10 Years on After 'Data and Goliath' Warned of Data Collection
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
It has been nearly a decade since famed cryptographer and privacy expert Bruce Schneier released the book Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World - an examination of how government agencies and tech giants exploit personal data. Today, his predictions feel eerily accurate.
At stake, he argued then, was a possibly irreversible loss of privacy, and the archiving of everything. As he wrote, science fiction author Charlie Stross described the situation as the "end of prehistory," in that every facet of our lives would be on a computer somewhere and available to anyone who knew how to find them.
Since the book was published, we've seen data harvesting continue, particularly for training AI models. The battle to keep even the most basic facts about us private seems all but lost.
We sat down with Bruce Schneier for an update on his work, and what we can expect in the future.
The Register: Data and Goliath came out nearly two years after Snowden's leaks and just months before Congress finally made a few moves on the surveillance issue with the USA Freedom Act. Ten years on, how do you feel things have changed, if at all?
At the same time, the information environment has gotten worse. More of our data is in the cloud, where companies have easier access to it. We have more Internet-of-Things devices around ourselves, which keep us under constant surveillance. And every one of us carries an incredibly sophisticated surveillance device around with us wherever we go: our smartphones. Everywhere you turn, privacy is losing.
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The Register: If the mass privatization of the government that's looking likely happens, what are the implications of all that data being leased out to the private sector?
And by security, I mean two things. Obviously, there's the possibility that the data will be stolen and used by foreign governments and corporations. And there is the high probability that it will end up in the hands of data brokers, and then bought and sold and combined with other data.
Surveillance in the US is largely a corporate business; this will just make it worse.
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