I wonder if the historical analogy is actually reverse: we started with wild capitalism, where we were on our own, and then we became serfs. What's next - slavery?
]]>Worse, I have no recourse against these new feudal lords. In centuries past a serf could, in theory, appeal to the king. If I have a problem with Google now (which I do) who do I go to?
]]>Basically, we are telling users: "You don't have to trust anybody to use our service, not even ourselves". We do that by:
We'd be interested to know what others think of this philosophy, and if it can be applied to other services...
]]>Oh, but we just need more democracy...
If we were serfs, there would be no outcry and no change when Instagram nearly took control of all photos. But when a government does something horrendous, nobody changes, no one gets in trouble, etc... Big governments and big corporations are the same... there needs to be more competition to diffuse the concentration of power...
]]>Under the economic model of capitalism, whereby we capitalize on opportunity, the identified reason that Trusts were bad, was vertical integration.
Syllogistically, if Trusts were bad because of vertical integration, then excessive mergers are bad for the same reason. If they are bad for some other reason, they are still bad, but the solution given might not be a good fit.
If the US, as a nation, employed mergers as a globalist business strategy, that is yet another discussion. Under the constitutional model, sovereignty and rights oscillate on a Federal v State pendulum. Internationally, there appears to be a similar continuum developing, between national sovereignty, and centralized global government.
My argument is this: If we re-visit the the trust busters discussion, it might show a way out of our current predicament.
]]>If you really believe that cellphones are Stalin's playthings, then why aren't you conducting phone interviews over GNU SIP Witch secured by GPL'd OpenVPN? If you can't get this stuff to work on mobile, what hope is there for others?
It's not like the world will stop using small, networked devices anytime soon.
]]>To do your computing in freedom, you must do it with your own copy of
a free program. That's what the free software movement aims for.
Please join our fight for freedom in computing (see fsf.org).
Sure, that'll happen.
]]>"People are aware that Windows has bad security but they are underestimating the problem because they are thinking about third parties. What about security against Microsoft? Every non-free program is a ‘just trust me program’. ‘Trust me, we’re a big corporation. Big corporations would never mistreat anybody, would we?’ Of course they would! They do all the time, that’s what they are known for. So basically you mustn’t trust a non free programme."
"There are three kinds: those that spy on the user, those that restrict the user, and back doors. Windows has all three. Microsoft can install software changes without asking permission. Flash Player has malicious features, as do most mobile phones."
"Digital handcuffs are the most common malicious features. They restrict what you can do with the data in your own computer. Apple certainly has the digital handcuffs that are the tightest in history. The i-things, well, people found two spy features and Apple says it removed them and there might be more""
From:
Richard Stallman: ‘Apple has tightest digital handcuffs in history
www.newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2012/12/05/richard-stallman-interview/
Did I misunderstand your article?
If so, please ignore my concerns.
Yes RT are a nice counterbalance on much we see on US-24H-News and likewise on the BBC, and I tend to watch them in prefrence to the US channels because they atleast take time to find people who are not just "talking heads" or "paid for mouth pieces".
As to the story it's self you have to ask a simple question "where's the backup facility?". As described it's an "all your eggs in one basket" solution currently and for various reasons that is realy unwise.
Further knowing the location (if it is singular) helps identify where the taps and backhaul are and quite a bit of other info.
There is an old joke about defence and agency funding that says "Why build one when you can build two at thrice the price."
Thus I suspect the facility is actually the secondary site a bit like a data warehouse where the primary site(s) still remain active and will continue to do so for quite some time into the future (before anyone asks no I don't have an inside scoop, just a gut feeling having spent quite some time back in the days of old working on Mil Comms and the various forms of ComInt both traffic and content).
As for the Constitutional violation aspect, I'm not surprised, back in the Pre-Thatcher years when Labour were in power they were upto their eyeballs in misusing Government records etc for political reasons and it was very much suspected that both 5&6 along with Special Branch were keeping fairly close surveillance on the entire Gov. From Harold Wilson (then PM) down through the cabinet and various ministers aids and ordinary party hacks, especialy female aids who were regarded as being more personal than political...
