Stallman: Facebook is Mass Surveillance

https://rt.com/news/richard-stallman-free-software-875/

by couchnaut • 15 years ago

313 143 15 years ago

jiggy201121• 15 years ago

I find it somewhat ironic that people like Stallman have battled for years to get so much FOSS out there.

What did we do with all this free software? Used it to build things like facebook, google and various SaaS sites that not only tie our data into proprietary clouds but due to the nature of the GPL etc don't really have to share their code anyway.

What they have really achieved is to turn everything they touch into a commodity and moved the "value" of software elsewhere.

We seem to be moving to a world where most of our devices and the servers powering our apps will be running some form of Linux or BSD under the hood but we are actually more restricted than ever.

roopeshv• 15 years ago

GNU has already given a solution to this kind of situation. It's called AGPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html). But the problem is most people would be happy to avoid GPL, and stick with BSD, because a lot of people want that. If anyone can start with AGPL, that's a great start.

PS: AGPL is the strictest GPL there is, like, LGPL is a looser version of GPL. It pretty much means, you give away almost all the stack. I don't understand the whole license, but I do know it's the strictest.

jiggy201121• 15 years ago

Interesting , haven't read that license in detail. Does this mean that as soon as I run something on a network (or just the internet?) I am required to push my changes back upstream immediately?

However I have a feeling that there is a sufficient body of GPL/LGPL code out there that people will just modify that.

Since a lot of OSS code is contributed by companies, they don't really have any incentive to contribute to an AGPL project (in most cases).

pors• 15 years ago

AGPL was made to also catch "hosted software". It still needs you to modify the OSS before the license kicks in. It has not been tested in any legal case as far as I know, which is why large corporations avoid using AGPL licensed software (like MongoDB).

sunchild• 15 years ago

The short version is that "distribution" includes providing access over a network.

tzs• 15 years ago

The problem some of us have with AGPL is that we do not consider it to even be a free software license, as we think it violates freedom 0 on the FSF's definition of free software.

majmun3• 15 years ago

Stallmans reminds me of Ted Kaczynski unabomber. (no offence) similair world view, he doesn't care of inovation because probably thinks that it leads to more controlled society. both are Neo-Luddites. only Kaczynski was more radical in his actions. If you want more of the same I suggest you read unabomber manifesto http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf

couchnaut5• 15 years ago

The creator of Emacs and gcc is a Neo-Luddite and on the same side as unabomber?!! Apparently there is some kind of nth humor level involved here that I can't really comprehend.

majmun3• 15 years ago

yes, what is your point? for fighting technology you can use technology. (and im not saying that he was neo-luddite allways)

savramescu4• 15 years ago

“The Anonymous protests for the most part work by having a lot of people send a lot of commands to a website, that it can’t handle so many requests. This is equivalent of a crowd of people going to the door of a building and having a protest on the street. It’s basically legitimate."

No it's not. This is just a few persons coming in buses and stopping the entry. If you want to equal it to protest then all the requests have to come from real people, not some bots.

I'm also not agreeing with this: "I won’t use the non-free software at all! I dedicate my effort to getting away from it! So if they stop making it – that would be great!"

This is ridiculous. I understand that the current IP legislation is a load of crap but trying to get ALL software to be free is absurd. How are developers going to live? How about groceries? Can I pay for that? Or that should be free as well?

jiggy201121• 15 years ago

I agree that you can not always compare a DDOS to people blocking a street. I think there's 2 reasons for this.

1) If you are busy protesting by blocking a street this causes you inconvenience as you can only physically be in one place at once. Whereas leaving your computer on to DOS while you go out to a bar isn't exactly a hardship.

2) Many of the DDOSers would not even be remotely aware of what they are doing , see the JS worm that they used recently.

You've just opened up a huge topic there, has been discussed on HN lots of times and while I have seen good arguments for copyright-less software in many areas (OS kernels , web frameworks etc) there are others where I don't think anyone has thought of another viable business model (at least not one that isn't even more freedom restricting in some way).

Some would argue that these areas should just disappear or be done only by hobbyists but I think I would miss professionally produced video games for example, indie or AAA.

