The IT Skeptic - Big Uncle

Uber, big brother, and company use of big data

skeptic — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 19:56:26 +0000

There's social privacy (hiding from the state) and personal privacy (hiding from your neighbours). Where do corporations fit in?

The Web started the decline of privacy; it is the personal camera that really nails it dead.

skeptic — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 20:00:39 +0000

Privacy is dead, get over it: the community now knows as much about you as your neighbour does if you live in a village, or your doorman if you live in an apartment block. And anyone who sees you can record what they are seeing.

Big Uncle - The IT Skeptic

skeptic — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:44:30 +0000

27:58 minutes (8 MB)

An extra-long 28-minute podcast of the series of posts on Big Uncle

Big Uncle is a name for the concept of “benevolent security”. Privacy is a dated concept, disappearing fast. People get all tied in a knot over this, but the consequences are only as bad as we let them be. Like any technology, there will be evil applications and there will be good ones. There are upsides which the IT Skeptic investigates.

Big uncle: policies and controls for security systems

skeptic — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:17:30 +0000

In our discussions of Big Uncle, we have seen how privacy is pretty much a thing of the past, certainly in the electronic realm. In the final blog post of this series, we look at how it is up to all of us to ensure that the result is Big Uncle not Big Brother.

Big Uncle: the total lack of privacy in electronic communications

skeptic — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:23:12 +0000

We have been discussing Big Uncle: the benevolent aspects of ceding privacy to security systems. Be aware how little privacy you have in electronic communciations.

Big Uncle: looking for the needle in the security data haystack

skeptic — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:38:51 +0000

Big Uncle is the concept of benevolent security. We have been looking in previous posts at the loss of privacy and the positive side of what it means. One application is finding enemies of society.

As the amount of data grows and as it becomes more integrated, a natural trend is to use data mining for more advanced security. The world has barely started down this path. There is much more that can be done to apply existing data technologies and techniques for

Big Uncle: ceding privacy for security in our daily lives

skeptic — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:55:28 +0000

We have been discussing Big Uncle, the benevolent aspects of the loss of privacy to security systems. Today we will look at how most of us willingly surrender privacy every day and will do so increasingly online (except for the most paraniod among us: you know who you are and so do we).

Big Uncle: what is “normal” privacy?

skeptic — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:24:36 +0000

We have been discussing Big Uncle, the benevolent aspects of the loss of privacy to security systems. Today we will look closer at the concept of privacy.

Big Uncle: benevolent security. The positive side of the loss of privacy

skeptic — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:40:08 +0000

Big Uncle is the concept of “benevolent security”. We discussed previously how privacy is a dated concept, disappearing fast. People get all tied in a knot over this, but the consequences are only as bad as we let them be. Like any technology, there will be evil applications and there will be good ones.