Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • May 21, 2025 11:46 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

When I get accosted by “survey takers” be they electronic or human I know one thing,

“They will not pay what my time or knowledge / insight is worth.”

And as they know this before they even approach me, Their obvious intent is at best to rip me off or in some other way rob me.

I’m reasonably certain that others feel that way not just me.

So the suggestion of,

“3. Pay people more.”

Is going to be at best ineffective.

It’s even more interesting when you deal with “focus groups” or what I call “Bogus groups” because the members are selected by their likely hood of being “yes-men”.

To see why you have to realise that the whole purpose of such groups is to say that what somebody already wants to do is a good idea… Not tell them the truth in plain unvarnished words they should be able to understand.

The organisers of such groups know that their income long term is based on their ability to get not “honest answers” or “correct answers” but “What we want to hear answers” of the people paying for the group to be set up…

I’ve had the misfortune to be the equivalent of “head hunted” by people wanting to get my thoughts on the cheap, it’s why I don’t give out information I can be traced by, nor do I respond to attempts by people to “get friendly” or equivalent beyond the boundaries I set.

I think one of the funniest ways I’ve ever seen to avoid being hunted is the “Eric Cantona” response.

For reasons that are not really relevant he got mobbed by a very large pack of journalists, doing what they can do, which if you’ve ever been on the receiving end can be quite scary.

They were asking some very stupid questions so Eric gave what is considered one of the most enigmatic answers,

“When the seagulls follow the trawler”

And left them completely baffled (though if you’ve ever seen the seagulls descend as the nets get hauled in… you know exactly what he ment).

It was not long after that, that he retired from football for the second time, arguably when he was just coming into his best performance. It left people not just surprised but shocked. He eventually pointed out that,

“When you quit football it is not easy, your life becomes difficult. I should know because sometimes I feel I quit too young. I loved the game but I no longer had the passion to go to bed early, not to go out with my friends, not to drink, and not to do a lot of other things, the things I like in life.”

So yeh the point is,

“Do you need that nonsense?”

And my view is not just “What’s in it for me?” But more importantly “Are there better things I could be doing?”

And that’s when you realise there is not enough money to answer those questions in the way they want.

So rather than be a “trawler” be a “sail boat gracefully heading for distant horizons via golden sunsets”.

Clive Robinson • May 21, 2025 11:11 PM

@ Bruce, ALL,

With regards number four on the list of “Rethink the whole model.”

What is suggested is,

“We can also learn from digital traces, behavioral data, or administrative records. Think of it as moving from a single snapshot to a fuller, blended picture. “

This is also a “full fit” description of both,

1, Oppressive surveillance.
2, Full invasion of Privacy.

The statement of,

“Yes, it’s messier—but it’s also more real.”

Leaves out,

“It gives nobody choice, it’s more invasive, and psychologically damaging of society due to the ‘chilling effect’.”

Which means it’s very far from being “more real”. Because people when they are observed or think they are observed change their behaviours. It was the basis for Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon Prison” to force behavioural modification.

But also consider how you behave is not really dictated by “free will” but by

1, Your available Resources.
2, Mores of current society.

It’s actually why Guard Labour organisations tend towards “barracks” for “Ordinary Ratings”(ORs) and individual rooms for “Junior Officers” with “Senior Officers” given the equivalent of a private area and a social area and a servant.

We see this reflected in business / corporate “offices” with “open office/floor” for the lowest level worker drones, rising through cubical space to individual offices for more senior workers or lower management. With more senior management having a private office, with attached meeting room and an office for a personal assistant / gatekeeper.

Due to “lockdown” we know that “return to office” is not about productivity as it causes it to drop. Nor is it about efficiency or cost reduction, it’s all about “personal power” in a “hierarchy”. Along with forcing a “culture” onto individuals for the sake of conformity and depersonalisation. Such that workers are not seen as people but “Units of work resource”.

So,

“Digital traces, behavioural data, or administrative records”

All they tell us about the past, and the inflicted power structures, not about what the future can bring, or what people want.

None of us would have any of the benefits of modern life if we had observed the behaviour of slaves or worse serfs and assumed that is how people wanted to live. We make the same mistake with modern “consumerism”, “office work”, and “religion”.

As I point out occasionally there are two lies we get told,

1, Divine Right / Might is right.
2, God made man in God’s likeness.

The truth is,

Firstly,

“Individual Rights v. Social Responsibility”

Is a scale and the more someone leans towards “Individual Rights” the more “self entitled”, and “authoritarian” they are and the more useless they actually are. Also they tend towards if not directly suffer from harmful mental traits.

Contrary to what they might think or espouse the “self entitled” are critically dependent on others for their survival. It is this that in effect requires them to be “authoritarian” and why they tend to “think with their fists or equivalent” thus push a “might is right” agenda.

Secondly,

To support “might is right” authoritarianism is the need for not taking any responsibility for your actions. Thus the “only following orders” excuse. But if you are at the head of the hierarchy who do you say you were taking orders from? You simply create an imaginary omnipresent deity that gives you “go forth” / “make it so” orders. Thus you can take credit for successes and blame the deity for the failings being part of a longer term plan mere mortals can not see…

The joke is of course,

“God made man in his likeness”

Is the wrong way around… It’s actually,

“Man made God in his likeness”

And in the process created a “patsy” for people to blame for their woes, troubles, and failings…

The fact people still fall for this tells you that they must have been indoctrinated at an age where they had not developed the necessary “mental defences” and in later life still do not want to take on either “Personal or Social” responsibility for their actions and behaviours.

So,

Do you want a world based on such failings as we can easily observe all around us?

For most of us the answer is probably not.

But by using,

“Digital traces, behavioural data, or administrative records”

It is what we are going to get.

It’s one of the major failings of current AI LLM and ML systems, their output is constrained by their input training data which is always a “past statistical norm” there is “no future” with LLMs because they are trained on an error function based on the “past” encoded in the input data.

This can only go one way, which is “retrograde” or “downward spiral” because each time around the loop you,

“Integrate for the lowest common denominator.”

A look around our natural world / environment tells us what will happen if we slavishly follow this path…