I do not consent to you and others giving Microsoft (or Google or Facebook etc…) all the personal information this necessarily reveals about me when you accept their terms and have any electronic interactions with me.
That's not your consent to give. If you tell me your name, I'm free to repeat that to whoever I want. If you aren't ok with public information being re-broadcasted, don't go outside.
If you aren't ok with public information being re-broadcasted, don't go outside.
Rights and freedoms that you can only exercise by giving up any semblance of normal life are no rights and freedoms at all. The idea that the moment you step outside of your home or go on-line you forfeit any right to the slightest respect for your privacy and we should just accept this is silly.
And if you think the only people who care are a few internet warriors, please consider the likes of Google's Glass and Street View, where some people have felt strongly enough about the invasions to resort to actual criminal violence in response, and some entire countries have clamped down on the surveillance in response to public concerns.
In any case, with many of these systems, we aren't talking about public information. We're talking about technologies that systematically abuse friendships and commercial relationships by getting one party to tell the technology operators information about another party without that other party's knowledge or consent and potentially even if that information had been given in confidence.
So you agree that you have no such rights and freedoms. That seems like the practical view. The alternative is the path of craziness, filled with things like the "right to be forgotten".
So you agree that you have no such rights and freedoms.
No, I think that just because we can do something, it doesn't mean we should.
In a literal sense, you have no rights or freedoms that you are not prepared to protect with your life. You can lose anything else to someone willing to try hard enough to take it from you. Fortunately, in civilised societies, we do not generally require everyone to die to defend basic human rights that most of us think are worth protecting. Instead we adopt laws and punish those who would break them.
The alternative is the path of craziness, filled with things like the "right to be forgotten".
And as you can probably guess, I support the basic idea of the right to be forgotten as well. I have no problem with requiring companies that specialise in providing easy access to data -- and that make huge amounts of money because of the immense volumes of data they deal with -- to make it harder to access information about, say, victims of abuse or mistaken identity. When the statistics came out about who was really making use of the right to be forgotten ruling in Europe, contrary to all the naysayers, it mostly wasn't people like criminals and politicians who arguably invited negative publicity.
That said, I have no problem with reducing the profile of criminals with spent convictions either, nor those who have done things that were not criminal but which society frowned upon at some point in history. A society that never forgets, full of people who want to hold everything someone ever did against them for all eternity, is not a healthy society. I believe most people can be rehabilitated even after a dark past, and the evidence about how successful different legal systems around the world are at preventing recurrence of damaging behaviour overwhelmingly supports that position as well.
Actually in the UK it is covered by the Data Protection Act. Interesting times ahead. If you knowingly or unknowningly give personal information away without my consent this is illegal.
I would challenge you to show something conclusive that states that I am forbidden by law from stating "I know this person. His name is batou." while pointing at you.
So if someone were to ask your computer "Do you know any trade unionists?" and it were to reply "I know this person. His name is batou.", and you weren't covered by the Schedule 3 exceptions, that would be an offence. This is an attempt at preventing employment blacklists.
And yet your original post was in response to this:
"If you tell me your name, I'm free to repeat that to whoever I want. If you aren't ok with public information being re-broadcasted, don't go outside."
to which you said:
"Actually in the UK it is covered by the Data Protection Act. Interesting times ahead. If you knowingly or unknowningly give personal information away without my consent this is illegal."
What you're saying now and what you said then are two different contexts.
He wasn't broadcasting his name in the first place; only you had the information (in the limited knowledge of the context). In case you are using this for anything damaging to him or for profit, that is what the Data Protection Act covers. That suddenly his name becomes public knowledge has little to do with this law.
I'm not talking about public information. I'm talking about private communication between you and I. Like truly private, private where you are happy to keep our communication confidential. Except now you have to have the technical know-how and proactive burden of keeping it confidential because Microsoft (and Google in other cases etc) sweep up everything you do.
In other words, if you consent to Microsoft tracking you, it means I cannot trust you in private communication even if you would otherwise be trustworthy person.
This is completely distinct concern from what is true public information.
That's been considered the foundation of privacy laws in the US. Europe generally has stricter laws -- for instance in Norway, until recently, it was technically illegal to keep an electronic[1] list of names and phone numbers of parents in a school class, or an electronic membership list for a club (esp: minor members).
That's now changed, and the requirement for being granted a "data license" are less stringent -- most electronic record keeping is legal -- everyone being granted a pre-emptive licence of sorts. However, that license is subject to things like a) being responsive in giving out/responding to requests to correct data, to show what data you have on an individual to that individual, and b) making a reasonable effort to keep the data safe.
Breach of those can lead to fines, and the revocation of the implicit license -- meaning you're not allowed to keep such electronic records any more.
Understandably Germany have a stronger emphasis on privacy, being a) a fascist dictatorship under Hitler recently, and b) half of Germany being under the Stasi also recently.
Why people in the US aren't more afraid of personal data ending up in privately held data banks where they are subject to National Security Letters, hackers, anti-union organizations working with big business, anti-native American rights activists and whatever else -- I don't know.
Maybe most people think that the next group to be frozen out of the job market won't be communist but Muslims -- and, hey, I don't know any Muslims -- so why should I be worried?
[1] Note the electronic bit. This is due to how trivial it is to link digital data, and how trivial it is to copy/get hold of a copy without the original missing etc.
I appreciate what you're trying to say, but ultimately... Sucks to be you. If you don't want others to share that data, you'll have to stop interacting with them.
I think its probably pretty good advice to follow: If you don't want someone posting revenge porn after you break up, don't give them nude photos/videos. Its always a risk you either accept or avoid.
There is a clear moral distinction to be drawn between people who use Windows 10 knowing that it might be sharing some data with Microsoft, so its algorithms can streamline certain everyday tasks and those who maliciously upload their exes' sex tapes to the Internet without their consent.
There are huge differences here on at least three crucial dimensions: intent of the sharer, the audience with whom it is shared, and the sensitivity of the data shared.
This is specifically in the context of your windows 10 install uploading data about me, without you asking me if that's ok. My wifi password over wifi sense, for example.
Yes. I understand that this is about "my" Windows 10 install sharing data about "you." I should have been more clear (and, unfortunately, the editing window has closed so I can't clarify). But if you re-read my comment with this in mind (as I had intended) it remains the case that while this a Bad Thing, and I see the analogy to revenge porn, it also is radically different in degree from revenge porn on several morally significant dimensions.
And let me guess, they don't have your phone number memorized; they probably save your phone number in their phone's contacts list alongside your name, which is automatically backed up in the cloud in either Google Contacts or iCloud depending on what phone they use.
Expecting your friends not to use cloud services seems a bit unreasonable and unenforceable. Are you really going to tell all your friends they should write down or memorize your phone number instead of storing it in their phone?
While your name and phone number are public, the list of people who have your phone number saved is not public. These companies can effectively map who you associate with only by looking at other people's phones. They can profile you by association, and that is very wrong.
At some point privacy is no longer a choice, not a real choice anyway. You get to chose between participating in society or keeping your privacy. It shouldn't have to be this way, but it is.
Oh, uh, I thought you were talking about your name.
Microsoft collects your friends' names so it can spell their names correctly when you use speech-to-text or related features. I thought that's what you were objecting to. What kind of data are you talking about?
If you really are as charming in real life as you are online, people might indeed accede to your quaint insistence on anachronistic media, until they don't.
Personally, I require that all my so-called friends communicate with me in morse code over short wave radio. It works a treat.
