J.R.McHale

From the ever interesting Maciej Ceglowski at his Idle Words:

“The proximate reasons for the culture of total surveillance are clear. Storage is cheap enough that we can keep everything. Computers are fast enough to examine this information, both in real time and retrospectively. Our daily activities are mediated with software that can easily be configured to record and report everything it sees upstream. But to fix surveillance, we have to address the underlying reasons that it exists. These are no mystery either. State surveillance is driven by fear. And corporate surveillance is driven by money.”

Read the whole thing, including details of his six, sensible, suggested fixes: (1) the right of users of an online site or service to download data (in usable format) that was provided to or collected by the online site or service; (2) the right at any time to delete one’s account (and all associated personal information) from an online service; (3) a ban on selling or sharing behavioral data, as well as relatively short limits on its storage (e.g., 90 days); (4) physical turn-internet-connectivity-off switches for IoT connected devices (which should be required to remain functioning in the off state); (5) a ban on third-party ad tracking (with sites only able to target ads based on page content itself and information the site has about the visitor), and (6) legally enforceable privacy promises with significant penalties that act as meaningful deterrents.

Also: Watch his presentation on “The Website Obesity Crisis” at Vimeo (53 minutes)