[jabjoe]

No. Government needs to have laws against this. We can't leave it up to ignorant and fickle consumers. This is a failure of the system of law, thus government. Consumer action is no substitute. Voting with wallets is not equal in anyway to voting. And never should be. We shouldn't be trying to herd consumers to punish companies, we should be asking governments to do their job.

[matthewmacleod]

I don't really agree – I'm very nervous about the idea of government banning technologies.

If I want to provide a real-time audio feed from my home to Samsung, then that is my choice to make.

If government is to do anything here, it's to make sure that there's a minimum standard of notification which is required for these devices. Maybe something like an explicit opt-in for any feature which transmits data to third parties. That's something I could get behind.

But banning it? No way.

[aragot]

In Europe we don't really believe in "it is your choice you make" (on other topics) because there are so many factors which prevent you from making this choice freely.

For example the choice of accepting Samsung's TOS could be bundled with the choice of flatsharing with someone. Or being a guest of someone. If you need to refuse attending a party because you've made the choice of disagreeing with Samsung's TOS, you're forced.

It is a classic feature of commercial products: Bundle the choice with something much bigger (such as: socializing) so people don't really have the choice of saying no. Worth saying that if phones were invented under a European jurisdiction, they'd be full of infinite more or less relevant option lists. Ironically that's probably why they weren't born there.

[matthewmacleod]

That's just unconscionability, which is a common legal concept.

You can solve this problem by making consumers being informed – by forcing manufacturers to provide clear information about the services which are being given, and any privacy risks. That's something I thoroughly support.

But I absolutely reject the idea of outright banning technologies. It's not even a slippery slope – it's a vertical cliff.

[gglitch]

Not sure why this was downvoted, I kind of agree. We're supposed to be defending rational choices made by informed consumers, but I too question whether current regulation adequately safeguards either one of those principles.

[DSingularity]

Yeah sure I agree. But this is a problem. Pretending like it isn't is basically cognitive dissonance. Why? These companies consistently refuse to secure their sevices to maximize profit.

The problem is they live in a completely self centered world where profit must be maximized. This is why this results in less secure devices by design. This is why you need regulation.

You leave it to the companies, they will almost always decide based on profit. Even if it results in a totally insecure product. See:http://iss.oy.ne.ro/Aether

[sysk]

> We can't leave it up to ignorant and fickle consumers.

People like you infuriate me to no end. The fact is that a lot of consumers are willing to trade privacy for convenience, price, etc. Privacy just doesn't weigh much in those people's list of priorities. I'm glad we still have a semblance of free market capitalism because if people like you had their way, a lot of modern technologies simply wouldn't exist. That being said, I personally won't be getting that TV.

[gglitch]

No offense, but this seems specious because it presumes that a majority of consumers are making a rational choice from a well-informed position, which is not necessarily the case. They're currently making the trade, yes, but that doesn't mean they fully understand the implications of their decisions.

* Edited for grammar

[olifante]

So if the invisible hand of the market "chooses" to create an Orwellian total surveillance society, that will be OK, because hey, consumers chose it.

[sysk]

First, what comes closest to Orwellian total surveillance today is the NSA mass surveillance program which was created by government, not the free market.

Second, I wouldn't personally feel OK with that outcome but I would also recognize that most people do (given your premise) and that I have no authority over their personal choices.

[opendais]

Government elections are pretty close to the free market in the real world for many things. The better funded candidate wins 85% of the time which virtually guarantees every political seat is bought [in the free market]:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/oct/...

Simply because you don't personally have the wealth to purchase a congressional seat of your very own doesn't change the fact that when 85% of them are essentially decided by the money spent that they are basically "buying" the win at that point.

So to claim the free market doesn't create an Orwellian total surveillance society is pretty much false across the board.

1) In the "free market", you have Google, Amazon, and a number of other businesses that try to build that sort of capability to profile their customers for advertising and sales purposes.

2) In the "government where majority power is purchased through the application of money", we have the NSA which engages in both commercial and military espionage.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-braz... http://www.bbc.com/news/25907502

etc.

So when you say the NSA is divorced from the free market, I think you are delusional and/or ignorant. I find it scary that people don't seem to understand that the majority of power in government is essentially paid for and if your sponsors don't like you...the money dries up. So unless you are independently wealthy [on the scale of being a billionaire] and can just self-finance every single campaign, you aren't really an independent agent but instead doing your best to balance who "bought" your vote to minimize the damage.

[jabjoe]

You can not expect them to understand the ins and outs of every purchase. You judge a society by how it looks after it's people. You are arguing to leave them to the wolves.

[nathan_long]

> That being said, I personally won't be getting that TV.

Will you have a choice? If they profit enough, there may not be any non-surveillance models left in a few years.

The free market does wonders, but sometimes laws are a better tool. Eg, you can't sell a house that doesn't meet fire code, whether the buyer would accept it or not. There's too much danger that they don't understand, or that the next buyer won't, or that they're coerced by having no other options, etc.

[michaelt]

Well, there are certain things that can only be achieved by legislation, not by technical means.

For example, if you send an always-on sound feed from your living room (or phone) to Google for voice recognition purposes, should it be subject to fourth amendment protections? Because this isn't possible by technical means or through market competition - it can only be achieved by legislation.

[vsl]

> No. Government needs to have laws against this.

Or you could just, you know, not buy that crap, and let the market sort it out?