That's just FUD. And saying baseless things like "that's never how it works", that's just fearmongering, not contributing to the conversation. It doesn't even make sense.
There are millions (hundreds of thousands? you get my point) of fingerprint readers out there. Suddenly Apple builds one in, an additional feature, and people start inventing conspiracy theories. People are completely confusing real issues (recent NSA disclosures) with totally imaginary ones. It's getting tiring.
They take a lot of fingerprints, but don't seem to catch many people.
> The U.S. government has been collecting digital fingerprints and photographs of nearly all non-citizens aged 14 and up entering the country since 2004, officials said, in a Homeland Security program called US-VISIT, at a cost of $1.7 billion.
> [...] On an average day, almost 14,400 international visitors undergo the fingerprinting process at Kennedy, officials said.
> More than 2,000 criminal and visa fraud cases have been detected by the screening process, introduced in response to security concerns following the attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. officials said.
Roughly they've scanned fingerprints for 36,792,000 visitors (who may be repeat visitors), and caught more than 2,000 people. (Between 2001/9/11 and 2008/9/11.)
The reason they don't catch many people is because they're fingerprinting tourists and most likely first time visitors to the US. I'm surprised they caught anyone at all.
Yes I know, I've been fingerprinted a dozen or so times. I don't know statistics but I would guess the majority are first-time or just connecting which still classes as entering the US.
>That's just FUD. And saying baseless things like "that's never how it works", that's just fearmongering, not contributing to the conversation. It doesn't even make sense.
It makes perfect sense -- you just need to follow the historical precedents, instead of looking for some inevitable logical reason why that would happen.
Technologies introduced with the potential to control and restrict people (or users) have always expanded their scope and reach.
CCTV was something banks used. Now it's all around modern cities. GPS tracking was once something exotic. Then millions could be tracked through their mobile phone. Then you even get people voluntarily participating in "location aware" services, transmitting their location 24/7. Walled garden software was few and far between all through 1980-2010. Now it's the sole standard on iOS, de facto on Android, and has crept in desktop OS too. There are tons of similar examples.
>There are millions (hundreds of thousands? you get my point) of fingerprint readers out there.
There were also "tens of thousands" of tablets before the iPad. Still noone cared about them. Mass sales are an enabler. It's another thing for "hundrends of thousands" (far fewer, I'd say) fingerprint readers to be out there in places and devices noone sees excepts when he travels or if he works in some special places that use them for security, and another thing to have fingerprint readers on 1 out of 3 or 4 americans (the iPhone market share IIRC).
>Suddenly Apple builds one in, an additional feature, and people start inventing conspiracy theories.
I don't care much about conspiracy theories (and I dislike the use of the term to ridicule legitimate concerns, as if we were talking about fake moon landings or UFOs). This comment thread was about some not far-fetched potential implications.
>Yes, that's why you can't get on the internet except through AOL any more.
I don't see any justification for your sarcasm.
It might not be called AOL today, but between FB and Google you have a even more widespread and far reaching modern equivalent. Add Youtube, Android, Google Fiber and Glass to the mix and the control and information gathered is even more than what was there to AOL's wildest dreams.
And between Google Search and Gmail, it's even less easy to switch to than from AOL. AOL was all disanvatages, whereas Google Search is best of class, as is Gmail. People are even afraid to leave FB (you see it all the time, even on HN threads) because of peer pressure and the effect on their social life. Leaving AOL never had that.
>What nonsense.
iTunes Store, Mac App Store, Windows Phone Store, Google Play Store, console software, etc etc. So called "post-PC" devices like the iPad have adopted the walled garden approach, that's not something to be argued, it's a fact.
Do you have any counter-examples, or just wanted to insult my response with the content-less reply of "nonsense"?
You're really equating apples with oranges with 'it might not be called AOL today...' All of your arguments are conclusory instead of evidence based, eg 'people are afraid to leave FB' - really? Afraid? Bullshit. Facebook has utility for them; if something of similar convenience and greater utility comes along, they'll use it.
iTunes Store, Mac App Store, Windows Phone Store, Google Play Store, console software, etc etc. So called "post-PC" devices like the iPad have adopted the walled garden approach, that's not something to be argued, it's a fact.
