Defcon 18 Changing threats to privacy Moxie Marlinspike Part
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited repeatedly to rebut 'just don't use Facebook' arguments and to explain why tracking becomes hard to escape at critical mass.
What it is
Moxie Marlinspike's DEF CON 18 talk on changing threats to privacy argues that surveillance arrived through convenient services and network effects, so opting out is not a real solution. It also includes his framing of getting social democracy rather than the fascism people feared.
Recommended by 6 HN commenters across 10 different months, 2012 to 2019.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec losvedir · 2012-12 · on “Steps to Anonymous and Secured Communication”
> Or, maybe, IM with OTR without logging, but that . . . might also fall prey to crazy counterparty either not disabling logging or intentionally recording and blackmailing. I thought this was one of the benefits of OTR over, say, PGP. That is, with PGP if you sign a message the counterparty can wave it around and say "look at what this poerson said", while with OTR, since the encryption is done with a shared key, it could be just as likely that the counterparty made it up. At least, that's what I gleaned from this wonderful video[1] someone linked to on HN yesterday. [1] [this video]
Strong rec yourcelf · 2013-08 · on “The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership”
Moxie Marlinspike gave a fantastic talk on this subject in 2010, even down to the government mandated tracking device vs mobile phone: [this video]
Strong rec CodeMage · 2013-11 · on “Surveillance as a Business Model”
I would highly encourage anyone who thinks that the solution is as simple as "don't use XYZ" to see what Moxie Marlinspike had to say about "Changing threats to privacy" at Defcon 18: [this video]
Strong rec CodeMage · 2019-06 · on “Open Up vs. Break Up”
> I think part of the difference in HN opinion color is somewhat related to transparency. It's not that I disagree with you on the topic of transparency, it's that I think we can't really compare opinions on two very different topics as if they were the same topic. People complaining about too many subscription content providers are not really arguing for or against a monopoly. It's not the same discussion. > And I'd say Google and Facebook haven't done a sufficient job in proactively informing the public about what they collect, how they generate revenue from it, and what's currently stored about a user. Granted, but I'm pretty sure that even if they did so, it wouldn't make much difference
Recommends jiggy2011 · 2012-11 · on “I Don't Want To Be Part of Your Ecosystem”
Lots of people don't care about voting in elections, giving to charity, partaking in public demonstrations or looking after their health either. The problem is not so much whether people mind if their location is tracked or whether they have control over their hardware etc. It's more that once these things reach a critical mass it is very difficult to start to go back if we don't like where we are or indeed for an individual to make a choice to live outside of this stuff. It is articulated quite well here: [this video] At around 09:00
Recommends lucb1e · 2013-12 · on “Facebook's AI lab”
Define: freely I think Moxie Marlinespike's talk at Defcon 18 (2010) was a really good one: [this video] He talks about how we do not really have a free choice when it comes to things like having a Facebook account or having a mobile phone. Namely due to the network effect, you don't really have a choice if you want to be a normal member of society.
Recommends CodeMage · 2016-08 · on ““How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?””
There's a reason most people don't like hearing that: it's not a solution. I could try to explain, but Moxie Marlinspike did it a lot better: [this video]
Recommends sygma · 2016-09 · on “Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany”
> Using the messaging service is a voluntary decision Yes, it is voluntary, but it would be socially alienating not to be on that service. Here's a relevant talk [0] by Moxie Marlinspike talking about that. [0]: [this video]