Since I've had a few people push back against my "privacy is consent" thread - I think I need to remind you all about what consent is - cause some of you have really weird ideas.
First, what consent consent is *not*:
Consent is not being forced to choose from a pre-filtered selection of options.
Consent is not trusting a company/government not to do something bad with the data you give them.
Consent is not irrevocable.
Consent is not being forced to choose from a pre-filtered selection of options.
Consent is not trusting a company/government not to do something bad with the data you give them.
Consent is not irrevocable.
When I speak of consent I am talking about deliberate, intentional action.
Consent is the deliberate, intentional act of providing access to you, for some period of time, for a specific purpose.
Consent is the deliberate, intentional act of providing access to you, for some period of time, for a specific purpose.
As it stands, our technology is not consensual. It regularly violates our consent through insecure design, overly broad APIs, implicit trust decisions, built-in surveillance and data gatekeeping.
When I speak of enforcing consent, I am speaking of building systems which resist this trend of technology - which are surviellance resistant, open to modify & extend, force explicit trust decisions and communicate only the essential to complete a process.
This definition of consent is applicable from the smallest collection of humans to the largest bureaucracies of state.
No one in society should be able to gain access to you without your consent.
No one in society should be able to gain access to you without your consent.
We live in age where we have access to some amazingly powerful tools. Tools that can verify information without knowing what the information is, tools that can distribute power to access information throughout a system, tools that increase the costs of violating consent high.
The way we prevent abuse of power, whether between intimate parters or subjects & states is to distribute power as much as possible.
Preventing the surveillance of someone being abused by a family member is the same problem as preventing mass surveillance.
Enforcing Consent
Preventing the surveillance of someone being abused by a family member is the same problem as preventing mass surveillance.
Enforcing Consent
That is the problem that @OpenPriv works on. It's a problem that pervades our modern world. And it is all about consent, and consent is the only way we solve it.
It's the reason I reject "solutions" to privacy that default to the power of a state, that default to the decisions of a few large tech conglomerates, that default to power aggregation.
The axioms of the modern world would have you believe that Surveillance is Love, Trust is Safekeeping and that Centralization is Strength.
Reject those axioms.
Reject those axioms.
Understand that Love, Strength & Safety can only be achieved through Consent.
It is only when build systems that restrain our authoritarian impulses that we can truly learn to thrive in this world together.
It is only when build systems that restrain our authoritarian impulses that we can truly learn to thrive in this world together.
