Remove blog submodule

docs/blog/2022/04/04/move-fast-and-break-things.md

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+---
+title: '"Move Fast and Break Things"'
+image: 'blog/2022/04/04/move-fast-and-break-things.jpg'
+created: "2022-04-04"
+author: 'Freddy'
+template: overrides/blog.en.html
+---
+Mark Zuckerberg does not look comfortable on stage. Yet, there he was proclaiming that “the future is private”. If someone has to tell you that they care about your privacy, they probably don’t.
+
+For someone trying not to appear like a cartoon villain, Zuckerberg doesn’t do a great job. He gives the impression of some strange cyborg algorithmically attempting to impersonate human life. His movements are not quite robotic, but he lacks the charisma you might expect from one of the most powerful people on the planet. A _New Yorker_ [profile](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg-fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy) of him revealed that he had an affinity for Emperor Augustus, an ancient Roman tyrant. ‘Through a really harsh approach, [Augustus] established two hundred years of world peace,’ he said.
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+It’s the first part of that sentence that is worrying.
+
+Is this what Zuckerberg sees himself as: a modern-day emperor hellbent on using any means he can to gain world peace? Probably not, but it would have been reassuring if he just told us he liked doing Sudoku and dad-dancing with his daughter (interestingly named August).
+
+The Zuck once [joked](https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/) to a friend that he could get them ‘info’ about anyone in Harvard. He had email addresses, pictures, real addresses: the lot. When the friend asked how, this was his riposte: ‘People just submitted it. I don’t know why. They trust me. Dumb f*cks.’ We now live in a reality where Zuckerberg can get ‘info’ about almost anyone in the world.
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+Like a depraved tabloid journalist fishing through a minor celebrity’s trash, Facebook collects everything it can about its users. Even if it means sifting through garbage, they want that data. But Facebook is not technically in the data business. It is in what author and professor Carissa Véliz [terms](https://aeon.co/essays/privacy-matters-because-it-empowers-us-all) ‘the business of power’ – which sounds rather more sinister than flogging off mildly irritating adverts.
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+Véliz argues that privacy is a form of power. It is the power to influence you, show you adverts and predict your behaviour. In this sense, personal data is being used to make us do things we otherwise would not do: to buy a certain product or to vote a certain way. Filmmaker Laura Poitras [described](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/10/23/snowden-filmmaker-laura-poitras-facebook-is-a-gift-to-intelligence-agencies/) Facebook as ‘a gift to intelligence agencies’. It allows governments to arrest people planning to participate in protests before they have even begun.
+
+The social media giant is tip-toeing ever closer into our personal lives. When Facebook encountered competition it just bought it, adding Instagram and WhatsApp to its roster. The company even tried to make its own cryptocurrency so that one day the Facebook would control all our purchases too. Earlier this year, the project was [killed](https://www.ft.com/content/a88fb591-72d5-4b6b-bb5d-223adfb893f3) by regulators. It is worth noting that when Zuckerberg purchased WhatsApp and Instagram, they had no revenue. Author Tim Wu notes in his book _The Attention Merchants_ that Facebook is ‘a business with an exceedingly low ratio of invention to success’. Perhaps that is a part of Zuck’s genius.
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+‘Move fast and break things’ was the old company motto. When there were a few too many scandals, they moved fast and [rebranded](https://www.privacyguides.org/blog/2021/11/01/virtual-insanity) to Meta. No one expected online privacy to be the ‘thing’ they broke.
+
+Before it became a global behemoth, Facebook started out as a dorm-room project. Zuckerberg sat at his keyboard after a few drinks and built it mainly because he could. It now has nearly three billion users. In the same way, Facebook [conducted](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users) social experiments seemingly just for fun. Why he did it doesn’t really matter. As John Lanchester [put it](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product): he simply did it _because_.
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+It is unfair to say that Zuckerberg does not care about privacy – he does. That’s why he [spared](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/11/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-neighbouring-houses) no expense buying the houses that surrounded his home. Zuckerberg knows the power of privacy, which is painfully ironic given he has built his career on exploiting it. For Zuckerberg, at least, the future is private. It’s the rest of us that should be worried.

