US authorities can see more than ever, with Big Tech as their eyes

https://proton.me/blog/big-tech-data-requests-surge

by jethronethro • 1 year ago

224 87 1 year ago

proton.me

xyzal• 1 year ago

Where was that nightmare GDPR letter template again?

TriangleEdge• 1 year ago

Wait until that author learns about Edward Snowden or advertisement agencies.

I used to play with Twitters firehose back in the day and there's quite a lot of personal data you derive from private accounts. We could tell the city someone likely lived if they followed a certain amount of people from a specific city, etc. Could also guess their gender with 95% accuracy with just using n-grams from their tweets. We'd test our algorithms with public accounts.

I think there's too much power and money in personal information for it to stop.

Y-bar• 1 year ago

He wrote about Snowden as late as last year: https://proton.me/blog/us-warrantless-surveillance and corporate role in surveillance state before that https://proton.me/blog/privacy-user-data-requests

Syonyk• 1 year ago

The book from a year or two ago, "Means of Control," by Tau, goes into some pretty good detail on the data collection and sales from just the adtech firms - where the entire ecosystem seems to be, "You can't use our data for anything but advertising... wink wink", and everyone knows exactly who is bidding on ads, and never winning any, just to slurp up location data and sell it. Or the "companies that don't sell the government." Also, they don't vet any clients beyond "The credit card is good."

And because giants like Meta, Google, and Apple must collect as much of your personal data as possible, there’s little they can do to protect your privacy.

I quite disagree with the "must" there. They choose to collect as much data as possible, because that's their business model.

And the good news is, it's fairly easy to opt out of quite a lot of that.

Turn location services off, turn your phone off when moving about, and pay cash without "personal tracking cards" associated with you. Just about everywhere has [local area code] 867-5309 registered, if you care.

zeta0134• 1 year ago

For a couple of years now I've been using [my area code] - 555 - [a unique 4-digit pin] for dealing with otherwise "walk-in" business that look at you like you have three heads if you decline to say a phone number out loud. In the US at least, the 555 block is defacto "fictional" and typically isn't assigned out, so it lets me create a valid looking number that won't accidentally ring some random real person if they try to call it.

forgetfreeman3• 1 year ago

Minor quibble, 555 isn't fictional, it's typically reserved for teleco internal use, or at least that was the case 25 years ago, who knows what the deal is now. Used to be you could wardial 555-xxxx and end up with all kinds of weird AT&T field installations, back office numbers, switch remote command and control modem numbers, etc.

AtlasBarfed2• 1 year ago

The basic rule of thumb is, if a company knows something about you, then the government does too.

Which means they know everything you have posted, everywhere you've gone, everywhere you've worked, what you think politically, and almost certainly have AI profilers trying to "precog" you.

To say nothing of camera surveillance, gait analysis, facial recognition, license plate tracking, cell phone signal interceptors.

All it takes is for one authoritarian to walk in and turn the key and POOF we have perfect.

Are we in danger of that? Oh right, no politics on HN. Don't worry, be happy folks.

potato37328423• 1 year ago

A one-off or series of authoritarians should be the least of your concern. They tend to be controversial and have great difficulty amassing the political will to get their things truly done and set in stone. A constantly popular government should be what keeps you awake at night. Because people who are otherwise capable of "hold a job, support myself" levels of intelligent thought will tie themselves into knots to support otherwise unjustified screwing at the hands of a government they support.

seveneves7s• 1 year ago

Just don't bring your phone with you. With low power states and opaque software and hardware, you really can't risk it. You can never be sure it's truly off, unless it's in a Faraday bag. But is it worth it?

amelius• 1 year ago

The magnetic field passes through a Faraday cage, so even then there are no guarantees if the phone uses unconventional modes of communication. Ultrasonic audio is another one.

fsflover2• 1 year ago

My phone has hardware kill switches for modem, WiFi/BT and camera/mic. So I can be sure. The schematics is available, too.

smgit• 1 year ago

Its like expecting farm animals to keep track of how the farm works, as the farm gets more and more sophisticated in animal domestication and exploitation. The individual action argument was weak 10 years ago and its worthless today.

The is a Systemic problem. Doesn't matter what the individuals do.

ty68533• 1 year ago

The trouble is people thinking it can be fixed with the system. I've been to a few dictatorships, none of them had the slightest clue what I was doing because the government was too poor and distracted with stuff like militias at their door to take much interest in what I was doing.

Safety comes from dysfunctional governance. Surveillance is a property of functional governance. Embrace disfunction.

monero-xmr• 1 year ago

It is impossible to avoid, and if you try to avoid it, you stick out. The correct maneuver is to appear normal, but selectively shutdown the system. Turn your phone on airplane and pay with cash with the moment is right. We live in a panopticon afterall.

In a country with the rule of law like the USA, the government can know you committed a crime, you know you committed a crime, society may suspect you of committing a crime, but criminal law requires a jury to convict beyond reasonable doubt. With a good lawyer this is a very tough bar, it's how organized crime gets away with so much (and despite the mafia being out of the news, they operate extremely well to this day).

So selectively you choose when to be anonymous. You pick your battles.

As a practical matter that may help the average HN normie, if you have a family you likely have life insurance. Never, ever, buy alcohol, marijuana, or cigarette / vapes / nicotine products with a credit card. Always pay cash. If you die the insurance company will go through everything to try and deny.

In the reverse case, the modern day can help you. If you drive, get a dashcam. You don't have to reveal video if you are at fault. But if not at fault, the video is gold. Put cameras around your house.

If you have rental property attached to your primary domicile, never have the internet under your own primary internet, lest you give reason for a wayward tenant to cause a search of your own home.

