, because it gets richer people to pay more and subsidize the poor.
> reselling of the data via monetization to unscrupulous aggregators or third parties
"Unscrupulous" is doing a lot of work here.
> ...general security reduction...
Gmail and Chrome being free ad subsidized has done a lot more for end user security than anything else. Do you want security to be only for the rich? It really depends how you imagine software works. I don't know what APT stands for.
> chilling effect of being tracked all the time in this way?
Who is chilled?
I guess talk about some specific examples. They would be really interesting.
Anti-disclaimer: I'm not one of those folks.
However, that's not at all a cognitive dissonance. Fundamentally, there's a difference between governments and private companies, and it is fairly basic to have different rules for them. The government cannot impinge on free speech, but almost all companies do. The government cannot restrict religion, but to some extent, companies can. Etc.
Of course, in this case, it's understandable to argue that neither side should have that much data without consent. But it's also totally understandable to allow only the private company to do so.
There is fundamentally a difference between corporations and the government, but it's still a cognitive dissonance. These aren't the laws of physics - we chose to have different rules for the government and corporations in this case.
There are plenty of cases where the same rules apply to both the government and corporations.
And in Europe, everyone and their dog uses WhatsApp
It isn’t cognitive dissonance, the state does lots of things we’re not supposed to do. Like we’re not supposed to kill people, but they have whole departments built around the task.
Should the state do surveillance? Maybe some? Probably less? But the hypocrisy isn’t the problem, the overreach is.
The FTC is under the president's authority. This is election pandering, same as Zuckerberg's backpedaling on government censorship.
This is for getting votes from the undecided.
Everything will be back to normal (surveillance, data collection and censorship) after the election.
The FTC is bipartisan, no more than three of the five commissioners can belong to the same party. The present report was unanimously voted by all five.
Begs the question of agency authority which is manifestly not resolved. You will find that the elections’ results will effect the eventual resolution of the question of the unitary executive quite dramatically.
I don't know if you've been watching but the FTC has actually been extremely proactive during this cycle. Lina Khan is an excellent steward and has pushed for a lot of policy improvements that have been sorely needed - including the ban (currently suspended by a few judges) on non-competes.
It is disingenuous to accuse the FTC of election pandering when they've been doing stuff like this for the past four years consistently.
And has sued Amazon for their use of anti-competitive pricing.
This is just what Kahn's FTC does.
Since the federal government isn’t a single mind (nor a hive mind), a cognitive dissonance can only be meaningfully located on the observer’s side.
There are different organizations with different opinions. The government isn't a monolithic entity.
It seems entirely reasonable/consistent that we would allow some capabilities among publicly sanctioned, democratically legitimate actors while prohibiting private actors from doing the same.
In fact, many such things fall into that category.
I would be worried if the state was conscious of what it itself was doing as a whole
And it's not just here.
The EU: Unlike the barbarians across the pond, we actually protect people's privacy rights.
Also the EU: ChAt CoNtRoL
The problem seems deeply fundamental to what it means to be a human.
On one hand, there's a lack of clear leadership, unifying the societal approach, on top of inherently different value systems held by those individuals.
It seems like increasingly, it's up to technologists, like ones who author our anti-surveillance tools, to create a free way forward.
this view presupposes the state as “just another actor” as opposed to a privileged one that can take actions that private actors can’t
In the matter of corporations vs governments, if you tally up number of people shot it's clear which of the two is more dangerous. You would think Europe of all regions would be quick to recognize this.
I don't like corporations spying on me, but it doesn't scare me nearly as much as the government doing it. In fact the principle risk from corporations keeping databases is giving the government something to snatch.
because the government has a monopoly on violence. i would much prefer that to corporations being able to wage war themselves
Who is arguing for corporations to wage war? What an absolutely insane strawman. What I am arguing against is letting governments grant themselves the ability to spy on their own populations on an unprecedented scale, because governments "waging war" (mass murder) against their own people is a historically common occurrence.
Those privileged actions are mostly irrelevant when discussing mass surveillance. Doubly so since they can just buy or acquire the data from corps.
The EU has multiple parts. One part keeps asking for chat control, and another part keeps saying no.
"According to one estimate, some Teens may see as many as 1,260 ads per day.200 Children and Teens may be lured through these ads into making purchases or handing over personal information and other data via dark patterns"
There is a long trail of blood behind google and facebook, amazon... Etc...
Even with ad blockers, we still see tons of ads. Corporate news like CNN constantly has front page stories that are just paid promotion for some product or service wrapped in a thin veil of psuedo journalism. Product placement is everywhere too. Tons of reddit front page content is bot-upvoted content that is actually just a marketing campaign disguised as some TIL or meme or sappy story.
"these surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking."
Is there any evidence that any of these things have ever happened as a result of this sort of data collection? I'm not talking about data posted to social media, I'm talking about the specific data collection described in this FTC press release.
I have been stalked and harassed by an Apple employee using data they were able to glean from their access at Apple.
The impossible part is proving the abuse. All of these companies keep their database, access controls, and everything they possible can about these data lakes secret. The simple fact of the matter is that you will never have any evidence someone looked you up in a database.
It is really easy to walk the line, but be obvious enough to intimidate.
Apple wasn't listed and (outside the app store) doesn't collect the data described in the press release.
They absolutely do, in fact they even tried to encrypt user data to not be as invasive as other companies but the FBI sued them and said no you can't do that, you need to keep that data so we can subpoena you.
They mentioned practices that corporations do. I think any corporation that collects data on you counts here. I don't think its worth it to only talk about the examples provided in the article.