docs/blog/2022/06/09/hide-nothing.md

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+---
+title: '"Hide Nothing"'
+image: 'blog/2022/06/09/hide-nothing.jpg'
+created: "2022-06-09"
+author: 'Dan Arel'
+template: overrides/blog.en.html
+---
+In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States, the US government enacted laws that weakened citizen privacy in the name of national emergency. This sent up many red flags for human rights and privacy advocates.
+
+These concerns were met with “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” The argument goes that if you're not doing anything illegal, then these violations of your privacy shouldn't bother you. If you care about privacy, you clearly can't be up to anything good.
+
+On the surface, this seems true to many people – but the reality is very different. We may not have had anything to hide in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but that was not the only information being sought after by governments. Indeed, following the passage of the Patriot Act in the US, the FBI issued 192,499 [National Security Letters](https://www.aclu.org/other/national-security-letters), meaning they collected the records and online activity of nearly 200,000 people.
+
+In the end it only convicted one person.
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+Now, many have argued that stopping one terrorist might be worth giving up some security for, but [according](https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/surveillance-under-patriot-act) to the ACLU, the conviction would have occurred without the Patriot Act.
+
+Many legal actions you take today could be deemed illegal by future laws or future government. In the US today there is discussion around the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned, allowing states to outlaw abortions. You may not currently feel the need to hide internet searches, menstrual cycle apps, or donations to women's health clinics today because it's not illegal, but tomorrow that information could be used against you.
+
+In countries were organizing around political dissent is legal, that doesn't mean the government is tracking those taking part and using that information to create informants or infiltrate such groups. Or worse, when or if laws change, using that surveillance to punish those involved.
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+And even if you break away from the legal aspects, we all have something to hide. You may not be ready to reveal your sexual or gender identity, but your internet usage could potentially do that for you. You don't want to make your bank account public; you have that information to hide. And you can continue to list things about your life you'd just rather not make public, regardless of potential legality.
+
+In July of 2021, a Catholic priest by the name of Jeffrey Burrill lost his job and was forced to resign after data collected through his cell phone showed that he was active on the Gay dating app Grindr, and that he had visited multiple gay bars in the area. [According](https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/07/20/bishop-misconduct-resign-burrill/) to the *Washington Post*:
+
+> “A mobile device correlated to Burrill emitted app data signals from the location-based hookup app Grindr on a near-daily basis during parts of 2018, 2019, and 2020 —– at both his USCCB office and his USCCB-owned residence, as well as during USCCB meetings and events in other cities,” the Pillar reported.
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+> “The data obtained and analyzed by The Pillar conveys mobile app date signals during two 26-week periods, the first in 2018 and the second in 2019 and 2020. The data was obtained from a data vendor and authenticated by an independent data consulting firm contracted by The Pillar,” the site reported. It did not identify who the vendor was or if the site bought the information or got it from a third party.
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+> The Pillar story says app data “correlated” to Burrill's phone shows the priest visited gay bars, including while traveling for the USCCB.
+
+While it was not clear who was tracking Burrill's device, the Post went on to say that:
+
+> Privacy experts have long raised concerns about “anonymized” data collected by apps and sold to or shared with aggregators and marketing companies. While the information is typically stripped of obviously identifying fields, like a user's name or phone number, it can contain everything from age and gender to a device ID. It's possible for experts to de-anonymize some of this data and connect it to real people.
+
+While Burrill was without a doubt in violation of his works own code of conduct, he did decide on his own to be a priest. However, his personal life was not harming others and was just that, his personal life. While the question looms about who was tracking him to begin with and why, the fact it was so easy to do is alarming.
+
+What if Burrill wasn't a priest, but just happened to work for someone who held anti-homosexual views who used this data to out him, humiliate him, and fire him under false pretenses? This data, which should be private could (and likely did in the real-life circumstance) ruin his life.
+
+That is what makes internet privacy so important. It's not hiding nefarious activity, it's that we all have an innate right to our privacy.
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+You might not feel today that you have anything to hide, but you might not feel that way tomorrow and once something is public, it cannot be made private again.