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MathewKenneallySecondPaper 4 - 28 Apr 2015 - Main.EbenMoglen
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| | | An intelligence officer at Columbia put a simple proposition to the audience. The State is offering you security from terrorism and all it’s asking you to give up is a smidgen of privacy, what a bargain! Private technology companies say “here is a free service and will use your data to customize your experience, no catch!”. The “catch” is disguised by the characterization of the privacy debate as a singular transaction. Privacy is environmental. The transaction occurs incrementally and has long-term effects. In short, it is the surrender of power by individuals to corporations and government in the form of information. This long-term view is missing from the current debate. | |
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Okay, I recognize this idea. Now your task is to expand on it or take it in a new direction. That could be announced here.
| | | People unconcerned by private companies holding data often characterize the use of that data as innocuous. A typical response is “Facebook tried to sell me something I bought three weeks ago” or “I’ll just ignore the ads”. It is true that current online advertising is unsophisticated, however, this presumes it will not improve. Tech companies are regularly experimenting on how to predict human behavior. The Artificial Intelligence crunching the numbers is improving.
The risk is that with exponential improvement the business will be able to take full advantage of the asymmetry of information between consumers and corporations. | | | First, the ability of the authorities to use meta-data for any crime, may lead us to a “total enforcement state”. The police can enforce any law because physical limitations are removed. Metadata revealing online spending habits higher than reported income could allow low-level drug dealers to be targeted. Police could identify drug addicts by looking at users that that browse for health ailments commonly associated drug use. Facial recognition technology could enable the arrest of anyone with outstanding speeding tickets who attends a ball game. Tracking movements, interactions, and browsing could allow a state to identify individual’s sexuality. | |
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< | Enhanced enforcement can undermine the community’s capacity to drive social change through low-level law breaking. For example, a huge number of Americans used cannabis in there 20s. These citizens have seen the cost of cannabis enforcement, but know from personal experience authorities over-state the risks of cannabis. The result: a dimming of popular support for the war on drugs. Further, homosexuality survived because people could do it in secret. | >
> | Enhanced enforcement can undermine the community’s capacity to drive social change through low-level law breaking. For example, a huge number of Americans used cannabis in there 20s. These citizens have seen the cost of cannabis enforcement, but know from personal experience authorities over-state the risks of cannabis. The result: a dimming of popular support for the war on drugs. Further, homosexuality survived because people could do it in secret.
Or, it became impossible to deny civil rights, including marriage, to gay people once homosexuality wasn't done in secret anymore, and everyone had to see what "family secrets" otherwise allowed them to hide from themselves.
| | | The consequences would be a loss of citizens to test the value of laws ourselves and to experiment with different lifestyles and ways of living not sanctioned. Instead the Government able, if it wishes, can enforce conformity. | | | The trade off between privacy and security is not simple. The trade offs security agencies and private companies invite us to make will change the society we live in. Combined with advances in technology they have the potential to make citizens far less able to exercise agency in the commercial or political sphere.
No wonder Facebook nor the NSA put this in big bold letters in the agreement. Instead they just ask to click and move on. | |
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It seems to me that the draft basically starts from my starting point and provides illustrations. But you can get more out of yourself here, if you ask where you want to go from the environmental nature of the privacy problem. Rather than being compelled to strengthen the assertion by examples, assume the reader is with you so far, and take whatever the next steps are that this shared hypothesis allows you.
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