So imagine the possible abuses by people at companies who do.
Not only is there evidence of harms, there are is a whole industry focused on fixing the problem for those wealthy enough or incentivized enough to care.
Do a bit of googling, but ADINT and RTB tracking will get you there for search terms.
Or, continue being confidently dismissive of something serious people are taking very seriously. I am sorry if this FTC report targeted the source of your RSUs or otherwise motivated set of incentives, but there’s no free lunch. The consequences are finally landing of your viewpoint, done collectively, over the last decade.
> targeted the source of your RSUs or otherwise motivated
I don't currently have any financial interest in any of these companies
> but ADINT and RTB tracking will get you there for search terms.
These are good things, do you have any examples of harm that has been caused by ADINT or RTB? Prosecuting criminals doesn't count for me
Your comment is really coming across as "well, nothing bad has happened yet so who cares?" If that's not the case, please let me know how you meant it. If it is the case, surely you can imagine a world in which dragnet surveillance of people who have an expectation of privacy can be abused by corporations, institutions, or private individuals. It really doesn't take a lot of imagination to picture this world.
It's been ubiquitous for around 20 years now (Google started doing mass surveillance for display ads in the early 2000s) and nothing bad has happened, so yes that's my point.
If nothing bad happens for decades, and that is inconsistent with your model of danger, then the model is probably wrong
Your argument boils down to "yes, someone has had a gun pointed at my head for quite some time now, but they haven't pulled the trigger yet so I don't see the problem."
No, I'm arguing that it's not actually a gun, and my evidence is that there are 2 billion "guns" that have been pointed at 2 billion people's heads for years, and nobody has been hurt.
It's more like a flashlight than a gun
> It's more like a flashlight than a gun
I disagree, and again, implore you to use your imagination. If private messages (not just yours but someone elses) were to suddenly be public or institutional knowledge, what damning things might happen? What influence might some have over others? What dynamics could or would shift as a result?
I'm comfortable making the claim that you aren't really thinking this through, at all, in any meaningful way.
The FTC press release is not talking about private messages, that is not the kind of data they are asking to protect. Private messages are already generally protected in the way the FTC is asking for.
What was the fallout last time this happened? Was it like pulling the triggers of guns pointed at people's heads?
If you don't think anything bad happens from personal data being accessed without one's consent, please reply to this comment and share:
1. Your full name
2. Your home address
3. Your social security number (if you're American)
4. Your mother's maiden name
If you're right, then you have nothing to worry about.
None of this data is included in the FTC report. They are not talking about this.
My full name is Michael Graczyk, I live in San Francisco, none of these companies know any more detail than that about the questions you asked
Michael, I disagree with your point but I recognize your integrity. You just posted your name and city, and your HN profile shares more personal information.
I respect that you are willing to stand behind your claim. Best of success with your current venture.
> none of these companies know any more detail than that about the questions you asked
I suspect you mean that you haven't provided these companies with these details. What reason do you have to think they don't know those details?
> nothing bad has happened
ummm, WTF?
10x increase in teen suicide doesn't qualify as "bad"?
or repeated DOJ lawsuits against Facebook because their advertising practices result in highly effective racial discrimination?
Wait for the AI tools Larry Ellison wants to give to law enforcement to retroactively connect/hallucinate the dots.
> Profound Threats to Users Can Occur When Targeting Occurs Based on Sensitive Categories
> Targeted ads based on knowledge about protected categories can be especially distressing. One example is when someone has not disclosed their sexual orientation publicly, but an ad assumes their sexual orientation. Another example is when a retailer identifies someone as pregnant and targets ads for baby products before others, including family, even know about the pregnancy. These types of assumptions and inferences upon which targeted advertising is based can in some instances result in emotional distress, lead to individuals being misidentified or misclassified, and cause other harms.
If this is one of the biggest harms the FTC can come up with, then honestly as a consumer I don't really care. Having free youtube is worth getting a few mistargeted ads, or I CAN JUST TURN TARGETED ADS OFF. Advertising isn't someone harassing you, its an ad that I can close or just report as not being accurate. I'd really be interested to hear from someone who thinks getting a mistargeted ad is in top 10 most stressful things in their life.
What I would really be interested in is the raw responses from the companies, not this report.
> I CAN JUST TURN TARGETED ADS OFF
The only reason you have the option to do this is because of groups pushing back against advertising companies. Ad companies have no incentive to offer the option to disable targeting.
If you like having this option available, then you should like this FTC report and the position they are taking.
> If you like having this option available, then you should like this FTC report and the position they are taking.
I can like other positions and actions the FTC has done, like requiring the ability to turn off targeted ads, and not like others, like this one. This is among the biggest problems in politics right now. Supporting a political party doesn't mean you need to 100% back all their opinions and policies, thats how change is effected in successful democratic systems.
> I can like other positions and actions the FTC has done, like requiring the ability to turn off targeted ads, and not like others, like this one
They weren't saying that was the case I think you're misunderstanding them here. But they are 100% correct, you are benefiting from other people fighting against this mass surveillance and yet speaking against it. I think you should do some research on why privacy is important and challenge yourself and your potentially entrenched beliefs.
Read my first comment. I definitely agree privacy is important. All I'm saying is that this is not one of the harms we should be worrying about when saying targeted advertising is a problem, and I don't understand why this is an important issue that we should care about when targeted advertising can be turned off:
"Profound Threats to Users Can Occur When Targeting Occurs Based on Sensitive Categories"
Use your imagination?
