Comment by vundercind
Comment by vundercind 10 months ago
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.
Comment by vundercind 10 months ago
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.
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.
Not true at all. I'm a tech person, understand it all and the implications, and I'm not being a doomer about it.
The more people faff about and fight for privacy as a misguided absolute, the less discussions we can have about ethical, safe and managed uses of surveillance. Privacy advocates have this weird habit of thinking they speak for everyone, which they don't.
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
> I've seen no evidence of this. People mostly either don't understand it for feel powerless against it.
Isn't feeling powerless and being ok with it, ultimately the same thing: Complacency
Maybe you missed this article where a many of the replies say they are fine with facial scanning at airports. Digital rights removal is the slow boiling frog.
"Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41603698
The mentality of people in tech has drastically shifted into "o well... "
>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...
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.
No. I have some guesses. A credit reporting company can probably sell access to their data for good money if the account is locked but not if it is frozen?
Put otherwise if a bank asks experian to look at my credit report and experian tells them to take a hike because my account is frozen, that’s not worth much money to the bank. But that’s the only credit account configuration that has any value to me, so I’ll insist on it.
I think “freezing” and the dynamics thereof are established by federal law, while “locked” is a think the companies made up so they had an account setting that they could provide that would give the illusion of security, while maintaining the ability to sell information associated with the account.
In other words: evil people do evil things when we aren’t paying sufficient attention. It’s our job to hold them accountable.
Innovis? That's new to me. How long till they spin up yet another credit check corporation that I have no choice but to involve in my life?
I was also informed you can freeze opening checking accounts here.
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.
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.
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.
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/...
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.