Frankly, you sound a little paranoid
October 14, 2015 3:54 AM Subscribe
If someone had told me even a few years ago that such a thing wasn’t pure coincidence, I would have had my doubts about that someone. Now, however, I reserve my doubts for the people who still trust. There are so many ghosts in our machines—their locations so hidden, their methods so ingenious, their motives so inscrutable—that not to feel haunted is not to be awake. That’s why paranoia, even in its extreme forms, no longer seems to me so much a disorder as a mode of cognition with an impressive track record of prescience. --Walter Kirn on modern paranoia in The Atlantic
Related: The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter in Harpers (1964)
Related: The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter in Harpers (1964)
I've had Ad block installed forever... I've forgotten what unfiltered web browsing is like. I used to be paranoid, but now I'm just blah about it all. I've realized that I'm just an old white guy, with nothing interesting to the powers that be.
posted by MikeWarot at 4:18 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by MikeWarot at 4:18 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
...That’s why paranoia, even in its extreme forms, no longer seems to me so much a disorder....
Then he's never met a person who was actually dealing with paranoia as a mental illness...
posted by HuronBob at 4:22 AM on October 14, 2015 [27 favorites]
Then he's never met a person who was actually dealing with paranoia as a mental illness...
posted by HuronBob at 4:22 AM on October 14, 2015 [27 favorites]
> I used to be paranoid, but now I'm just blah about it all. I've realized that I'm just an old white guy, with nothing interesting to the powers that be.
One thing to keep in mind when understanding how paranoia works in the 21st century is that the old distinctions between intentional personal-scale surveillance and simple analysis of statistical inevitabilities has broken down. Just because they're only analyzing you as a disconnected piece of data in a large database rather than as a discrete named individual doesn't mean that they don't think of you as something that's interesting to monitor and control
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:26 AM on October 14, 2015 [17 favorites]
One thing to keep in mind when understanding how paranoia works in the 21st century is that the old distinctions between intentional personal-scale surveillance and simple analysis of statistical inevitabilities has broken down. Just because they're only analyzing you as a disconnected piece of data in a large database rather than as a discrete named individual doesn't mean that they don't think of you as something that's interesting to monitor and control
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:26 AM on October 14, 2015 [17 favorites]
As Kissinger observed, even a paranoid can have enemies.
posted by three blind mice at 4:26 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by three blind mice at 4:26 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
The alternate title to this piece is I Don't Understand Cookies.
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:34 AM on October 14, 2015 [11 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:34 AM on October 14, 2015 [11 favorites]
So it would seem that the reason I'm not paranoid is not because they're not out to get me but because I'm using adblock as the equivalent of Joo Janta peril sensitive sunglasses. Kinda hoopy.
posted by walrus at 4:46 AM on October 14, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by walrus at 4:46 AM on October 14, 2015 [7 favorites]
I'm counting like one or two things he mentioned where running an ad blocker in your web browser would make any difference. If you type a query into a search engine or you have an app installed on your phone, all an ad blocker is going to do is prevent you from seeing targeted ads in your browser that have been selected based on the profile of you that's being built. It's not going to prevent the information about you from being collected in the first place.
And even if you have all images, frames, cookies, scripts, and css turned off, if you're directly loading the HTML of a web page you're not really doing much to obscure your browser-only non-form-submitting activities, you may just be forcing third parties to buy that information from the site you're hitting, or their web host, or their ISP or your ISP (or the NSA). Which isn't totally pointless but we shouldn't kid ourselves about the efficacy of ad blockers.
posted by XMLicious at 4:49 AM on October 14, 2015 [9 favorites]
And even if you have all images, frames, cookies, scripts, and css turned off, if you're directly loading the HTML of a web page you're not really doing much to obscure your browser-only non-form-submitting activities, you may just be forcing third parties to buy that information from the site you're hitting, or their web host, or their ISP or your ISP (or the NSA). Which isn't totally pointless but we shouldn't kid ourselves about the efficacy of ad blockers.
posted by XMLicious at 4:49 AM on October 14, 2015 [9 favorites]
An ad blocker is kind of like a towel you wrap around your head to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Trall (such a mind-bogging stupid animal; it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you). (Adapted from the late great Douglas Adams)
Adblocker blocks the content from reaching you, not the long arm of data from putting your obsession with cat videos on your permanent record.
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:59 AM on October 14, 2015 [15 favorites]
Adblocker blocks the content from reaching you, not the long arm of data from putting your obsession with cat videos on your permanent record.