Do you have any counter-examples, or just wanted to insult my response with the content-less reply of "nonsense"?
Yeas, but your claim was that this is a new thing. Go back and look at home computers in the 1980s or networking hardware in the 90s. Walled gardens have been around for ages: it was the basis of the AT&T monopoly that existed until the 70s (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walled_garden_(technology)) and used to be the norm in the motion picture industry at one time before antitrust actions forced the studios to divest their theater holdings.
Really, it's up to you to back up your own claims, not up to me to falsify them. You have a bad habit of drawing your conclusion first and then looking for evidence to support it. I personally find it helpful to begin by assuming I'm wrong and trying to falsify my hypothesis.
>And what better way to prove it than to cherry-pick examples.
Examples are always cherry picked. The other option is called "exhaustive enumeration", and I don't think it's possible.
Let's just say that 50 years ago,
1) nobody could track your exact position 24/7,
2) there was not fingerprint matching,
3) you could still dissapear in a remote place with much fewer chances of people finding you
4) your friends didn't post pictures of you for all the world to see
5) people were not required to carry some sort of ID cards
6) your purchases could not be tracked in real time (cach or cachiers check's, no credit cards)
7) all your (snail then) correspondence was not automatically and efficiently read
8) CCTV wasn't prevalent
9) radio couln't track what you were listening to (as Pandora etc)
10) nobody kept track of what movies you watched (like Netflix, Youtube, etc)
11) They could track cars by reading their plates of some camera.
etc etc. And tons of other stuff besides.
It's nice living in a dream bubble, but all these do exist, and are a real tendency in a higher technological society. After all bureacracy and control with expand given the chance (and with the lack of any counter tendency), and technology is a huge enabler for it to expand.
Good grief. Then unplug your damned devices and go live in a cabin somewhere. Many of us speak as if our lives were so profound that governments everywhere are just dying to violate us. Even with everyone's data shared everywhere it becomes meaningless after awhile due to the sheer volume.
Respectfully, I think you're missing the point. It's not about any one person being interesting enough. The fifth amendment gives the (American) people a right not to incriminate themselves. The point is that a sizable chunk of the population can now unlock a lot of information about themselves without the fifth being an issue. I don't think the writer of the article claims that this is an effect that was actively saught after by Apple or the govt - it's simply here and people need to know and think.
It's as if someone invented a key you could turn to remember whatever you forgot. Great invention, but the article is saying: be aware, turning the key is not self-incrimination, and so now you have no 5th amendment.
>Good grief. Then unplug your damned devices and go live in a cabin somewhere. Many of us speak as if our lives were so profound that governments everywhere are just dying to violate us.
It's not about boring people living boring lives. They can go on doing whatever and not care. This is about people whose rights get violated, people that do things, from investigative journalism, to politics, to corporate whistleblowers, etc.
And it's not just about some boring, cozy little suburbian part of the world (as if Nowheresville, Iowa and Sunville, California is all there exists), it's also about people living in oppressive regimes, fucked up governments etc.
Those people push society forward. If it were only for people whose "lives are not profound", then we would still have slavery, no women's vote, no gay rights, and 15 hour workdays (including for children).
I'm from India. And we are 450 million people into (by next year that will be 600 million, and a few years later, 1.2 billion) a mammoth ID project that makes it mandatory to submit your biometric data (all fingers plus iris) to get the 'Aadhar' card. Of course, technically the card itself isn't mandatory, but because it's linked with various govt services ranging from subsidies (educational scholarships, cooking gas), pensions, property sales/rentals and even marriage registrations, it is as good as mandatory for most people. Various countries and multilateral aid agencies/donors are studying the Indian model to see if it can be replicated in other countries.
I agree it is not directly connected to Apple, or the US, but there is a progressive and gradual creep into the acceptance and use of biometric data.
That's just FUD. And saying baseless things like "that's never how it works", that's just fearmongering, not contributing to the conversation. It doesn't even make sense.
There are millions (hundreds of thousands? you get my point) of fingerprint readers out there. Suddenly Apple builds one in, an additional feature, and people start inventing conspiracy theories. People are completely confusing real issues (recent NSA disclosures) with totally imaginary ones. It's getting tiring.