It was also fairly obvious during the Thatcher years that 5/6/SB were very active on the perceived threat of the "Unions" and their leaders and many journalists (Duncan Campbell etc) because "the establishment" regarded them as threats anyway and Maggie Thatcher was handing out very large sliices of TAX money for them to upgrade their capabilities.
I've always asumed that it was happening to any one who "came to attentiion" because it was the UK Gov through the GPO (later BT) when developing the first "digital switches and trunks" as part of System X had requirmentss for turning on the microphoone remotely as a fundemental part of the specifications which is still there in the likes of GSM etc.
It's even happened to me, a part of OfCom under the guidence of Clive Corrie out of their Birmingham office decided to use their powers under RIPA to get at "Pirate Radio" when it failed to work on the Pirates themselves, OfCom switched tactics to those supplying revenue via advertisers and it was fairly obvious from OfCom's ham fisted approach that they would fail there. So OfCom's next logical choice would be those they suspected (mainly incorrectly) of supplying equipment to the Pirates (in actual fact the Pirates used "cut out companies" and plain simple theft of BBC and Independent Radio Stations equipment as well as DIY kit). It was fairly easy to check OfCom were listening in, just saying a few choice things in a way that Clive Corrie was to stupid to realise were "hooks" resulted in him gettting hooked and landed in very short order. Mind you he was quite happy to break the law as well and perjuring himself was just par for the course as well. As has been observed before "Clive Corrie's not the brightest light bulb in the corridor by a very long way" but his thug like behaviour has proved usefull to his superiors in OfCom for political reasons.
]]>- Crispin Glover
www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio
I have always thought it humorous when people looked at Prince Charles and his water colours...don't judge the past kings/princes by the current royals...Back then, say William the Conquerers' day it was the the meanest, biggest SOBs that got the castles, serfs, land... ;)
]]>The threat of feudalism with the sword. What was it somone once said? you commit 3 felonies a day just going about your business?
@RT Yes people are beginning to catch on to loss of privacy. Remember when you could just buy something and walk out? Now they want your name, address, email. Hey they'll give you a card for discounts (foodlion) in return they track what you buy. Credit card companies sell info to others. Even political campaigns can buy information to glean whether they should call you...
Waiting for the camera for everybody to wear in exchange for money/discounts. Well, at least some will do it. uh, hold on isn't that what facebook does? smirk
]]>"Copies of some material (photos, notes, etc.) may remain in our servers for technical reasons, but this material is disassociated from any personal identifiers and completely inaccessible to other people using Facebook."
http://www.facebook.com/help/125338004213029
Since they "disassociate" personal identifiers from the photos, surely that must mean they remove all the faces.
]]>http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?...
It is an interesting take on the history of the area and explains how those living on the fringes of "civilization" deliberately structure their lives to prevent being subsumed by the state. They grow tuber crops and leave them in the ground until needed rather than storing grain that can be raided, they are distrustful of anyone seeking to impose hierarchy, they maintain oral cultures but don't keep written historical records, etc.
But living on the edge they also may choose to participate in the civilization when it serves their interests. For example trading material harvested and foraged in their mountain highlands for rice grown in the "civilized" low-lands of the state. If the local lord starts getting too oppressive they just head for the mountains.
I'm not sure what the equivalent would be in facebook/gmail/etc world. Maybe using a gmail account for encrypted file storage? :)
]]>The PC Desktop is becoming antiquated and the amount of money in it for manufactures decreasing because there is no "value added" aspect to it and net pad and mobile devices are rapidly caatching up if not surpassing speed/power on acceptable desktop performance.