To clarify though, I doubt that Stallman would support Anonymous or people who want to pirate software. To him any software that is not libre is irrelevant and should be rejected regardless of monetary cost or who distributes it.

savramescu4• 15 years ago

In according to his view on this we shouldn't pay for groceries because you don't know how they were grown. Everyone should get a farm and get his own vegetables, mine his own minerals etc. Saying that all software should be free is absurd.

a3_nm• 15 years ago

> 1) If you are busy protesting by blocking a street this causes you inconvenience

You only have a finite amount of bandwidth, and you have to decide how much to use for DDOS and how much for your own use, so, in a way, the analogy of street blocking still holds there.

skore13• 15 years ago

Oh look, it's that tired and misleading argument again.

The Free in Free Software stands for freedom. He is not making a statement on pricing, but on liberty.

Furthermore, I must say that his DDOS argument is a lot more valid than you give it credit. After all, it IS possible to DDOS a site without malicious intent, just ask any celebrity on twitter who tweeted about a site he or she liked. And who is to say that some protests today don't consist of people who have been either paid (western countries) or forced (eastern countries) to attend them?

steve-howard• 15 years ago

> it IS possible to DDOS a site without malicious intent

The whole point is to temporarily break a server someone's paying money for.

savramescu4• 15 years ago

Actually no. He is making a statement exactly on pricing. You've got the liberty not to buy it. But he's asking ALL software developers to stop making software for money. How is that freedom? "So if they stop making it – that would be great!"

batista2• 15 years ago

"Liberty", though, also means that the price is zero. You can have free (as in beer) but not liberty software, but you can't have liberty software that is not free as in beer.

I.e you can sell the software, but anyone you sell it too has the right to just give it away for free.

icebraining3• 15 years ago

A few points:

1) To Stallman, having the 4 Freedoms[1] to any software you acquire (paid or not) is an Human Right. And of course, you don't violate human rights just because it employs some people. So your question is completely irrelevant to him.

2) It's Free is as in Freedom, not Beer. You can charge for free software and in fact he encourages you to charge as much as you can. Of course, any of those buyers might start distributing it for free, but on the other hand, people could have also bought the Humble Bundle for almost nothing and yet they chose to pay a decent amount.

3) You're discounting the software - possibly most of it - which is produced either in-house or by a company contracting with another to write it. If a company needs some software which doesn't exist yet, or to add some feature to an existing FOSS package, they'll pay.

In fact, I have friends which work on a company which makes money by adapting Free Software to others' needs.

4) You're leaving out value adds. Red Hat makes money, despite CentOS. Reddit makes money, despite having a repository with all the code. If your software depends on a service, you can give away the software and charge for the service.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

frivoal• 15 years ago

> This is ridiculous. I understand that the current IP legislation is a load of crap but trying to get ALL software to be free is absurd. How are developers going to live? How about groceries? Can I pay for that? Or that should be free as well?

Some business models are impossible without slavery. Does this mean slavery should be allowed?

Stallman's argument here is the same: if the particular software you make can't survive financially without abusing people, then you shouldn't have a right to make that software. And he considers all proprietary software to be abusing people's human rights.

So if you want to counter him, saying that it will put developers out if work is no more valid that saying that abolition of slavery is bad because of the financial hardship it would impose on the cotton industry.

To counter Stallman, you have to come up with arguments showing that non free software does not abuse its users.

shareme• 15 years ago

you are confusing FREEdom with free price and they are not the same..

let me give you an example the first few pieces of FSF software was distributed by RMS by computer tape and he charged for that and that revenue paid for his living expenses.

The other big example is Redhat/JBoss..everyone of their workers get paid through services charged..

VMG4• 15 years ago

Except that it is completely voluntary.

muyuu• 15 years ago

People can be tricked into giving away absolutely everything. As Facebook so aptly proves.

VMG4• 15 years ago

It still happened voluntarily. I'm not saying that this means that it is therefore morally good, I'm just staying that there is a qualitative difference between facebook and the secret police terrorizing people in dictatorships.

masklinn• 15 years ago

No. It's completely "voluntary" and the quotes are important: if your whole social environment standardizes on a platform, you're an outcast if you don't step aboard. If your professional environment standardizes on a platform, you're an outcast if you don't step aboard.

It's only actually completely voluntary if you have infinite money and no issue (and no repercussion from) completely dropping whole social and professional circles out of your life.

And that still requires the network/system is honest about it[0], when Google automagically creates a G+ account for you when you sign up for (supposedly) unrelated services or forces you to create one to access other content, "voluntary" is really debatable. Again, unless you have no issue shedding whole social circles instantly.

