Cambridge Analytica is a scandal that isn’t a scandal: Everyone who has ever worked on or with the Facebook platform knew that for several years, the platform made data available to third-party developers by design.
Why is this news and a problem now? What made the sky fall? If everyone knew, then why has someone been picked to be the bad guy now?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/technology/privacy-resear...
More generally, it's quite difficult to present a problem as compelling when there are no bodies on the ground. Take a look around you at any particular piece of safety equipment, process, practice, regulation, etc., and realise that that price was paid, in blood if not souls.
An example I've recently learnt of was of oderised natural gas. That "gas" smell you know is not the smell of methane, which is, in fact, oderless, but a special oderiser, Mercaptan, which as been added to it.[1] The reason it's been added is New London School, New London, Texas. In depression-era 1937, the school found an inexpensive source of heating by way of a local "wet" gas line, related to oil production, that ran near the school.
The gas leaked. The explosion killed 295 students and teachers, and is still the deadliest school disaster in the U.S., 81 years later.
Texas, a state known for its reluctance to government regulation, required the addition of mercaptan to all gas supplies within weeks of the accident.
That's just one of many such stories you'll find in the world of industrial and engineering safety.
A significant aspect of unintended consequences is that they are non-apparent consequences. It takes time, and evidence, and quite often bodies, to make the point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_School_explosion
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Notes:
1. The scent is exceptionally notable and detectable at low levels. Mercaptans are part of the hazard warning system in mines, environments in which visual or audio signals might not be readily apparent.
But what/who do we blame? Is it the education systems staggering lack of ability to prepare people for modern, tech-enabled society in any sort of privacy-as-a-right context.
No one? We shouldn't be assigning "blame" because the public doesn't have the same specialized education that we have to understand the nuances of "APIs" vs "breaches."
I think what needs to be done is to create an easily understandable formulation of "privacy-as-a-right" and teach that.
Because: everyone who has ever worked on or with the Facebook platform != everyone
Which is of course why its brought up so much...
Dear TA2048,
In some/many parts of this planet we don't give a poop about who is the President of the US-of-A.
But we care for our own elections (see UK referendum, Greek referendum, Catalonia referendum, elections in Austria, Hungary, Italy, etc.)
The problem surfaced NOW, and NOW we are dealing with it. We can't turn back time. Not even slow it down. But we can try/make sure it won't happen again, or at least reduce its impact.
Kind regards, Someone-who-believes-in-democracy
I'm the first person to admit that I'm not impressed by my peers when it comes to electing suitable leaders, but it worries me much more that we're now falling for the temptation of reasoning for them, and protecting them from themselves. I think this straitjacket that we're so eagerly putting on our fellow man for his own good may very well be put on us, or perhaps the truly original thinkers that we yet don't know about.
So no, comments like these aren't infantile, they're crucial for maintaining the liberty that we've thus enjoyed on the internet, and that I would very much like to keep enjoying, even if I don't always agree with how people tend to use that freedom.