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:59 AM on October 14, 2015 [15 favorites]
From @kennwhite on twitter a while back:
“I think my TV is spying on me.”posted by memebake at 5:01 AM on October 14, 2015 [19 favorites]
90’s: “You should talk to a psychiatrist.”
2013: “You should talk to my cousin Ernie, he's an IT whiz.”
Just because they're only analyzing you as a disconnected piece of data in a large database rather than as a discrete named individual doesn't mean that they don't think of you as something that's interesting to monitor and control.
So, Proverb #3 & 4, Still in effect!
posted by lazycomputerkids at 5:03 AM on October 14, 2015
So, Proverb #3 & 4, Still in effect!
posted by lazycomputerkids at 5:03 AM on October 14, 2015
Besides internet activity much of what the author mentions has nothing to do with being online. The other day the U.S. military started the RFI process (started soliciting bids essentially) in connection with the second generation of the Identity Dominance System, which has been used in Afghanistan in an attempt to "identify and track every single human being in the country and, in the process, make it impossible for the Taliban and other insurgents to live undetected among civilian populations". These days your fingerprints can be extracted from a photograph where your hands are visible or even just a photograph of something you've touched and gait detection can be used to identify you from video that shows you walking, even from quite a distance.
Technology from the first generation version of the IDS or related systems has probably been available to the general public (like retail stores and other places that have security cameras everywhere) for years already.
posted by XMLicious at 5:17 AM on October 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
Technology from the first generation version of the IDS or related systems has probably been available to the general public (like retail stores and other places that have security cameras everywhere) for years already.
posted by XMLicious at 5:17 AM on October 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
The weirdest thing that's been happening to be is that LinkedIn contacts (i.e. professional colleagues I keep at arms length) keep showing up in my Facebook feed. I believe what's happening is that THEY are syncing LinkedIn contacts to their phones' address book, and then the Facebook app on their phone is reading their contacts and identifying people they may know based on phone numbers. But it's weird for a recruiter to contact me about a job on Monday, and for me to see her drinking cocktails on the beach in Mexico on Tuesday. For a while I thought there was something deeper and more complicated going on (Facebook and LinkedIn are sharing data?) -- it really is enough to make you paranoid.
posted by miyabo at 5:37 AM on October 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by miyabo at 5:37 AM on October 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
I've had that happen between gmail and LinkedIn, miyabo. People who I had group email exchanges via Fark ten years ago show up as a suggested contact in LinkedIn. I never did the "import contacts" feature nor have the same password between the two accounts.
posted by dr_dank at 6:43 AM on October 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by dr_dank at 6:43 AM on October 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
Another simple one to trace was the stream of invitations to drug and alcohol rehab centers that I’d been getting
This is exactly what made me start blocking ads nearly universally through of course it doesn't do that much to stop the profiling itself.
posted by atoxyl at 7:21 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
This is exactly what made me start blocking ads nearly universally through of course it doesn't do that much to stop the profiling itself.
posted by atoxyl at 7:21 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah, even if you try and keep your own life offline, you can't keep your friends/coworkers/acquantainces/etc from putting your information or photos or whatever online. I don't worry about this stuff much myself (and I have worked on all sides of the tech parts of content and ads online) because it just seems like a ton of work to try and keep things hidden and even then it will come out anyway. Its a little different for people who have a genuine need for more anonymity (those with stalkers, identities that the government or soceity would target them for, etc).
posted by thefoxgod at 7:42 AM on October 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by thefoxgod at 7:42 AM on October 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
New Facebook feature is a friendly reminder that your smartphone can eavesdrop on you
posted by bukvich at 7:59 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by bukvich at 7:59 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon: "> I used to be paranoid, but now I'm just blah about it all. I've realized that I'm just an old white guy, with nothing interesting to the powers that be.
One thing to keep in mind when understanding how paranoia works in the 21st century is that the old distinctions between intentional personal-scale surveillance and simple analysis of statistical inevitabilities has broken down. Just because they're only analyzing you as a disconnected piece of data in a large database rather than as a discrete named individual doesn't mean that they don't think of you as something that's interesting to monitor and control"
Or, as you put it in Gravity's Rainbow, “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”
posted by chavenet at 8:07 AM on October 14, 2015 [6 favorites]
One thing to keep in mind when understanding how paranoia works in the 21st century is that the old distinctions between intentional personal-scale surveillance and simple analysis of statistical inevitabilities has broken down. Just because they're only analyzing you as a disconnected piece of data in a large database rather than as a discrete named individual doesn't mean that they don't think of you as something that's interesting to monitor and control"
Or, as you put it in Gravity's Rainbow, “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”
posted by chavenet at 8:07 AM on October 14, 2015 [6 favorites]
A lot of the things he worries about, I'm pretty sure aren't possible. I am pretty sure the contents of your text messages aren't somehow transmitted to email spammers so that your email in the morning reflects your texts to your spouse the previous night. I'm pretty sure that fitness trackers don't eavesdrop on your conversations so that they can use them to generate random health tips ("eat more walnuts"). I flatter myself that I know a lot about the privacy invasions that actually exist and that these aren't among them.