You aren't protecting yourself for the 99.99% time, you are prepared for the 0.01% case

mistrial9• 1 year ago

ok but -- combined with innate hostility or rampant selfishness, this degenerates into the famous "low trust society" fairly quickly. Certainly there is room for work on fair courts and laws somehow? in the daylight?

mnky9800n• 1 year ago

I was watching this old British show called connections where they try to connect random things in the world together and they talk about your online persona and how the world will change because of the internet and World Wide Web. What I found interesting is that they present it all as if there will be an online version of you that you should treat, essentially, as a separate entity. It is not you, it is your representative to the digital space. That you should think of it as some agent that does things for you in that space even though in reality it’s simply a collection of data about you. But I liked that idea because it helps create a delineation between you the person and your online presence. I think what people don’t realize these days is that it is rather difficult to be anonymous online in the same way it is rather difficult to be anonymous in a room full of people you know. This is because your online profile is essentially known to any online actor who wants to know as you and the article point out. But tbh I think most people, including myself, spend too much time engaging in doing things connected to online. You don’t need slack and zoom to talk to colleagues it is possible to have in person interactions. You don’t need strava to go for a run. You don’t need your phone to go to the coffee shop and read a book.

ttyprintk2• 1 year ago

I’m a big fan of the show. People who only use Facebook, I don’t expect them to dress their speech based on anonymity. People who actually fear a surveillance state, same deal. So how shall we depict the minority (on HN and IRC, etc) who expect anonymity as a feature?

enahs-sf• 1 year ago

My personal favorite is 281-330-8004.

vgeek• 1 year ago

Who?

gilbetron• 1 year ago

And the good news is, it's fairly easy to opt out of quite a lot of that.

The problem is that we really need something like herd immunity. If you opt out, but the rest of the people in your life do not, then it's possible to discover most of your data most of the time. You might have location services off, but your friends and family don't, so much of the time there's a good guess where you are at. Or you might not share your phone #, but it can be collected by those that you text or call and shared that way. Creating "shadow accounts" is very advanced these days.

Not to mention, "opt out" has to be actually true and not just a facade.

tptacek3• 1 year ago

What these analyses always miss is that providers on foreign soil have even less protection against the US IC: breaking into foreign providers is literally NSA's chartered mission. That's not to say you should deliberately use US providers! Unless, that is, abuse of legal process in the US motivates your decisionmaking, in which case: an abused legal process beats no process requirements at all.

AtlasBarfed2• 1 year ago

It's the NSA's job to do that domestically, it's just supposed to be firewalled by some hidden kangaroo court that absolutely doesn't do its job: FBI agents have been busted stalking women/exs several times.

Has been since 9/11. Remember, there's the omnipresent neverending war on terror.

tptacek3• 1 year ago

I mean, sure, stipulate that. But there isn't even a kangaroo court for a service hosted in Europe.

idrathernot2• 1 year ago

It’s not even that they have to “break in.” The government allows big tech companies to basically do whatever they want as long as big tech provides the government with an easy way to move forward with the parallel construction needed to bring case against literally anyone should officials be motivated to see that person imprisoned. Everything you’ve ever done can and will be used against you to maximum effect.

int_19h• 1 year ago

Whatever legal requirements might be at play, the fundamental difference is that a US company will comply, whereas a non-cooperative external party would still need to be broken, which is very much non-trivial in the age of strong cryptography, even if you're NSA.

panny• 1 year ago

giants like Meta, Google, and Apple must collect as much of your personal data as possible

Stopped reading there. If someone tries to sell a lie like that in their first five sentences, I can't trust anything they say.

kome• 1 year ago

but it's the truth. where is the lie?

Terr_• 1 year ago

Hmmm... Perhaps an Apple fan, upset that the company's Not Quite As Bad policies aren't being celebrated?

Jensson• 1 year ago

Must they really collect as much data as possible?

bamboozled• 1 year ago

Is it a lie?

haswell2• 1 year ago

Meta and Google must collect your data.

Apple does collect some of your data, but their business doesn't depend on it, and I have some degree of control over how much I participate.

I think it's a category error to include all three in the same sentence, but I don't think the author is lying. I do agree somewhat with the sentiment that such a lack of distinction calls the content into question, or at least the author's framing of it.

XorNot• 1 year ago

Google have stopped recording location history (opt-in) server side at all.

fhchl• 1 year ago

Have been using proto mail for a few years now and highly recommend it. You will ever have a cute @pm.me address!

th0ma52• 1 year ago

Many people I know are switching away from them because of their alleged support of fascism.

Gys• 1 year ago

I think they are mixing up who is supporting fascism…

pcthrowaway• 1 year ago

Can you provide any additional context for this? I haven't heard it, and a cursory search doesn't turn up anything obvious regarding their ties to fascism.

ttyprintk2• 1 year ago

What I’ve heard is that hosting in Switzerland concerns right-leaning people.

johnisgood• 1 year ago

In what way do they support fascism? I am using Protonmail, does it mean I indirectly support fascism? I do not care about the CEOs political views, nor his views on polygamy, or his favorite sexual position. If you want to argue against the use of Protonmail, you will have to try harder.

robertlagrant3• 1 year ago

I would love a privacy-friendly (e.g. Proton or similar-supplied) log in option on lots of websites. Log in with Google is what keeps me using Gmail.

j-bos• 1 year ago

Proton has Proton Pass, even supports passkeys if you're into that.

robertlagrant3• 1 year ago

Yeah, that looks quite good! Not quite a log in with Google, but an interesting alternative.

lazyeye• 1 year ago

Selling peoples personal data has been around for longer than people realise

The Hank Show https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250209277/

sub7• 1 year ago

BuT ChiNa Is TeH SuRvEiLlaNcE sTaTe

US authorities can see more than ever, with Big Tech as their eyes

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