The dystopian boiling pot

As the fable goes, the frog does not jump out of the gradually-heated pot of water--it doesn't even notice--and is boiled to death.

I think dystopia will arrive in such a fashion (arguably has already). But the heat keeps rising:

Colombia-based call center workers who provide outsourced customer service to some of the nation’s largest companies are being pressured to sign a contract that lets their employer install cameras in their homes to monitor work performance, an NBC News investigation has found. 

I work from home too. Shortly after, the company wanted to encourage camera use for online meetings. Around the same time, they put out this electronic policy that every employee had to sign. As with most short-sighted, greedy companies, there was nary a word about privacy in that electronic agreement. Theoretically, a person who signed that policy and installed a camera could be spied upon in their own home, without their knowledge and the company would at least have that signed document (and arguably, the employee's consent) in their defense. I made my objections clear, as any self, spouse, family, and privacy-respecting person should. My camera remains unplugged and I never signed that piece of trash.

You have to push back. You, me, we have more power than one might realize. It feels good to use it now and then.

from Redditor Revolv_er

Remember when Apple fought for privacy? Good times

Years ago, Apple famously (or infamously, depending on your POV) refused to create a backdoor for the government to get in criminals' phones. Here's the Wikipedia article.

Recently, as you might be aware, Apple announced it plans to scan users' photos in order to fight child abuse.

[Note: I am very much pro-privacy. I do not need and refuse to post a disclaimer saying I am against child abuse because that's insane, and would do little to protect me from idiots who have no issue assuming others are totally okay with child abuse.]

On Thursday, Apple surprised the tech world by announcing that it will actively scan some users’ iPhones for known images of child sexual abuse material. The company also plans to discourage Siri searches for this material and warn children against sending or receiving sexually explicit messages, all starting with the launch of iOS 15 this fall.

The news drew a quick backlash from security experts and civil liberties groups, who believe the company is standing on a slippery slope by adding these content-scanning systems to its devices. The news also seems to have raised some objections inside Apple, as the company has stood behind its system in a memo to employees.

Apple is doubling down. They described opponents of this terrible idea as the "screeching voices of the minority." With that logic, we should mandate that every smartphone record everything and compare the data to what other people decided was bad. It would surely save lives, prevent child abuse and much more! From Pixy at Ace's:

Dismissing the entire security community, which has universally decried this, and the entire privacy community likewise as "screeching voices of the minority" shows exactly where this is coming from.

They are fully aware that what they are doing is wrong. They know it will harm people. That's why they kept it secret. They just don't care.

This is the end result of intellectual monoculture. To whatever small extent they spoke to any security or privacy advocates about this, their concerns were overridden because by definition anyone objecting to this was evil.

Cupertino delenda est. 

The apparent and increasing inability of the upper echelons in tech to question their own beliefs, to be genuinely open to disagreement, and to do so without assuming bad faith of their opponents is frankly disturbing.