We've seen this before with games consoles in that they are in effect sold at zero profit or less with the income derived from a percentage on the "value added" games so they are locked down in the software dept to protect revenue streams (the 3DS apparently has a built in anti tamper feature where it "bricks" it's self if it detects tampering). Likwise mobile devices are sold at or close to zero profit or bundeled at zero profit in with a service package. The net pad and higher end smart phones are all locked so you have to go to the OS owners "walled garden" to get applications. This is just like the old idea of the "Company Store" where workers had to buy everything at vastly inflated prices, and anyone trying to open a rival store was discouraged in various ways (one of which was to pay workers in "company coinage" or tokens not real money).
If you look back at the history of computers prior to the Apple ][ every "office usable" computer was sold with some kind of "lockin" where you had to go back to the manufacture/supplier cap in hand to pay exhorbitant sums of money.
For those that are unaware of this the "old iron" "lockin" attitude is still around and certainly so for highend servers and I don't see that trend reversing in fact the opposit
Part of the cost reduction on net pad and mobile devices is "kitchen sink designs" where you build everything in. Thus as a consumer you do not get to have the ability to modify the hardware beyond a very very small amount. As an example the Apple mobile devices currently lack Near Field Communications (NFC), a four man company has developed an add on to do it via the audio connector. It's far from pretty as a solution it looks like a childs lollipop sticking out the top. It looks silly and is fragile, thus they are trying to crowd source development costs to make a fit around case to make it a more elegant and robust solution. The problem for them is it's a technological dead end, because if Apple see NFC as taking of they will build it into their future designs, if it does not then they are developing a product without much of a future (typical catch 22 / pact with the devil situation).
But even the desktop is now becoming locked via the Microsoft driven UEFI, whilst MS will sign your code currently it's got a 99USD fee, but that's only for Intel platforms. For ARM platforms it's Windows RT and as MS consider ARM systems "devices" not "PCs" you are locked out from day one.
Secondly those making arguments about surfs and Magna Carta etc, history is way way more complicated than you are making it out. And of the three parts of the final "Magna Carta" (there were very many) still in law only one is in effect for the common man in the UK these days. The rest of it is effectivly repealed in a process that started in the 1800's.
But Magna Carta did not start with King John and the Barrons it started a hundred years prior to that with Willian II as the price to his succession to the thrown but that was in turn actually based on what Edward the Confessor had willingly given in setting up the legal system in England.
So a very scant (and thus not fully accurate) overview of part of the feudal system, which by the way was still inforce in parts of Europe untill just befor 1900 and in other parts of the world untill the 1960's.
In the Medieval period the whole system was one of patronage and fielty where those in power could give (and take away) Lord rights over parcels of land known as Mannors (Thus all land in theory belonged to the crown and technicaly still does which is why nation states have the right of "compulsory purchase" etc).
Tha manorial system predates what we now call surfdom (a term coined in the 1800's) it was as a result of the Roman Vilar system. The tying of people to the land arose because of the falling birthrate in Rome and other places (which was one of the primary reasons the Roman Empire colapsed and what was left of it became what is now the Roman Catholic Church).
There were three main parts to the Saxon (English) state and the laws recognised them, The Church, The King and Lords with mannors to support them and the Mannors with peasants tied to them. There were also various people outside of this patronage and land system and they were in efect what were later "outlaws" which back then did not mean they were criminals (although as they had no ties to land in what was a mainly agrarian system often were). As certain skills such as metal working and stone working were trades, those who were out side the mannorial system could ply their trade as and where they wished as could vagabond labourers.
Importantly although the word surf derives via from the French word derived from the latin for Slave (French was the Courtly Language, latin the language of the Church, and English the language of the peasent etc), surfs were not slaves they were bound by oaths of fielty that effected not just them but their families and decendents. Although the oath was given to the Lord of the Mannor they were actually pledging alegience to the Mannor. Thus if the Mannor changed it's Lord for whatever reason their oath automaticaly transfered to the new Lord.
Now the Barons did not control as much land as you might think the job mainly fell to the Lords of the Mannor who were often knights and had fielty of arms (ley) directly or indirectly to a Baron who in turn had fielty of arms to the King who controled the vary numerous forests and through other fielty systems the major towns (boroughs) and cities.