On the other hand, a lot of what he is talking about is absolutely possible, and known to be the case -- the way that ad networks track and profile you from site to site. Information from sites that you visit on Tuesday showing up Wednesday in random ads on Facebook or on unrelated parts of the internet -- that absolutely happens. And even if you block cookies and trackers, it might happen anyway because you're using Verizon and it inserts its own user identifier by hacking your HTTP connections.
I guess the point is that around the privacy invasions that are known to be possible and active there is an unknown halo of invasions which we haven't heard about yet. And God only knows how big that halo is.
I mainly just concern myself with privacy invasions by commercial entities, ad tracking and profiling, because I feel like there is honestly nothing I can do about somebody who can just show up in a telecommunications data center and say "by the way, you're routing all your shit through our black box here now and you're never allowed to tell anyone that." Government invasions of privacy are like acts of God, there's nothing I can do on an individual level about that.
Also the effects of government spying are abstract and theoretical at this point, to me anyway as a fairly ordinary person. The effects of corporate adware spying are all around us: they're actually using that data all the time to try to sell to us, and to determine what kinds of things are available for us to buy (what offers are made to us). So not only is corporate spying easier to combat, there is more to be immediately gained by combating it.
posted by edheil at 8:47 AM on October 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
On the other hand, a lot of what he is talking about is absolutely possible, and known to be the case -- the way that ad networks track and profile you from site to site. Information from sites that you visit on Tuesday showing up Wednesday in random ads on Facebook or on unrelated parts of the internet -- that absolutely happens. And even if you block cookies and trackers, it might happen anyway because you're using Verizon and it inserts its own user identifier by hacking your HTTP connections.
I guess the point is that around the privacy invasions that are known to be possible and active there is an unknown halo of invasions which we haven't heard about yet. And God only knows how big that halo is.
I mainly just concern myself with privacy invasions by commercial entities, ad tracking and profiling, because I feel like there is honestly nothing I can do about somebody who can just show up in a telecommunications data center and say "by the way, you're routing all your shit through our black box here now and you're never allowed to tell anyone that." Government invasions of privacy are like acts of God, there's nothing I can do on an individual level about that.
Also the effects of government spying are abstract and theoretical at this point, to me anyway as a fairly ordinary person. The effects of corporate adware spying are all around us: they're actually using that data all the time to try to sell to us, and to determine what kinds of things are available for us to buy (what offers are made to us). So not only is corporate spying easier to combat, there is more to be immediately gained by combating it.
posted by edheil at 8:47 AM on October 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
Also the effects of government spying are abstract and theoretical at this point, to me anyway as a fairly ordinary person.
The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes
posted by bukvich at 8:56 AM on October 14, 2015
The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes
posted by bukvich at 8:56 AM on October 14, 2015
with nothing interesting to the powers that be.
This is kind of naive. The public record is filled with abuse of people who clearly, to rational informed observers, had nothing interesting to the powers that be. Yet the powers that be are often not competent in their assessments, and/or are often paranoid, often bark up the wrong tree (and have the tree torn down because it's best to be sure), often act from random human idiosyncrasies or ideological blinkers or bigotry, often are intentionally mislead by another actor, etc. Claiming to have nothing to hide is what criminals and subversives do. Having nothing of interest is a weak line of defense in a dragnet world.
posted by anonymisc at 9:36 AM on October 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
This is kind of naive. The public record is filled with abuse of people who clearly, to rational informed observers, had nothing interesting to the powers that be. Yet the powers that be are often not competent in their assessments, and/or are often paranoid, often bark up the wrong tree (and have the tree torn down because it's best to be sure), often act from random human idiosyncrasies or ideological blinkers or bigotry, often are intentionally mislead by another actor, etc. Claiming to have nothing to hide is what criminals and subversives do. Having nothing of interest is a weak line of defense in a dragnet world.
posted by anonymisc at 9:36 AM on October 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
Point taken, bukvich; instead of "fairly ordinary person" I should have said "fairly ordinary American not living abroad, especially not in the Middle East."
posted by edheil at 9:42 AM on October 14, 2015
posted by edheil at 9:42 AM on October 14, 2015
The other day I took a picture of my open purse, with a half exposed picture of my daughter from a decade ago. I put it up on facebook which immediately tagged her name as being with me.