[0] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/google-doubles-p...

VMG4• 15 years ago

The thing is that surveillance should be reserved to people who lived under something like the Stasi regime and had to risk their life to escape.

You only have to pick up the phone instead of using the computer.

[edit]

G+ doesn't change the surveillance situation at all. I have a G+ account and I don't do anything with it. Google doesn't have any additional information.

lunarscape2• 15 years ago

I agree. I've certainly personally paid a large price socially for leaving Facebook (after the photo recognition scandal) and professionally after leaving LinkedIn (after the advertising incident).

Permit• 15 years ago

I don't know if I've ever really bought into this. I've yet to hear the story of the individual who lost all social ties because they quit Facebook. I made the decision about a year ago, due to excess wasted time on the site and have yet to face any real negative side effects to doing so.

People were social long before Facebook was around, and can remain so without it. Even with an account, the information you share on Facebook is voluntarily given.

I think what Facebook has done most effectively is given people the illusion that their lives are somehow more social because of it.

Karunamon2• 15 years ago

So? If this is a problem, sign up with the minimum amount of information necessary. (Which, as of time of writing, is first/last name, email, gender, and DOB.. and the DoB doesn't have to be legitimate)

You are not forced to share anything. If you want to use Facebook as strictly a messaging platform, there is no negative effect for doing so.

Characterizing it as "surveillance" is RMS's typical good-natured extremism.

davidhollander• 15 years ago

> you're an outcast if you don't step aboard. If your professional environment standardizes on a platform

Although employment and social circles DO limit your range of actions, you accept the tradeoff voluntarily in exchange for benefits. You can find a new job or people to associate with if the benefits do not justify the cost, without your employer or friends being able to legally threaten you with violence. On the other hand if you refuse to allow surveillance or investigation by the law, they are authorized to use as much force as is necessary to seize your property, imprison you, or execute you. It's completely voluntary in that regard.

"Voluntary" can be viewed as an antonym for "coerced", where coercion implies an underlying threat of violence. Forced denial of an individuals life, liberty, and property can be construed as violence or coercion. Such properties do not presuppose the presence of another person or governing body, so may be considered intrinsic to the individual. However, employers or friends denying the deliverance of their property or empathy to you cannot be construed as violence or coercion. Such exchanges presuppose the presence of multiple people, and therefore cannot be considered the denial of a property intrinsic to one individual.

Tichy• 15 years ago

You have to do extra work to opt out of Facebook tracking, though. At least your IP address will be tracked everywhere if you don't block Facebook somehow.

VMG4• 15 years ago

just imagine the legal consequences if establishing a connection to your computer wasn't regarded as being voluntary

RexRollman2• 15 years ago

Considering that Facebook has been caught tracking people without Facebook accounts, I won't go so far as to say that it is completely voluntary.

majmun3• 15 years ago

well it depends on if you can or can't know in advance if you are tracked on some website. but if you are worried of tracking there are allready available solutions to that problem . like proxyes, but that is another safety hazard by itself. world is not necessary a safe place.

hermannj314• 15 years ago

I agree that people voluntarily join Facebook, but expectations are important. If I volunteer only to realize your intentions were far removed from my expectations then we have a problem.

Imagine I start a FREE postal delivery service for writing letters to your friends. But when your letter shows up at the destination, it is full of advertisements that I hand picked for your friend based on the content of your correspondence. Oh yeah, also the police asked for a copy of the letter. Oh yeah, and we also showed the letter to a bunch of your other friends because we changed our delivery rules and figured you wanted to opt-in. Didn't think you would mind.

But you can't complain. The service was free and you signed up voluntarily.

I'm neither pro / con on the Facebook thing. I never know when the real world rules should apply to the electrons. I think we are just making it up as we go.

tensor• 15 years ago

Signing up and using facebook is voluntary. But how do you deal with other people signing up and giving facebook information about you? These people certainly don't have malicious intent, yet the end result is that facebook has a pretty good profile of me even though I've never once signed up for the service. Off the top of my head, they have:

My personal email. My work email (can infer where I work from this). Many of the people whom I know who searched for me on facebook. Highschool friend links (can infer my highschool and possibly even age from this). I know for a fact that they have photos of me tagged with my name.

