+1We not only need to declare our rights to privacy, agency and the rest of it; we need the means for making it work for each of us. Some of those means are in the works here (in the VRM community and its fellow travelers), while others are not — and won’t be, as long as we look only for big companies or governments alone to give us what only fits in our own hands.Look at it this way. Do we want to have hammers and saws and bikes of our own? Or do we want to have those only as services from some cloud?I’d say more, but I'm on the road.DocOn Jun 4, 2016, at 10:51 AM, T.Rob < " target="_blank"> > wrote:> Frankly I don't think people... including the well educated and thoughtful... can really appreciate how fast technology is moving to alter the relationship between the individual and the state…Part of the problem Tom, is the way we framed the changes when the Internet was first invented and the extent to which we love that narrative. It has always been described as this big democratizing force that would empower individuals and redefine the relationships of power. And while it has done that what we failed to recognize is that it isn't biased to function that way. The bias we saw had more to do with the demographics of who was using the Internet in the early days. It empowered individuals and spat unicorns out its butt mainly because the established power base wasn't using it.For the Internet to fulfill the promise of becoming a democratizing force for good would have required the established power base to not embrace it prior to the balance of power shifting past a tipping point. Unfortunately for the species, that didn't happen. Once the established power base was threatened, they began to wield the Internet for their own purposes, except that these were entities that already had massive influence and funding and they can wipe out the advances we've made with the blink of an eye. Furthermore, the crop of unicorns that were spawned now also have significant interest in using the leverage of the Internet to preserve their positions. Disruption is highly asymmetrical and no disruptor wants to be disrupted. Had we framed the narrative correctly we might have seen it for what it was: the Internet doesn't make power fungible but rather amplifies it for all parties. If you start out with a little power you can topple some unsuspecting giants. If you were a giant to begin with you can now crush little people like ants, even as they scurry about democratizing their anthills.In other words, David got all cocky when the Internet gave him a sling. But then Goliath figured out how to use the Internet to make himself 10 times larger and instead of realizing what just happened, David's on hold with Customer Support waiting to tell a human "Hey this Internet thing is broken and Goliath is beating the crap out of me." Until David realizes Goliath is just as able to use the Internet, and worse that Goliath will use his superior influence and resources to reshape the Internet in ways that diminish David's ability to use it, then David's going to keep getting his ass handed to him on a daily basis.The leverage of the internet goes to who controls the fulcrum point and that hasn't been us for a while now. The primary beneficiaries to which the power of the Internet now mainly accrues are governments, cybercriminals, and corporate interests - i.e. the entities who held large stockpiles of wealth and influence and who survived the first wave of DIY innovation. It's hard to say whether government or cybercrime benefit most, but corporate interest runs a distant third. People like us, even our higher profile community members, barely register in the equation. But we still talk about how the Internet is this transformative democratizing force and ignore that the established power base is using it more effectively against us than we ever did against them. Now that the large power holders have awakened to the Internet we will never have that shot again.In the technology timeline there's a window within which it is possible to define privacy as a basic human right. Either we say that we get more safety and liberty in the ability to communicate privately as individuals; or we say that we get more safety and liberty by allowing governments, cybercriminals, and corporate interests access to all our communications and tracking. There is no middle ground, no case in which government and corporate interests use it only responsibly, no case in which cybercriminals *don't* get access to the same capabilities and powers, no instance of math working differently for the Forces of Good that it does for the Forces of Evil.But if we fail to declare privacy a basic human right and protect it as such, the trajectory we are on eventually shifts the balance of power to the point that it is no longer possible to make that decision in favor of privacy. At least not short of violent revolution which, in this day and age, would be a species-threatening event. Unfortunately, our distraction in treating this as a continuum with grey areas and fighting on myriad fronts, preserving privacy on a case-by-case basis, having to justify it rather than having to justify violating it, favors the expiration of that window without recourse and that too is a species-threatening event.Problem is, based on the degree to which we are surveilled today, the controlling power that surveillance and tracking bestows, and the demonstrated willingness of those in power to do anything to preserve it, there's a powerful argument that the window may have already expired. Could we, for example, ever again have a modern version of the Underground Railroad? Do we actually believe we'll never need something like that again and if the answer is "yes" how do we get back to that by fighting for net neutrality, VRM, ad blocking and the like without first establishing an absolute right to privacy? VRM gives us leverage which is great, but while we are busy building it the fulcrum is steadily disintegrating. So long as privacy is fungible, everything we build on it is a house of cards.Kind regards,-- T.RobT.Robert Wyatt, Managing partnerIoPT Consulting, LLC+1 704-443-TROB (8762) Voice/TextFrom: Tom Crowl [ " style="color:purple;text-decoration:underline" target="_blank">mailto: ]
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2016 23:38 PM
To: T.Rob
Cc: Christopher Herot; Doc Searls; ProjectVRM list; David Brin
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Facial recognition vs. PrivacyFrankly I don't think people... including the well educated and thoughtful... can really appreciate how fast technology is moving to alter the relationship between the individual and the state... (and in my opinion our relationship to the financial sector... money being a tool dependent on belief and a central function for binding, if not unifying, a state).Tech is going to make 'hiding' pretty much impossible. We may be able to limit some intrusion (ad blockers, encryption, etc)... but big brother is coming.A key solution involves what Dr. Brin calls Sousveillance (the ability to watch the watchers). He has a recent post dealing with how two different locations are approaching this problem of government surveillance.I won't belabor it... but I again suggest that the user controlled and owned 'pocket' designed for.. but not necessarily limited to... the micropayment and its network of 'owners' (i.e. everyone) is another needed check (not necessarily an opposition) to state power.Tom CrowlOn Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 7:00 PM, T.Rob < " style="color:purple;text-decoration:underline" target="_blank"> > wrote:> We are probably an election cycle or two away from where I worry about the government making use of thisToo late.-- T.RobFrom: Christopher Herot [mailto: " style="color:purple;text-decoration:underline" target="_blank"> ]
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2016 14:05 PM
To: Doc Searls; ProjectVRM list
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Facial recognition vs. PrivacyWe are probably an election cycle or two away from where I worry about the government making use of this, but the implications of what businesses could do is really scary. Imagine a surveillance network observing you going into a bar or marijuana dispensary and then some time later you find out your insurance rates have gone up, a landlord won’t rent to you, or you didn’t get offered that job?From: Doc Searls < " style="color:purple;text-decoration:underline" target="_blank"> >
Date: Friday, June 3, 2016 at 11:37
To: ProjectVRM list < " style="color:purple;text-decoration:underline" target="_blank"> >
Subject: [projectvrm] Facial recognition vs. Privacy<https://mic.com/articles/144573/an-incredibly-accurate-facial-recognition-app-is-coming-here-s-what-it-means-for-privacy>
The headline: "An Incredibly Accurate Facial Recognition App Is Coming — Here's What It Means for Privacy.” It begins,
"Privacy is dead — or at least, it will be soon. That's the conviction held by Russian entrepreneurs Artem Kukharenko and Alexander Kabakov, whose startup, NTechLab, recently launched a facial recognition app that nearly obliterates the concept of anonymity. Called FindFace, the app has remained exclusive to Russia since going live earlier this year. Soon, though, Kuhkarenko and Kabakov are introducing a cloud-based platform that makes their frighteningly accurate algorithm available to everyone…"
Thoughts?
Doc
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