In England a "surf" was a person who worked the land and had fielty of labour and tith (tax and rent) to a Lord of a Mannor and in return (untill the enclosures Act) had land and foraging / grazing rights on common land and rights not just to protection from the Lord but compensation (in efect alms) from the Mannor. Unlike a slave they could not be sold they "belonged to the Mannor or land" not the Lord. There were several tiers of surf from freemen to villain, cottager etc. A freeman had significant land rights and few if any duties to the Lord and responsability for their own live stock, a villain had lesser land rights and had more significant duties to the Lord although in practice this was only during harvest, they usually did not have non meat livestock this was provided by the mannor. A cottager got a cottage and between 1 and five acares of land formalised to 4 during the Elizabethen period when surfdom was ended. The labour and duties were usually for the common good of the mannor such as tending live stock and common areas and property. Yes the Lord got a share of the crops of the land (but usually considerably less than modern taxes) but had to provide poth protection and relief in the event of disaster to the surfs as well as maintain the mannor fences ditches, path ways and common resources such as common grazing land and woods ploughing oxen and the mill and other "social good" necessities such as the courts and those responsible for keeping the peace etc (including in some cases the brewing of beer etc). In most cases the harvest labour to the mannor was something that could be looked forward to as the lord provided food and other sustinance as well as rewards at harvest end (which remained with tenant farming well into the Victoriam era with Harvist Festivities and other high days).
A surf could become a "free" by evading his "lord" in the forest or in chartered towns and cities (or on other Lords property) for a set period of time (a year and a day). However the price was to lose all entitlement to land protection and relief. Which if you had a marketable skill or trade might make the risk worth while but otherwise not.
The Black Death caused a significant displacment of people trying to avoid it and the lose of a significant fraction of the population gave rise to a chronic shortage of labour and this gave rise to a lot of people becoming itinerant labours as the market for labour became significant. This caused a significant backlash and much repression.
However with the ending of surfdom in western europe came much economic prosperity which would eventually lead to industrialisation. However to the east of the Rhine it was a very different story and although surfdom started a lot later and was initialy fairly light it become more represive as the west of europe became more industrialised and much money was to be made from exporting grain from the east (it's one of the reasons why communism although thought up in Victorian England became a dominant force in Russia and Eastern Europe at the turn of the century and spread southwards through Italy and Spain prior to WWII).
]]>What we need is a new common law for these new feudal relationships, like the Magna Carta in England and the Roman law on the European continent. Unfortunately, nowadays we can't expect much from the states, not only because their knowledge is still far behind, but also because their laws regarding these issues are most often meant to preserve what is left of their own power.
But what we can do, is take all the principles and rules which the western civilization produced for protecting people against the powers of the past, and rewrite them in order to create a new rule of law for these feudal relationships of the future.
]]>I have iStuff, I have Androids, I have accounts on Gmail, Google+, Facebook, Twitter and a host of other feudal Lords' domains and I use them all the time (except Twitter -- that's just stupid, and Micro$ith -- one has to draw the line somewhere); but all my serious work lives in a number of cheap Linux boxes that back each other up and eschew the Cloud.
Live in the mansion, why not? But always keep an escape route to the little off-grid house in the country. I don't mind telling you this because I'm not doing anything the Lords could legally object to, other than maintaining my independence.
I believe this is the flaw in your analogy: Lords had ultimate sway over serfs because the latter needed land to grow food or starve, and land has always been precious. The equivalent commodity in computers is hardware (cheap; you already have it, or you wouldn't be reading this) or software, of which a lot is free. You just have to learn how to use it. If you are enslaved by your own laziness, you deserve to be a serf!
]]>If this process continues, we'll find the "free service, in exchange for your data" model to diminish. Soon the data will be less valuable as we craft it to be only what we want employers to see.
]]>Of course, not many individuals and small companies do that. The reason is that they believe that the costs to acquire the needed expertise are higher than the costs they associate with outsourcing their data. Which is fine, as long as they don't enforce their views on others who choose to live outside the feudal system.