I didn't authorize any of this, yet there it is. Never before has it been so easy to aggregate this sort of information, or perhaps even possible.

dotemacs• 15 years ago

What has to be noted here is that this is published on Russia Today. From my understanding of it, it tries to offset the US crazies like Fox and its ilk...

lunarscape2• 15 years ago

To me RT is a Kremlin mouthpiece giving a voice to obscure anti-US and anti-EU voices. At one stage is was nothing but 24 hr anti-Georgia propaganda.

narrator• 15 years ago

I've seen the BBC and other western media quoting some random unknown Chinese or Russian intellectual and giving them the world stage because they agreed with the western perspective on China or Russia.

couchnaut5• 15 years ago

RT happened to have the longest and most full presentation of the interview that I could find in a minute. I originally saw this in Free Software Magazine which linked to this piece http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/sci-tech/others/rich... but it seemed too short for HN.

Now (regarding other more strong notes on this thread) - Stallman has his opinions and he supports them in a very logical way (albeit a bit too passionate). Moreover, he tries to support personal freedom, which in my books is more of an American value than anyone's else. So, trying to dump the real issue here by referring to what RT may be (according to what sounds like post modern cold war psychosis) is at least cheap propaganda.

DanBC2• 15 years ago

There are people who are uncomfortable about the intrusions of various websites, but who use those websites anyway. These people "just" need a better alternative to switch.

But I have no idea what to do about the people who just don't care.

For example, OKC recommended a person to me recently.

EDIT: Redacted a bit more.

She lists her blackberry pin; her facebook account; an email address; her cell / mobile phone number; and her twitter account.

That's enough information to find her profiles on a wide range of websites.

iamjustlooking• 15 years ago

Even though you redacted that information it's quite easy to find that person still because of the poor spelling and grammar. Perhaps you should remove it.

DanBC2• 15 years ago

Yes. You're right. I have done.

slig• 15 years ago

You'd be surprised to see how easy is to find all that with just the OKC username. Lots of people use the same handler for all kinds of services.

ppod• 15 years ago

Is it true that sites with a facebook like button send the IP address of hits back to facebook?

tikhonj• 15 years ago

If the like button is hosted on Facebook, your browser requests it from there when you visit the page. So the site doesn't have to do anything except include an img tag with a Facebook url in it; everything else is a consequence of how the internet works.

mike-cardwell2• 15 years ago

Google Analytics creates the same problem. This is why I use server side analytics instead. I don't want to send a list of everybody who visits my website to Google.

rmc• 15 years ago

The webpage doesn't send IP address, your browser contacts facebook for the icon and hence sends IP address and cookies to facebook, in the same way that image hotlinking would work.

Remember it's not just IP address, but could be cookies. Facebook can set a cookie that will be stored in your browser and will be sent to facebook each time. So if your laptop moves around, then the facebook cookie follows you.

Since this is at the browser level there are browser extensions that will block this for you if you want.

mike-cardwell2• 15 years ago

The cookie issue doesn't exist for Safari users as it disables third party cookies by default. I don't know why all browsers don't do this. I've been disabling third party cookies in my browser for years and have never come across a website that it breaks. And if Apple can do it without people complaining, I'm sure Mozilla/Microsoft can too.

I prevent the IP address leak by using the Firefox addon RequestPolicy to block cross-origin requests.

astrodust• 15 years ago

You can also just null out www.facebook.com in your hosts file and be done with it.

victork2• 15 years ago

Hi,

Well it can be way worse than just a simple IP. When you ask for a picture your browser send a bunch of infos about you that can be dangerous because it gives a footprint. If you want to see that go to that page ( hosted by EFF) it shows you how it can be used to fingerprint you: http://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php?action=log&js=yes

Also there are other attacks that can be used to go even further using for example browser cache. The browser cache has a field that can be set by the server and generally is the date for the expiration of content you are asking. But... when first designed it accepts a random string, so for example an UUID... This cache cannot be cleaned with normal procedures and you are tagged without your consent.

Other techniques can be used with Flash and cookie revival has been actively performed by companies like Quantcast. (look it up on the net)

So... what Mr. Stallman has said is true to an extent that only few people know and that's a pretty big deal.

tezza10• 15 years ago

I just don't see what the big deal is...

