This is true, but there's a bigger problem than the mere fact that a lot of data is being collected. It's how transparent companies are about the data that's collected, along with how long it's stored and who has access to it.

One might be fine with having their TV scan their face, but does that mean they're okay with that scan being transported to someone else's servers? Who now owns that information? Can the manufacturer sell that to someone else without telling you?

This kind of information shouldn't be buried in 46 pages of legalese.

Many people aren't aware that Siri functions by sending your voice off to Apple's servers for processing, let alone knowing whether that means that Apple now owns those recordings of their voices. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but the Average Joe isn't going to read the 50 page ToS, let alone be able to accurately parse it. And if Apple chooses to keep that data for themselves, they aren't exactly incentivized to tell people that they now own this information and can resell it.

I think the readers of this website vastly underestimate how much the average person understands, and vastly overestimate how much the average person values their privacy.

It's starting to get annoying, the folks who want to start a "privacy revolution" even when no one's asking them to.

There's the joke about anecdata to be had here, but I've found the people I talk to do care and value their privacy, and they are coming to a slow realization that there's a creeping ... creepiness to it. At least with the people I interact with regularly (most of whom aren't technologists), the average person is getting slightly annoyed by having to keep an eye on their gizmos as they slowly hear more about the devices betraying their trust in a myriad small ways.

And I think that's where the revolution foments. Momentum builds slowly, but it seems to be there, simmering and slowly heating over the years. Those folks calling for revolution now are just impatient and louder.

I disagree. With 1.23 billion users[0], Facebook is easily one of the most visited websites on the planet. Also up there? Google.

Convenience is winning the war, and that's only increasing. All data points to even more invasiveness of products, and even more acceptance by people. The people you talk to simply don't outweigh the greater voice of the sum total of users of the Internet.

There is no revolution. Nothing is fermenting, and there is no momentum, except from the hacker elite (us), and that's not going to change, if stock prices and usage rates are any indication.

[0] - http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/04/facebook-1...

I think it would be more accurate to say that people vastly underestimate how they actually value their own privacy.

Remember the Holocaust? Well, one thing that helped was an initially mostly harmless ethnic census conducted by Napoleon. Then the Nazi got hold of that data, and used it. Oops. Not that you or your descendants actually risk being put down in the gaz chamber because you turn on your TV, but there's a whole range of nasty stuff that can happen between nothing and summary execution.

What really annoys me is that people have a right to not care or see past their own nose. If their opinion was free of negative consquences for me -- and more importantly, the people who already are feeling the boot -- I would consider accepting them having it. But that is far from the case.

What makes people think they have the right to be ignorant and/or opportunistic, when I never asked them to? :P

What do I know about the difference between my data being on a machine in the headquarters of Samsung or the headquarters of the Golden Lucky Data Brokers Pty?

There may be a slightly-strained analogy to be made here with vaccinations and herd immunity. Just as refusing vaccinations makes others in more danger of contracting infections, willfully allowing yourself to be surveilled makes it more difficult for others to avoid surveillance.

Anyway, are you saying that you personally have no problem with a TV that listens to you, or that you don't like it but other people might not object?

Who cares what I personally have a problem with? Who I am doesn't matter.

The same reason you're not allowed to sell yourself into slavery.

Slavery is the complete loss of agency.

Letting JDate know my ethnicity isn't quite the same as losing one's agency.