> This sort of thing is one of the major reasons why I'm abandoning smartphones.
You should also abandon:
- Dumbphones (AT&T will give LEO all the same information.)
- Landlines (AT&T will give LEO all the same information.)
- Automobiles (Automated license plate readers abound. I suppose if you never drive on a toll road, or an arterial, or within line of sight of a cop car, you may still be OK...)
- Public transit (Passes + pre-loaded cards are the only reasonable way to use them, nobody is going to be fishing for 2 dollars and 3 quarters every single bus trip - and your travel is recorded.)
- Private transit (Uber, Lyft, coach buses, airlines all keep records of passenger travel. I guess you could hand-hail a regular taxi, and pay in cash, if you live downtown, but as we all know, HN hates taxis.)
- Debit cards (Payment processors will give LEO all of your information, and sell the rest to other companies.)
- Credit cards (Payment processors will give LEO all of your information, and sell the rest to other companies.)
- Bank accounts and cheques (See above.)
Have fun commuting by bicycle, paying for every minor purchase with a mixture of one-dollar bills and exact change, and communicating with your acquaintances by carrier pigeon, snail mail, and semaphore.
Alternatively, you can accept that the 21st century is a world where every third party you transact with is constantly making records of those transactions, and where (in the US) the law of the land allows law enforcement to compel these third parties to turn over those records. [1]
You'll be in the company of people who are outraged that passports are required to travel, and that you have to do a background check, credit check, and criminal record check to get a job flipping burgers at Mickey D's.
[1] If you really want to make an impact, this is actually what you should push on. It's much easier to change, than to make every single firm you transact with not keep records.
A person doesn't need a globally completely consistent set of priorities to accomplish anything.
This smacks of the same stupid arguments that you cant possibly not like huge amounts of corporate money in politics if you dare purchase anything from a corporation.
Attitudes like this ensure that nothing changes, ever.
No, it doesn't, because the argument you're presenting is a convoluted sequence of causes and effects, that are all quite, well, arguable.
The comparison I'm presenting is trivial. OP has issue with third party collection of their records, and is dumping smartphones. I point out that this will accomplish nothing meaningful in reducing the global third party collection of their records - especially if they switch to a dumbphone.
Great point, not that I agree with your conclusion that we shouldn't care about privacy, but good point that most supposed privacy people are living in cognitive dissonance.
This is why I always lol at people putting duct tape over their laptop webcams when their phone cameras are completely exposed always and taken to much more private places than their laptops. (Phone microphone too.)
You basically have to accept that nation-states know everything about you and will always know everything about you. Therefore the only practical goal of personal opsec is protection against other civilians.
If you steelman the argument, there’s actually several reasonable alternatives, and this is the benefit of having the discussion: it pathfinds the way for people to get off the bus, and changes the narrative over time.
Yes, because cherry-picking any one of those problems, while ignoring the mountain of other ones is not particularly productive.
If you can't get access to third party record rules overturned (Good luck, there's centuries of legal precedent for this sort of thing), it's not a hill worth dying on.
The problem is the the private sector keeps expanding the amount of data it wants to collect. The other day a store clerk demanded ID from me to buy cough medicine - not the kind you can get high from, just generic honey+lemon flavor powdered acetaminophen (I think the branded version is Theraflu). When challenged the clerk said they can't sell it to people under 18. I'm nearly 50. There's no legal requirement for this in my state, I checked.
If you turn it into a battle, you will be fighting that battle with every single organization that you will ever do business with. You are not going to win any meaningful number of them. Since some of these organizations are monopolies, or duopolies, you can't meaningfully make a choice to opt out, short of becoming a cave hermit.
If you do want to fight, fight the problem at its root - whether or not third party data should be accessed by LEOs through a warrant[1], how it can be shared with other organizations, and what purposes it can be used for. The (much-reviled on HN) GDPR happens to go a long way to address the latter two points...
This requires legislature, not grand-standing about cherrypicked examples. But for various reasons, the hacker community is very much against using legislature to solve these global problems, so it sticks to grand-standing. [2]
[1] As I've mentioned before, centuries of western legal precedent believe the answer to this is 'Of course, how is this even a question?' I don't think that's going to change in my lifetime.
[2] Consider your own example - do you think it's more productive for you to boycott the clerk that wouldn't sell you cough medicine, or to try to change the rules for what requires, and what does not require ID?
This requirement for ID only began recently; I purchased the same product some months ago with no ID. They're probably expanding the amount of data they collect in advance of the new (GDPR-inspired) privacy laws that go into effect here next month.
You're not telling me anything I don't already know, but I think you're overlooking the asymmetrical problems wherein it's far easier for corporations to collect data (even with these regulatory requirements) than for individuals to maintain even basic privacy.
You should also abandon:
- Dumbphones (AT&T will give LEO all the same information.)
- Landlines (AT&T will give LEO all the same information.)
- Automobiles (Automated license plate readers abound. I suppose if you never drive on a toll road, or an arterial, or within line of sight of a cop car, you may still be OK...)
- Public transit (Passes + pre-loaded cards are the only reasonable way to use them, nobody is going to be fishing for 2 dollars and 3 quarters every single bus trip - and your travel is recorded.)
- Private transit (Uber, Lyft, coach buses, airlines all keep records of passenger travel. I guess you could hand-hail a regular taxi, and pay in cash, if you live downtown, but as we all know, HN hates taxis.)
- Debit cards (Payment processors will give LEO all of your information, and sell the rest to other companies.)
- Credit cards (Payment processors will give LEO all of your information, and sell the rest to other companies.)
- Bank accounts and cheques (See above.)
Have fun commuting by bicycle, paying for every minor purchase with a mixture of one-dollar bills and exact change, and communicating with your acquaintances by carrier pigeon, snail mail, and semaphore.
Alternatively, you can accept that the 21st century is a world where every third party you transact with is constantly making records of those transactions, and where (in the US) the law of the land allows law enforcement to compel these third parties to turn over those records. [1]
You'll be in the company of people who are outraged that passports are required to travel, and that you have to do a background check, credit check, and criminal record check to get a job flipping burgers at Mickey D's.
[1] If you really want to make an impact, this is actually what you should push on. It's much easier to change, than to make every single firm you transact with not keep records.