]]>Want to have security patches for all these useless apps your service provider loaded the phone with (NASCAR? Facebook?)? Well then agree to our shiny new Terms of Service that you really don't want to read for your own peace of mind
]]>But at this point I need a more up-to-date phone for various reasons. So far (a day or two) I've managed to work with it without tying it to a Google account, but it does mean there are a lot of things I can't do. I resent this situation enormously.
wg
]]>Example one. Not being compliant enough and having a TSA agent literally screaming in my face. I wasn't moving fast enough. Sorry I'm disabled, takes a second and yelling rapid fire in my face isn't likely to help. I thought he was going to blow a gasket and drop dead right there.
Example two. Buy a lighter at Target and they will scan your drivers license or want to . "We just want to make sure you are over 18" Really, the grey bald head didn't clue you in? Well, you know that is going into a database to be sold for advertisements....
shaking head.
]]>I am going with the 'spread-it-around' strategy, having email now with all 3 of the big boys, and devices with all 3 now. We shall see who provides the best security and privacy, at least for my limited needs.
@Johns ... thanks much for the reference to 'jus primae noctis', which I did not remember, but I certainly remembered and immediately thought of this horrible degradation when I read the line 'that lord would protect them from harm.'
@MingoV ... spot on: 'I'm from the guvmint, and I'm here to hep you ...' I have seen so much bait and switch, where the title of the legislation leads one to a particular perception, when in truth the legislation sneakily does pretty much the opposite. And, of course, that famous line from the Speaker: 'You have to pass it to find out what's in it.'
@kashmarek ... and your own DNA, fluids, and tissues do not belong to you, either, as you might demand royalties from the blockbuster treatment they find after studying your corporeal essence, this coming quietly from the wake of the HeLa tissue line litigation, where the descendants of Henrietta Lacks DID receive some compensation. And the response from many quarters of government and private research? 'Oh, no ... we can't have this happening all over the place ...'
Excellent thread, Bruce ... brought me out of the lurkwood ... (g)
van
As Terry Pratchet comments
"peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly."
]]>@Criminal Minds Cast "Surely, the only power that companies have over us is what we give them? They're not governments."
Governments only have the power we give them too, unless they also abuse the guns we foolishly gave them. However, back on topic...
The problem is that there is no competition, no alternative that isn't just another feudal lord, that isn't deemed illegal. Often the product in question is the only one of interest on the market to start with.
For example, take video gaming & Steam - it's reached a point where if you want to play some games (which are by definition unique entities), you must be beholden to the feudal lord or you can't play it at all. Same with books; if the author publishes on Amazon only, you're out of luck for legal alternatives.
It's all very well to say 'well this stuff is being touted as free, but clearly it isn't' but there aren't many services out there that say 'you know what? we'll be nice and not sell your data in return for a monthly fee'.
]]>Found the following on SlashDot.org:
-----------------------------------------------------------
Who Owns Your Health Data?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/12/03/...
--------------------------------------------------------------
I believe the owner of the data should ALWAYS BE the one who generates the data, permanently. Everybody else needs permission or should pay for the data.
The above is indicative of the classic end run around health care laws. Organizations want to collect data about your health without being subject to the restrictions of the law, and then use that data to market health care products/services to you, including setting your health insurance coverage rates, denying coverage, constraining your job opportunities, perhaps restricting your use of certain transportation capabilities (too unhealthy to fly for example), and maybe even what foods you can buy/eat or what entertainment/vacation venues you might choose.
Examples include an auto company attempt at using your captive time in a car seat to collect data from your body, as well as data logging sleep monitors, pedometers, and general purpose blood pressure reading devices (if not already being done with insulin sampling devices). Othere data collection already exists for your computers, thermostats, and household appliances, with TV viewing being a prime target. Your phone and spending data is already anchored in concrete.
@Otto: "If you want to take your data to a more favorable service, you can do that too."