The set of information people publish on their own about themselves (like blogs) is almost exactly the same as the set of information they disclose via Facebook.

Anyone can datamine people's blogs for similar surveilance.

From Stallman's blog & email history on newsgroups I could work out:

  who he knows
  what projects he participates in
  his age
  infer his sexual preference
  infer his religion (may even be explicit there)
  where he lives
  where he was on any day (conference speaker history)

People shout and scream about themselves as often and loudly as they can. Facebook is just the medium du jour.

Those concerned with privacy have oodles of crypto-tools to do so with.

It's just people can't be bothered. That's the root problem.

pessimizer3• 15 years ago

Stallman is an intentionally public person who wants you to know these things.

tezza10• 15 years ago

Many many people besides a public figure like Stallman have written a blog or participated in a newsgroup.

Let's just see what can be done without Facebook:

You (pessimizer) have listed your email address pessimizer@xxxxxx .

  You have an HN comment history.
  Your email pops up in google under Arkansas
  You commented on a Django topic.
  I could infer your set of HN buddies (maybe not including myself now!).

All those methods are almost as bad as facebook for disclosing information.

If you use a pseudonym to hide from those - why don't you use a pseudonym as your facebook account??

I haven't listed my email, but I'm pretty sure people could work out who I was and where I lived from my comment history. But I am reasonably happy that the reward of not having to screen all my comments for incriminating info is worth the risk of someone figuring it out.

(edit with an example)

barumrho• 15 years ago

One thing that he mentions in the video is the fact that Facebook Like buttons are everywhere. They can track many of the sites you visit.

tezza10• 15 years ago

A simple grep of your HN comment history shows equivalents to 'Like'

  http://www.webmasterkb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/javascript/35764/For-all-those-jQuery-fanboys
  https://github.com/derwiki/redirect_tracker
  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ltwatch/id482807766
  http://angularjs.org/
  https://github.com/ludicast/angular-peepcode-todo
  etc.

How is Facebook worse than this??

tezza10• 15 years ago

A google for "firefox facebook blocker" returned:

http://webgraph.com/resources/facebookblocker/

gldalmaso• 15 years ago

But none of that information is auto-profiled by a machine. That's already a big difference since it's not being sold/bought by companies or states.

tezza10• 15 years ago

It is auto-profiled in google and other indexers.

You (gldalmaso) don't list your email address, but you haven't used a unique username, so you pop up under twitter (your name is disclosed).

You have a StumbleUpon page which lists your age (27) and your hometown Flxxxxxxxxx, Brazil

You are clearly an Anime Lover.

This has all been automated, cached and waiting for me just to do a search.

Facebook has not been involved at all.

lelele3• 15 years ago

> From Stallman's blog & email history on newsgroups I could work out:

The problem is: FB has all these things together: blog, e-mail, network of people and surfing habits (inside FB, at least). For you and recursively for each friend of yours.

pjscott• 15 years ago

And they don't even have to try hard. It would take effort to track down this information manually from blogs and such; Facebook just has it. Don't underestimate what a difference convenience makes.

lelele3• 15 years ago

RMS: "Free software literally gives you freedom in the area of computing. It means that you can control your computing. It means that the users individually and collectively have control over their computing. And in particular it means they can protect themselves from the malicious features that are likely to be in proprietary software,"

Open-source, proprietary or not, gives you control over your computer compared to closed-source software. It's not free software versus proprietary software.

Free software goes beyond open-source, and besides safety gives you freedom.

Craiggybear• 15 years ago

There are a lot of people here who don't seem to understand you can earn money and a good living with 'free' software.

The term 'free' is very misunderstood in this context. Its free as in freedom/free speech, not (necessarily) free as in beer.

Although sometimes (most times) its both. This doesn't stop you using it to earn a living. It allows you to freely use and modify it to your own purposes. Contrast that with non-free (i.e. locked, obfuscated and proprietary).

I've written freely available stuff that people have (never the less and willingly) paid me rather handsomely for the privilege of using or modding to their own needs. They didn't have to, but people can be inherently decent that way.

I could have made it entirely closed and I think I'd have made less out of it if I had. I would have had to market it for a start -- and that's a fucking headache. I'm not a salesman and don't want to be.

Anyhow, Stallman is 100% right. Everything he's been warning us about for years is already upon us. With much worse to come.

Stallman: Facebook is Mass Surveillance

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