Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Geisterde 846 days ago
My appologies. I think informed consent is a wonderful idea, I just am skeptical that it exists in real life. I would say if you use an electronic device today, you are being spied on (with very narrow exceptions).

Informed consent to me (take the example of a phone or many apps), based on the level I have to break it down to people for them to understand, is something like "we will see you whacking it to hentai, we will know when you take a dump, we have enough of your data to derive private information you never gave us, we have all the data necessary to totally ruin your life socially and economically, and it will all be leaked to criminals that will profit from your demise, dont worry though, we will give you a 1 year sub to mcafee antivirus as a consolation prize."

I think we can at least agree that ^^that happens to people. So, whos going to be the first company to not veat around the bush and just admit that reality? That, is why I say informed consent sounds nice, every company that can keep a skilled contract lawyer on payroll has an incentive to downplay their spying. I dont know in what version of reality informed consent could exist, because the incentive is fairly obvious.