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The last time Congress managed to pass a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988: The Video Privacy Protection Act. That’s a law that bans video-store clerks from telling newspapers what VHS cassettes you take home. In other words, it regulates three things that have effectively ceased to exist.
Corey Doctorow always hits so hard
And even though it’s being labeled as a “consumer privacy law” it was actually spurred by a politician getting upset that people might find out what he was renting. It was a self-serving law that had the side effect of also helping consumers.
Wasn’t it because a couple of anti-porn politicians were outed as having renting porn tapes (yet another thing that doesn’t really exist anymore)
I’m waiting until someone invents antidisenshittificationism
I think you just did. Good job, you get a cookie 🍪
Is this a third party cookie?
The telephone jumped the shark a few years ago. Now no one expects using the phone for legit business. Now it’s email.
Great read. Great summation of the last 30+ years.
Longer than I wanted to keep reading, not dissatisfied that I kept reading.
Thanks for your comment, it encouraged me to actually read the article and I completely agree. Long but worth the read
Five giant websites featuring screenshots of the other four.
Holy shit.
And violating [an app’s] terms of service puts you in jeopardy under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which is the law that Ronald Reagan signed in a panic after watching Wargames (seriously!).
I watched it two days ago, that’s tragicomic.
I know, right? Like how the hell do you get worried from such a silly movie… Unless he knew the us military defense systems were in fact that weak, against people and their telephones.
Nah, Reagan was just a wuss.
Of all the things that happen in the movie, the thought that someone will have hooked a top-secret defense computer up to a modem is the one that is the absolute most believable.
Like, it’s entirely going to have happened at some point.
for several years, the process for getting security clearance involved no background check, just knowing who to ask. they literally rubber stamped it.
getting a fed job or something still did, but just security clearance, on its own, for anyone? just ask. not even nicely.
The story goes that, after watching the film, Reagan asked the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff ”Could something like this really happen? Could someone break into our most sensitive computers?”, and, after looking into it for a week, the general came back with the reply “Mr. president, the problem is much worse than you think.”, which prompted Reagan into setting off a series of interagency memos and studies that led to the signing of classified national security decision directive NSDD-145, “National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security.”.
So… yeah, things probably actually were that bad, or even worse (except for the AI bit, of course).
Has there ever, once, been an infosec issue that doesn’t result in an investigation and someone then going ‘oh my god, this is worse than anyone could have imagined’?
Teaching rocks to do math was a terrible, terrible idea.
If it wasn’t an infosec issue (because no math rocks), it would be an opsec or comsec issue. We’re the weak link unfortunately.
The nuclear codes for decades was 00000000. That’s all you needed to launch nukes.
Our cyber security was atrocious
Let me save you the time and summarize the blog post - internet got worse, big tech is bad and the author is just ranting how bad it is nowadays. Nothing new, no idea how to fix it, just complaining about the modern world.
I’m not saying the author is wrong. It’s just I heard this many times before.
You didn’t read it. Also why is it when someone takes time to address an issue like this, there is guarantee a post like this to dismiss it in favor of basically doing fuck all. Like the implication here is that you’re trying to diminish the effort for what? What’s the reason when you didn’t even read it.
The entire second half of the column is literally how to fix it.
I think we have read a different blog post. There was something about Google’s antitrust thingy and that all big tech should be regulated but no straight solution were given.
Again, I agree withe the thesis but honestly, anyone who’s focused on privacy would tell you the same but in way fewer words.
BTW, similar issue was raised in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Pretty good read.
anyone who’s focused on privacy would tell you the same but in way fewer words.
Corey Doctorow literally wrote the books on privacy. He coined the term Enshitification. He’s even been portrayed as a guest character in a couple of XKCD comics. Generally he’s someone to listen to on anything security, privacy or tech policy related
No, fart_pickle knows all.
You think Cory Doctorow isn’t focused on privacy?
There was 2,177 words in the “how to fix” portion of the blog post, you dumbass.
The article proposes restoring competition, regulation, interoperability and tech worker power as response; in case anyone was wondering.
And the solution for world hunger is to distribute food from rich countries into the poor countries. Here, I’ve fixed the famine issue. Do you get my point? It’s easy to say what to do but when it comes to the details, all those preachers fail short in giving the real solution to the real problem. As I said before, this is just a rant about how bad modern world is.
These are problems that require legislative action to fix, which is why he is encouraging the nerds and hackers who will be most affected by tech policy and understand the tech the most to start meeting with their legislators to discuss tech policy as it comes up for votes
The author of this post, Cory Doctorow, literally coined the term “enshittification” in a prior blog post. I think he of all people is allowed to continue talking about the topic as much as he wants.
