Video Interview with Me
This interview was conducted last month, at an artificial intelligence conference at Oxford.
Comments
Clive Robinson • January 25, 2013 4:27 PM
@ jdgault,
I’m disappointed that you find information in the hands of profit-making companies scarier than in the hands of nanny statist bureaucrats
Bruce and others have indirectly mentioned this befor.
A company is not subject to FOI requests or even legislation requiring disclosure in your jurisdiction. They simply “off shore it” in a way where they can do what they wish with the data in any way they want. In this respect they are well above the Government, which has to respond (sort of) to all FOI requests or requestss from their own judiciary.
This “off shore it” tactic is so effective it is one of the major reasons the US and other Governments are “out sourcing” many surveillance activities to private companies. Even if the Gov does get to see all the data from such companies as it’s commercial information it’s exempt from FOI requests and I suspect most if not all requests from the judiciary.
Vles • January 27, 2013 2:19 PM
[Theres a difference of what’s public and what’s private]
…
In the past you got privacy by default. In the past you had to be wealthy to live your life in public. You had to be famous. You had to be a movie star or a model. You had to be someone the world cared about. Right and privacy was easy. Publicity was hard. Now it’s being reversed. Now being public is easier, being private is hard, but that doesn’t mean people at all generations of all ages don’t take those pains to live their life in private, to live partial life in private when it matters to them. So people do value privacy enormously. I think the way forward is for law to step in. I mean there’s lot of ways to control the way society works. One of them is laws of physics. One of them is laws of the market. The other one is laws of government and then social norms…but whats working on the internet is everything but laws of government. The governments law is abdicated on the internet. I think that’s a mistake. We do need goverment intervention to enshrine some of these basic social values that we believe are good and valuable but that the market doesn’t value. That for-profit cooperations arent giving people the option to get.
Right that every company that offers you email that equally mine your data then we have a market failure and the way market failures are solved is through government.
I hope Neelie Kroes knows about you, had lunch with you and has you on speeddial.
I would love to know what Ideas are being shared at the upper echelons…
SOPA and PIPA aside, the general consensus on the net and amongst the netizens is that any government interference on the internet is bad and evil. That interference will destroy everything the internet stands for. By implication, that means they must be happy choosing their feudal lords and go through digital life as simpletons/serfs. Compare that to history and it’s like we are sort of regressing back to the Middle Ages. Hackers have become the new champions/knights (RIP AS) – be they fighting for good or evil…
I think the gesture from Facebook to give some of their power in the form of the new graph search tool back to their user base a powerful democratic one. Is this enough to justify the new social contract?
Is it possible to spent time on the internet without any government interference at all?We’re pretty busy re-writing these social contracts for the digital age. Rousseau would have loved it. The idea that a third party (government) is necessary to check the balance of power between company and user seems logical and rooted in the reality of the present. But how will you convince everyone Bruce? And which great thinkers and do-ers are with you? And how will it work without slowing it down with bureaucracy, red tape, kill switches etc etc. (will it require IPv12?)
Vles • January 27, 2013 2:25 PM
Sorry for the double post. I much prefer them being seen as cowboys rather than knights. Hah!Whistle :o).
Winter • January 28, 2013 4:19 AM
“SOPA and PIPA aside, the general consensus on the net and amongst the netizens is that any government interference on the internet is bad and evil. ”
My government is has some responsibilities to me. So if my government invades my privacy in nefarious ways, I have some recourse. Your government has no responsibilities to me and I have no recourse if your government abuses my data.
Most netizens will have problems with governments other than their own messing with their internet.
USA and Iranian netizens (among others) might even have problems with their own government interfering in their on-line life, but that is only a small part of their problems.
Companies are renowned to monetize your private data intentionally or not (breeches). And they have many ways of keeping out of reach for recourse.
Vles • January 28, 2013 6:13 AM
“So if my government invades my privacy in nefarious ways, I have some recourse.”
How will you be able to detect your government intercepting your calls, emails, messages?
Winter • January 28, 2013 6:30 AM
“How will you be able to detect your government intercepting your calls, emails, messages?”
They do that. Most likely, yours does too.
But if they abuse the information, there is recourse. If not legal, then there is “public opinion”.
Vles • January 28, 2013 7:39 AM
Ah nevermind. Everything I say is false. And that’s the truth. 😛
Glenn • February 10, 2013 8:17 PM
Amused that as I was thinking “this guy’s an idiot” (“the best way forward is not to care”), your face says “what the fuck?”.
Sometimes I wish YouTube had a button to let me watch interviews without having to listen to the interviewers.
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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
jdgalt • January 25, 2013 3:33 PM
Not a lot new here, but I’m disappointed that you find information in the hands of profit-making companies scarier than in the hands of nanny-statist bureaucrats. Ultimately, trust must be based on one’s own ability to hold the trusted person or group accountable if they betray us — and even the biggest companies are more answerable than government. Compare the results of complaints made about Google’s behavior and TSA’s in the last 20 years.