Re:Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising
by chopin on Wednesday July 07, 2021 @10:12AM
(#27761330)
The analogy breaks at the point "won't enter your home". Current surveillance tech does exactly the analogous of that. It's rather like having a cop sitting at home pinky-promising not to listen or storing any conversation.
Maybe it's even worse. There are third-party analytics tools which send out any key-stroke you do, even if you don't submit any form.
It has become the new normal. Take todays article in Ars Technica on Audacity (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/no-open-source-audac...). The author has no complaint about the fact that a tool for local editing of audio files reaches out to the internet to send data about the user and seemingly defends this on grounds that it is opt-in. That's fine but that code is needlessly there. There's no reason whatsoever for it. And I am tired of being told that surveillance is for my benefit. No, it's not. It's solely for the benefit of the surveillor.
Maybe it's even worse. There are third-party analytics tools which send out any key-stroke you do, even if you don't submit any form.
It has become the new normal. Take todays article in Ars Technica on Audacity (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/no-open-source-audac...). The author has no complaint about the fact that a tool for local editing of audio files reaches out to the internet to send data about the user and seemingly defends this on grounds that it is opt-in. That's fine but that code is needlessly there. There's no reason whatsoever for it. And I am tired of being told that surveillance is for my benefit. No, it's not. It's solely for the benefit of the surveillor.