RE: Google: Beyond Good and "Don't Be Evil"
That's not a difference. This is a mistake it appears a lot of people make: just because you choose not to use a product doesn't mean the government's cronyist subsidization suddenly stops. We're talking about companies that track everything. If you don't have a facebook account, you still have an identity with Facebook because they abstract it based on the existence of your phone number in other people's contact information, and the data that can be abstracted from the text messages you've sent to people who do have a facebook account. If you don't have a Google account, you still have a google tracking data footprint because Google's browser, Google's Analytics and AdWords APIs have fingerprinted your browser, your browsing habits, and so much more.
It is dangerous to make excuses for the arms of the government that you think deserve defense because they present themselves as private entities. Subsidy and contract brought them into power, and subsidy and contract demand the tools that make them ever-present even if you never touch their products. It has nothing to do with having right to Facebook -- Facebook has no right to YOU.
They can try and collect any information about me they like, it may or may not be accurate. I don't use Googles browser or search, never have, I don't give them any information. Say Facebook finds out my phone number, that's usually not too secret, used to be published in the phone book, so what?
so they sell it to some marketers who are not allowed to call me because I am on the do not call list and then they know my phone number! whoa man that's an Orwellian nightmare! The government does not need to buy my phone number from Facebook because they already have access to all of that information.
The maniacal end for these companies is to try to sell you shit, that's the information they really care about: what do you want to buy. Because that's the only information about you that is valuable to anyone, most of your searches and your selfies and all of that are useless to them, they want to find people who are looking to buy a new Jaguar so they can give them ads relevant to that. That is their end game.
You aren't thinking of more profitable extractive mechanisms than honest (more or less) sales. Taxes, for example.
Consider that deep psychological profiling is conducted on vast reams of civilians via AI using the vast reams of selfies and other 'useless' information, and besides selling Jags, this can be used to convince you that Q is leading a covert team of white hats battling the deep state bankster cabal on behalf of President Trump.
Or, to tolerate bombing school buses full of Yemeni children with weapons made in, and provided by, the US.
Stretch your thinking a bit, and you may well recoil in horror at how Fakebook and Goolag might use the surveillance power denied government to execute the most heinous purposes to which government can stoop.
"this can be used to convince you that Q is leading a covert team of white hats battling the deep state bankster cabal on behalf of President Trump."
I suppose it could be, but of course there are no targeted Q ads are there? Have you been receiving Q mailers or junk mail or browser ads? No you haven't and not because you don't fit the profile, because there are no targeted Q ads because Q is not a product. Honestly I have no idea what Q is and neither do you. Perhaps at some point some clever marketer will decide to sell Q t shirts and then perhaps there would be such ads, because the guy would be making money of the shirts.
Well before the internet was very popular marketers already had incredibly detailed psychological profiles on everyone, they knew things like if you prefer a real stamp or a printed one, a blue envelope or a white one, cursive font or times new roman. Every little thing about you, they already knew people better then they know themselves.
A political candidate is a product and of course they will continue to try to use data about voters in order to try to market their candidate to them.
I don't really use facebook or google and claims that facebook ads can determine an election outcome seem exaggerated at this point as part of the Russian anti Trump media narrative.
Which is? Haven't plenty of governments in the past already done that before the internet?
In East Germany for example they had vaults full of little strips of cloth. They had everyone's scent on file, for the dogs.
What surveillance powers are still denied government at this point?
Actually already happened, BTW.
As are NGOs, parties, and all manner of institutions.
Legally - lawfully - anything absent a warrant based on probable cause. Practically? None. Including far more potent weapons than your scent so the dogs can track you, such as your DNA.
While we don't need paranoia, denial is possibly worse. Surveillance potentiates oppression, and I'm agin' it.
I would say your cell phone, license plates and credit cards are way better for tracking you than your DNA, that would be pretty useless for trying to track someone. You could use it to confirm if someone had been somewhere but that is slow. The fugitive trackers love social media too, that tells them who might help you. Of course you could ditch your phone and credit cards and license plates, then you just need to dodge the facial recognition. Once the dogs are on your scent though, you are probably fucked.
There was a show on a couple of years ago where they had a bunch of real federal marshals and other experts using all the available technology to try to track a number of contestants who won the contest if they could evade arrest for a month and then get to a certain spot without getting caught. It's pretty wild to see all the tools they had at their disposal, someone did win the show though, they were pretty smart and lucky.
Obviously nothing good can come of a panopticon and it gets even more sketchy when the have AI to actually make that panopticon effective.
You're refusing to acknowledge that individuals will have panoptic surveillance, facial recognition, and AI to better deploy their use of it.
In fact, why don't you have these things today?
Whether you want it or not, these things are becoming more available to individuals, more advanced, cheaper, and hurt nefarious actors far more than good neighbors in good communities of good people.
Nothing good can come of these technologies as long as they are wielded by oppressors alone. They are existential threats to oppressors when all civilians have them.
This is exactly how tech makes government obsolete. Keep adding more tech to the list of power that will inure to individuals, and no longer only be used against them by institutions, and only denial will prevent you reaching the conclusion that freedom from oppression is inevitable.
I suppose any wealthy individual could employ those technologies today, but to what end? What would I use facial recognition for? I can already recognize all the faces I need to.
I was going to say I agreed with that but I can't really divide the world into "oppressors" and "civilians", I don't consider myself to be either.
Just consider how rapidly the costs of such technologies are dropping, and how much more rapidly they disseminate today than in the recent past, and it will become apparent that quite soon even the desperately poor will have access to them and more, and that the rate of dispersal will continue to accelerate.
While you may not feel that you are in danger of being surveilled, stalked, or otherwise need to recognize faces that may belong to professional thugs, you might grasp that some folks are, do, and soon will. The Stasi were not benign, and the FAANGs, enemedia, and political bureaucracies are more and more resembling them, as they become more desperate to continue to wield power.
I hope you will not tarry long before joining the ranks of we civilian non-combatants successfully gaining our freedom.