No, I tried, you cannot do that at full extent. You can only get what you explicitely posted/published.
I even just tried with Torrey's links, they won't work:
@Torrey Hoffman: "Have you not seen https://www.google.com/takeout and http://www.dataliberation.org/?
These links say that Google does not have any browsing history. I have opted out of customization of search results and ads based on my browsing history (http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54057) but I believe that they still keep my history for government access.
Google say that I do not have any youtube history. I have seen a lot of videos though on youtube. Maybe google means that I did not post any video, but it is not what I mean by "taking my data".
]]>Beyond that, I find your serf metaphor lacking in many ways. Serfs were not allowed any weapons, or any possibility of upward mobility. They also couldn't leave their lord's property, and were helpless against anything the lord wanted (this last sounds too much like modern government, but not at all like anything private companies do except to their employees).
]]>"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance." - John Philpot Curran, 1790
I'd hope, if it's abused far enough, people will still have the capacity to back out in the future. That's the only real card I see in their hand.
]]>When will we see the laws protecting the serfs agains abuse by the lords
I quote from the preface to the laws of the sixth king of Babylon, also known as the Hammurabi Code, dated 1772 BC:
... then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind...
Trusting a cloud provider with your data is pretty much like trusting a bank or other financial institution with your money. It may take out the complexity of handling things yourself, but we've all seen what lack of regulation and accountability can lead to in that particular sector.
]]>I will digress a bit and explain: sometime back someone contacted all my customers with "hacker" information I had on my website. I started a custom 'blog before there were blogs - daily updates, all hacked together with php includes from files for different categories, lots of custom stuff. Content was typical geekish stuff like hacking my DirectTivo, or anything I owned that I could get into and dink with. I linked to ESR's definition of hacker, etc. to clarify what I'd meant by hacker. Problem was I also merged posts of my customers signs on my blog ("Working at such and such today"). Actually, should not have been a problem at all - they were always outside public signs, nothing ever inside or NDA-violating (typically stuff like, "Ripping out a room-sized PBX and replacing with a rack of equipment" or "connecting multi-homed BGP routers" or "turning up city-wide WAN" or whatever).
But then in 2-3 days I was contacted by dozens and dozens of upset folks, called into my the office to meet with my boss, asked to remove all customer content, etc. While I was able to talk to all but one customer (and all the end-technical resources I worked for totally got it), the problem was the external contacts who had escalated things to high executive-levels caused such a ruckus with some places (such as where I worked in a sat. office, but the main office was in NYC and I didn't have any contacts there, lots of public and government agencies, etc.). Basically a week was spent doing little work and mostly a lot of damage control.
Anyway, from that time forward, I pulled all my content, and stopped putting any real content online. Sure, I post pics, and vague info ("got a Christmas tree today"), but nothing at all very interesting. I used to post very detailed technical information on obscure bugs or deployment issues, etc., and generated a large amount of folks who accessed my site (often as I found clever work-arounds or fixes, or my site had better public info then the vendors' were releasing).
Point I'm really trying to make is you really want to limit what you put online, and limit photos of yourself and your full name or anything tying it back to you and keep a line such that you have very public info completely isolated from private info (name, identifying photos), because otherwise, at some point, you will make someone mad, and they'll use everything they can to cause you grief.
I still don't know how they found out, as I'd limited things I'd say online, but ever had anonymous calls to potential land lords telling them ackward half-truths about you? I still don't know to this day if one person or a number of people suddenly got really mad at me, but it was... hah, ackward.
To this day, I still run all my own personal services (dns, email, private web, private vpn/storage). I use third-party services just to minimally interact with family.
]]>This was an incredible surprise from someone who frequently criticizes governments. Asking the federal government and the UN to help regulate corporate internet use is like asking a mugger to help you carry shopping bags. You may like the assistance at first, but soon you've lost your bags, your wallet, and your cell phone.
]]>Of course, this lord has to be popular to be useful.
]]>