Surveillance Capitalism

Yesterday the US signed into law ‘the cloud act’.

They haven’t addmited yet, nut this seems to be more of a treaty than your average law.

It gives the us rights to demand info from any servers out side of the us. Also it givesvselect foreign countries access to us servers. All without warrant.

To me is smells of legalising what they had pre prism leak.

Remember the days when a government was there to work for its people. Now we are seen as little bags of cash to be squeed and all guilty of something.

Tippon – no so eye opening as I was aware of most of that. Mentioned the Timeline feature of Google in the office yesterday and a few people freaked out.

I was against using Gmail for a while until I read this article. If that high a percentage of emails are going to Google, which pay out for email hosting elsewhere? (Mind, I’ve still got my Fastmail account but I’m in two minds as to whether or not to keep that when the fees run out).

Interesting to note Mozilla’s latest release – Facebook Container

It doesn’t bother me that FB and Google know where I’ve been. But I would very much like to know where I will be in a month’s time, say….

Set you accuracy to high, if you want a better track. It will eat a bit more battery though.

The Duke wrote:

Set you accuracy to high, if you want a better track. It will eat a bit more battery though.

Yes Steve, it is already set to high, I hate to think what it would be like if set to low. Perhaps I would be shown as being on holiday somewhere – that is about the only way that will ever happen.

As to Ed’s point about Google’s and more particularly others’ roles in drawing inferences I am not clear as to how effective or otherwise these inference engines really are. They generally rely on soft data such as views expressed or social interactions, probably including some data on purchasing habits. Is it not something we all do every day?

We make snap judgements all the time, maybe we cross the road, or turn round and move away from something or someone we do not wish to encounter. The better our data, the safer we feel making a judgement. Perhaps the issue is where and when a line should be drawn and not crossed. At the moment false judgements flourish. The mother of a child at my granddaughter’s school lost a baby in doubtful circumstances. The mother blames the child’s vaccinations rather than the fact that she went out drinking. When she woke after sleeping it off the baby was dead. Her inference was that the vaccination killed the baby not her drinking with her soon to be ex-partner. A whole illusory heap of false theories has now been built about how bad all vaccinations are as e.g. smallpox was eradicated by soap and water… Foolish people still tout long discredited folk lore so people with limited understanding draw the inference that an onion will prevent illness entering a home. This based on an ancient story that an onion drew bugs out of the air because when the onion was cut open, (long before viruses were known about or could be evaluated) it was full of ‘bugs’.

So in my book inferences are never substitutes for substance. In some cases they are best guesses but in others they are no more than dangerous illusions.

Steve, yes I agree targetted might just spark an interest. Currently the targetting is still poor, very poor. ‘

We saw you bought a carrot peeler, here are another dozen alternatives you might like.’

Is just not targetted at all! Perhaps offering a saucepan might be better.

At least I don’t get too many offers for women only personal products any more, so I’ll call that progress.

I have to suggest that limiting what you put out so inferencing has less to go on is a good idea. As for movement of the line, I had some early insights into the coming power of data analysis. I also had sight of the ways that data mining could also go horrible wrong, as associations between totally unconnected matters were easily made.

What always makes laugh is the hatred, or fear, of google etc.. But are very happy when pampers send out their ‘bounty’ packs, when they are pregnant.

No one bothered to wonder ‘how did they know’.

Now you older lot will know this, but if you ever have bowel issue, and you need a bag, all of a sudden you get a load of free sample bags for a number of companies. Same with crutches if you have  issues etc..

My wife gets them all. The NHS apparently don’t share when you no longer need the bags, to the relevant companies.

The big difference between google and the NHS is, google sell you as a statistic, the NHS simply sells YOU the person. Your name, address, age and medical conditions. At least google and FB sell stats and averages.

So when people complain about google etc, I can’t help thinking that ship sales 50 years ago. It’s just that everyone love free nappies and baby milk, they never noticed.

Ed, if I correctly read what you are saying it is rather along the lines of, ‘most ducks can swim while budgies tend only to splash or drink with water’. I will set aside the old established process of linking relationships to (hopefully) reconstruct identities, it has been used for a long time in all sorts of walks of life. However sticking with the ducks and water analogy, data miners realise that the greatest chance of finding ducks is near to duck ponds, and feeding them something they like will get their attention, but is this really news? If you replace ducks with people the same thing applies, those who like football are probably likely to either have a Sky subscription, another on-line subscription or possibly a season ticket, so advertise products thought to appeal more closely to that grouping on or near football grounds. What a single member of any such group will or will not do is wide open to discussion and guess work. Of course some will have key buttons that will fire them up, that is how advertising is supposed to work, but does it hit the target every time? Scatter gun approaches are still the popular game. I get the same holiday offers that everyone else gets or news of wonderful competitions with the chance to watch some football in Russia. Perhaps some would really wake up and enter, I am just never going to be part of that group. (This example came from a company that should have its own internal data resources on me, so a classic fail.) This why I am with Steve, wishing for better targetting to filter the junk.

Bob, I understand that the ever so helpful bounty packs come directly from a commercial relationship between the hospital and the sales representative who is paid to capture data from expectant women. I suspect similar relationships exist for some other products. For a while I received a load of age related contacts, but none of them were of the slightest relevance and thankfully that flow has more or less dried up. I do get regular pitches from investment consultants, the recycling bin gets well fed. Like you, I also have a very jaundiced approach to ‘surveys’, for a while I would enter junk data, but now I no longer have the time to waste or the inclination to waste it any more.

The old mother maiden name, first pet, school etc.. All can be found out on social media in moment by ant one.

Always use a long password and turn two factor authentication on. And use a password manager.

I have no issue eitj being used as a statistic. The issue always is, who may getvaccess to all that data I’m the future. Ie a far right gov brit would be my no1 concern. I don’t care one bit if Russia or china etc have my data, its my own gov that would possibly effect (maybe be I shouldnt write this I’m public then lol)

Not a dig at UK gov, if I was russian, US or even Tongan, it would be my gov id be most scare about.

Now when Russian invades us, I’ll start worrying about them. But the data will likely be the least of our worries. (To begin with at least).