We’re Losing All Our Privacy
And few seem to care. Gary North on the case of Windows 10.
August 22, 2016
Surrendering Our Privacy
By Gary North
GaryNorth.com
We are losing our privacy forever. Most people just don't care.
We can see this with the free upgrade to Windows 10. It went on for a year. It was difficult not to accept the upgrade. You had to take steps to avoid it or the promotion. I sent out instructions on how to avoid the automatic installation.
Windows 10 sucks our data into its database. The Windows 10 agreement is clear:
Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to:
1: comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies;
2: protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of the services, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone;
3: operate and maintain the security of our services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or
4: protect the rights or property of Microsoft, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services - however, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property of Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer's private content ourselves, but we may refer the matter to law enforcement.
No one cares. How do I know? Because this information has been public for a year. It first hit the Web in late July 2015.
I did a Google search for this (quotation marks create an exact search):
"Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications"
I got a lot of hits.
I am reminded of Paul's words to King Agrippa: "For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this thing was not done in a corner" (Acts 26:26).
The public does not care.
You can (and should) install Windows 10 with the privacy shields on high. There are lots of articles on this. They have been available for a year. This one is good: click here.
This is from the Electronic Freedom Foundation.
The trouble with Windows 10 doesn't end with forcing users to download the operating system. By default, Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of usage data back to Microsoft, and the company claims most of it is to "personalize" the software by feeding it to the OS assistant called Cortana. Here's a non-exhaustive list of data sent back: location data, text input, voice input, touch input, webpages you visit, and telemetry data regarding your general usage of your computer, including which programs you run and for how long.
While we understand that many users find features like Cortana useful, and that such features would be difficult (though not necessarily impossible) to implement in a way that doesn't send data back to the cloud, the fact remains that many users would much prefer to opt out of these features in exchange for maintaining their privacy.
And while users can opt-out of some of these settings, it is not a guarantee that your computer will stop talking to Microsoft's servers. A significant issue is the telemetry data the company receives. While Microsoft insists that it aggregates and anonymizes this data, it hasn't explained just how it does so. Microsoft also won't say how long this data is retained, instead providing only general timeframes. Worse yet, unless you're an enterprise user, no matter what, you have to share at least some of this telemetry data with Microsoft and there's no way to opt-out of it.
Microsoft has tried to explain this lack of choice by saying that Windows Update won't function properly on copies of the operating system with telemetry reporting turned to its lowest level. In other words, Microsoft is claiming that giving ordinary users more privacy by letting them turn telemetry reporting down to its lowest level would risk their security since they would no longer get security updates1. (Notably, this is not something many articles about Windows 10 have touched on.)
But this is a false choice that is entirely of Microsoft's own creation. There's no good reason why the types of data Microsoft collects at each telemetry level couldn't be adjusted so that even at the lowest level of telemetry collection, users could still benefit from Windows Update and secure their machines from vulnerabilities, without having to send back things like app usage data or unique IDs like an IMEI number.
Here is my point. The public does not care. It does not care that the NSA collects their data. It does not care if Google does or Microsoft does. The public is content with Windows 10. It has about 15% of the market for all operating systems, and 30% for the installed base of Microsoft users. The free upgrade program ended in July. From this point on, gains will be marginal.
There was no hue and cry from those who consented to the upgrade. My guess is less than 20% of those who consented used the custom install feature to block Microsoft's snooping. Maybe it was under under 4%.
Microsoft will make its money on the 96% who did not take steps to block the data snooping. The protesters are economically irrelevant.
Microsoft is not alone.
What this means is obvious: people have surrendered to the data collectors.
Microsoft is the only American firm with a AAA bond rating. It sold $19.75 billion of its bonds on August 2. This testifies to the success of their marketing. For better or worse, Microsoft understands its users.
LAW LAW OF DEMAND
The collection of data will accelerate as the cost of collecting it falls. Our world is becoming digitized, and the price of digits falls steadily. This is not going to stop. Here is the fundamental law of economics: "As the price falls, more is demanded." This is the law of demand.
The extent to which we will be tracked goes way beyond Orwell's dystopia in Nineteen Eighty Four. Big Brother is watching. So are dozens of little brothers.
I used to watch The Fugitive in the mid-1960's. Millions of Americans did. I recall this above all: he always took a different route to work every day. But in a world where facial-recognition software is cheap and getting cheaper, and cameras are on every street corner, it will do far less good to select a new route every day. The United Kingdom is the wave of the future. There is a Wikipedia article on mass surveillance in the UK.
People really do not care.
There was a time when people in the West said they believed in the sovereignty of God. But that faith is waning. Now they are taught in public schools to believe in the sovereignty of man. But the sovereignty of God included the doctrine of the omniscience of God and the omnipresence of God. These backed up His omnipotence. These were said to be unique to God: incommunicable attributes. But when a new god arrives, he will claim all three. Maybe not all at once, but eventually.
The god of the state is competing against the god of the market for allegiance. Both claim omniscience or something approaching omniscience. The state claims power; the market claims profitability. Both are working hard to reduce privacy. Individual privacy is the alternative to corporate omniscience. Today, it's a race to see whether the state will win the data collection race or the market will.
As for privacy, it's a losing proposition.
Our hope is in this: the uses to which the databases will be put. Will the information centralize power or decentralize it? I think the forces of decentralization are more powerful. To use the concepts offered by Ludwig von Mises in his little book, Bureaucracy (1944), the profit management system will overcome the bureaucratic management system. The quest for profit will overwhelm the quest for power.
Meanwhile, the price of defending our privacy keeps rising. The law of demand tells us what will happen: "When the price rises, less is demanded."
The data gatherers have correctly concluded that the percentage of users who will opt out of their automated data-collection processes is so low that the overall effect will be minimal. They have factored this into their profit calculations. The NSA is not worried about budget cuts to its secret budget. Microsoft is not worried about those who will customize their installation settings.
CONCLUSIONS
I suppose the public can be persuaded to care. But we must add the economist's qualification: "at some price." Who will pay this price of educating the public? No one.
As individuals, we can reduce the risk of privacy loss, just as the fugitive took a different route every day. But our peers are not concerned. The algorithms will not tell the data gatherers which route you will take every day, but they will know what the patterns are.
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Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months
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