I looked up a disease I had never heard of, the next morning Phizer was in my gmail, offering me a medicine for it.
In 2007 I bought a laptop and immediatly covered the camera. For the next three weeks, websites I never tried to access notified me there seemed to be a problem with my computer's camera. I have gotten to know the hum of the cessna that flies down the Wasatch picking up phones.
The government has my fingerprints, which means, anyone with sufficient juice can make duplicates. Suddenly I am a culprit. I wish I had more faith in inherent good,*snicker*, yeah.
posted by Oyéah at 12:58 PM on October 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
I looked up a disease I had never heard of, the next morning Phizer was in my gmail, offering me a medicine for it.
In 2007 I bought a laptop and immediatly covered the camera. For the next three weeks, websites I never tried to access notified me there seemed to be a problem with my computer's camera. I have gotten to know the hum of the cessna that flies down the Wasatch picking up phones.
The government has my fingerprints, which means, anyone with sufficient juice can make duplicates. Suddenly I am a culprit. I wish I had more faith in inherent good,*snicker*, yeah.
posted by Oyéah at 12:58 PM on October 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
Wait. My son, who is a bit paranoid about technology, mentioned getting emails based on web searches, just like Oyeah above. I told him he was being silly...but is it really a thing? How does Pfizer get your email from your web search?
posted by Biblio at 6:12 PM on October 14, 2015
posted by Biblio at 6:12 PM on October 14, 2015
from vice.com: Looking Up Symptoms Online? These Companies Are Tracking You
....
The most disconcerting possibilities lie not with Google or Facebook, which both vacuum up data from all over the web and store it on their servers, but with the practices of data brokers like Experian, whose products Libert found present in roughly 5 percent of the pages sampled—typically, in for-profit sites like WebMD, About.com, and MedicineNet.com. Experian is a credit bureau that has ballooned into a “global information services group.” It was the subject of a scathing Senate investigation led by Jay Rockefeller in 2013, and concerns itself with collecting as much data about individuals as possible, then packaging and selling it. And yes, that includes private health data.
...
“Experian is a data broker well known for selling credit scores—which include information on bankruptcies," Libert said. "Academic research by Senator Elizabeth Warren has shown that over 60 percent of bankruptcies are medical-related.
...
“There’s this advertising demographic of you, and now you’re getting healthcare data in there, too. How much are we going to charge you for healthcare, if you’ve been searching for ‘cancer’ and a bunch of illnesses? Health care services could raise your rates.”
“Another nightmare scenario is applying for jobs,” Quintin continued. “A company might get a demographic profile from one of these data brokers and use that information to decide whether or not to hire you.”
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:55 PM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
....
The most disconcerting possibilities lie not with Google or Facebook, which both vacuum up data from all over the web and store it on their servers, but with the practices of data brokers like Experian, whose products Libert found present in roughly 5 percent of the pages sampled—typically, in for-profit sites like WebMD, About.com, and MedicineNet.com. Experian is a credit bureau that has ballooned into a “global information services group.” It was the subject of a scathing Senate investigation led by Jay Rockefeller in 2013, and concerns itself with collecting as much data about individuals as possible, then packaging and selling it. And yes, that includes private health data.
...
“Experian is a data broker well known for selling credit scores—which include information on bankruptcies," Libert said. "Academic research by Senator Elizabeth Warren has shown that over 60 percent of bankruptcies are medical-related.
...
“There’s this advertising demographic of you, and now you’re getting healthcare data in there, too. How much are we going to charge you for healthcare, if you’ve been searching for ‘cancer’ and a bunch of illnesses? Health care services could raise your rates.”
“Another nightmare scenario is applying for jobs,” Quintin continued. “A company might get a demographic profile from one of these data brokers and use that information to decide whether or not to hire you.”
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:55 PM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ha ha ha I just received a letter that Experian had been hacked with regard to T Mobile customers, maybe 15,000 of them. Then Experian is going to give me a free credit protection for two years because of the hack. I called T Mobile and was told it is a thing. Reading this I go, well yeah, it is some kind of thing. Anyway I am convinced it is really much worse than I want to imagine. See, I have no juice. There is no reason for anyone to give me a thought. But I wouldn't want to be someone trying to find a spouse in this climate, the data predation makes it a house of mirrors. It also does make the employment scene much more aware and reflexive, inhumanly responsive to the bottom line.
posted by Oyéah at 10:20 PM on October 14, 2015
posted by Oyéah at 10:20 PM on October 14, 2015
A lot of the things he worries about, I'm pretty sure aren't possible. I am pretty sure the contents of your text messages aren't somehow transmitted to email spammers so that your email in the morning reflects your texts to your spouse the previous night.
