Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy

On Mon, 17 Feb 2025, Dave Yeo wrote:

D wrote:

  On Sun, 16 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:
 

D <nospam@example.net> writes:
 

On Sun, 16 Feb 2025, Retrograde wrote:
 

From the «doom I say» department:
Title: Nearly 10 years after Data and Goliath, Bruce Schneier says:
Privacy’s still screwed
Author: Iain Thomson
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2025 15:44:13 +0000
Link:
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2025/02/15/interview_bruce_schneier/
  'In 50 years, I think we'll view these business practices like we view
sweatshops today'
 Interview  It has been nearly a decade since famed cryptographer and
privacy
expert Bruce Schneier released the book Data and Goliath: The Hidden
Battles to
Collect Your Data and Control Your World - an examination of how
government
agencies and tech giants exploit personal data. Today, his
predictions feel
eerily accurate.…
 

 Yes, it is difficult to be optimistic about privacy in this day and
age. =(

 Legislation has always been slow.  The industry has always taken
advantage of that.  We just need to say no---if we knew how to.
Optimistically, we'll get there, but, of course, by then the industry
will most likely have found another niche somewhere else.
 

 I'm more scared about the government than the industry. With industry I
always have the choice of not using it, and they depend on customers, so
in the end, that protects me.

>
It's got pretty hard to avoid some of these businesses. Google, Facebook, Microsoft are examples of companies that are very hard to avoid.

? Facebook is super easy to avoid. Just don't use it. They make nothing of value.
If you have a job at a global mega-corp I agree, M$ and Google are difficult to avoid. =(
In private you can do just fine to avoid them as well. There is libreoffice which takes care of all your office needs, and there's graphene os, dumbphones and kaios which eliminates the need for an android phone.

 The government on the other hand, is based ultimately on violence and is
an inherently unethical and revolting institution, and so are the people
working for it promoting its power. This is what scares me the most.

>
What scares me is companies using the power of government to advance their agendas. Reading about how Musk leverages the Chinese courts to silence criticism and how it looks like the same thing is coming here
Dave.

I agree... this unholy combination is the worst of all! It is difficult to say where the government starts and where the company ends. They merge into one demon from hell.