I don't have first-hand knowledge of whether this happens but one way in which it seems not-entirely-impossible to me is that spammers are famed for using botnets to send their spam, botnets being legions of virus-infected computers often created and controlled by criminal enterprises. So if anyone is similarly trying to use botnets for figuring out ways to target spam and increase the efficacy of spamming campaigns, an infected smartphone could include scanning text messages in its information-dredging.
(But granted, this would be a much more complicated use of botnets than simply sending spam, so it does seem more likely a coincidence or some other targeting mechanism. Governments are more likely to be monitoring texts.)
posted by XMLicious at 3:03 AM on October 15, 2015
How the NSA can break trillions of encrypted Web and VPN connections
Researchers show how mass decryption is well within the NSA's $11 billion budget.
posted by XMLicious at 9:41 AM on October 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
Researchers show how mass decryption is well within the NSA's $11 billion budget.
posted by XMLicious at 9:41 AM on October 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
We should distinguish between two very different kinds of paranoia :
Paranoia the political position is the expectation that, if an individual or organization is granted any substantive power they could abuse in ways that benefit them, then they will do so. Political paranoia is rarely wrong. And less so the greater the power.
Examples: The NSA will spy on you. And tell the CIA, FBI, DEA, IRS, etc. The CIA will torture and murder people. The FBI will fake terrorist plots. Cops will murder innocent people. Prosecutors will railroad innocent people. Priests will fuck the kids their given charge of. Oil companies will deceive the public about the dangers of climate change. Potato chip companies will design their chips to be additive and make you fat. Pharmaceutical companies hide the side effects of their products. etc. etc. etc.
Paranoia the mental illness is when worries start preventing you from doing what you want to do. Now perfectly correct political paranoia can influence the coarse of paranoia the mental illness.
Example: Your social life deteriorates because you drop facebook. It's not an illness to drop facebook, not anymore than its an illness to drop alcohol, restaurants, etc. The illness is some feeling of paralysis that prevented you from taking measures to compensate, like making an effort to call your friends sometimes, or even making them install TextSecure.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:56 AM on October 18, 2015
Paranoia the political position is the expectation that, if an individual or organization is granted any substantive power they could abuse in ways that benefit them, then they will do so. Political paranoia is rarely wrong. And less so the greater the power.
Examples: The NSA will spy on you. And tell the CIA, FBI, DEA, IRS, etc. The CIA will torture and murder people. The FBI will fake terrorist plots. Cops will murder innocent people. Prosecutors will railroad innocent people. Priests will fuck the kids their given charge of. Oil companies will deceive the public about the dangers of climate change. Potato chip companies will design their chips to be additive and make you fat. Pharmaceutical companies hide the side effects of their products. etc. etc. etc.
Paranoia the mental illness is when worries start preventing you from doing what you want to do. Now perfectly correct political paranoia can influence the coarse of paranoia the mental illness.
Example: Your social life deteriorates because you drop facebook. It's not an illness to drop facebook, not anymore than its an illness to drop alcohol, restaurants, etc. The illness is some feeling of paralysis that prevented you from taking measures to compensate, like making an effort to call your friends sometimes, or even making them install TextSecure.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:56 AM on October 18, 2015
If you're not paranoid, you're not paying attention. - @opsecanimals
Also : Counterintelligence is learning about how your enemy watches you and using that knowledge to avoid being spotted.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:32 AM on October 21, 2015
Also : Counterintelligence is learning about how your enemy watches you and using that knowledge to avoid being spotted.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:32 AM on October 21, 2015
Chelsea Manning wrote a 139 page NSA reform bill from behind bars (pdf)
posted by jeffburdges at 5:45 AM on November 4, 2015
posted by jeffburdges at 5:45 AM on November 4, 2015
The Senate's New 'Give the NSA All Your Private Info' Bill Would Make George Orwell Blush: The government needs—nay, it deserves—completely unfettered access to your personal information, because cybersecurity.
posted by homunculus at 11:45 AM on November 4, 2015
posted by homunculus at 11:45 AM on November 4, 2015
How the Military Uses Twitter Sock Puppets to Control Debate and Suppress Dissent
Former reviewer of anti-terror laws co-owns firm with ex-MI6 chief
Same guy who vowed to arrest Assange
posted by jeffburdges at 11:32 PM on November 4, 2015
Former reviewer of anti-terror laws co-owns firm with ex-MI6 chief
Same guy who vowed to arrest Assange
posted by jeffburdges at 11:32 PM on November 4, 2015
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