The Telegraph reports Silicon Valley executives are taking extreme measures to protect their privacy:
The famously discreet technology set are going to extraordinary lengths to keep their affairs secret, regularly employing what is legally referred to as a “domestic non-disclosure agreement”.
The agreements, or gag orders as they are more commonly known, do not concern matters relating to their businesses however, but rather to innocuous home renovation work.
The documents can compel contractors to keep quiet on everything from the details of a house’s floorplan to the styling of the garden shrubbery and the colour of the paint. Even the mere mention of their client’s name could see a painter, electrician or gardener slapped with an expensive lawsuit.
It seems as though in their eyes, what's good for the goose is not good for the gander. Still it seems their efforts will ultimately fail given that they live in a world surrounded by other people, the vast majority of whom are not billionaires. It's only a matter of time before somebody builds a crowdsourcing platform to invade their privacy.
Related Stories
David Knowles reports at Bloomberg that former Hewlett-Packard CEO and potential 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina called out Apple CEO Tim Cook as a hypocrite for criticizing Indiana and Arkansas over their Religious Freedom Restoration Acts while at the same time doing business in countries where gay rights are non-existent. “When Tim Cook is upset about all the places that he does business because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets that he’s in, including China and Saudi Arabia,” Fiorina said. “But I don’t hear him being upset about that.”
In similar criticism of Hillary Clinton on the Fox News program Hannity, Fiorina argued that Clinton's advocacy on behalf of women was tarnished by donations made to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments where women's rights are not on par with those in America. ""I must say as a woman, I find it offensive that Hillary Clinton travels the Silicon Valley, a place where I worked for a long time, and lectures Silicon Valley companies on women's rights in technology, and yet sees nothing wrong with taking money from the Algerian government, which really denies women the most basic human rights. This is called, Sean, hypocrisy." While Hillary Clinton hasn't directly addressed Fiorina's criticisms, her husband has. “You’ve got to decide, when you do this work, whether it will do more good than harm if someone helps you from another country,” former president Bill Clinton said in March. “And I believe we have done a lot more good than harm. And I believe this is a good thing.”
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:03PM
(Score: 3, Funny) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:35PM
People who own, design and direct businesses that profit from a model based on the extraction and correlation of personal information should be forced by law to live completely naked, in houses made of glass.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:17PM
>privacy in numbers
Just like numbers in war ceased to matter with the invention of the machine gun, the aircraft carrier, and nuclear weapons, numbers in privacy falls before modern data analysis like wheat before the scythe.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:09PM
Just fly around Atherton, Pacifica and so on during the morning and evening rush hours. It won't be hard to recognize who lives where. Then you can publish detailed photographs of their shrubbery.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:50PM
"We want... ....a shrubbery!"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:12PM
Someone wants some privacy and you want to obviate it. You are no better than the scum who would obviate yours.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:29PM
It's only a matter of time before somebody builds a crowdsourcing platform to invade their privacy.
Life is too short to be spent coming up with ways to be a total douchebag.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:33PM
Unfortunately, being a total douchebag is frequently quite profitable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @01:44PM
Being a total douchebag, as martyb demonstrates with his stalking platform idea (which he/she can just as easily become a victim of), is frequently a trait of the not so rich as well.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Tuesday March 24 2015, @02:02PM
I think it's more of a creative thing unless he actually puts it into practice - then he's a douchebag.
That is all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by martyb on Wednesday March 25 2015, @03:03AM
An editor's job is not to put words into the author's mouth. As an editor on SN, I've learned this lesson the hard way. So I now try as much as I reasonably can, to let the original author's words come through. Yes, it is necessary to correct grammatical or spelling errors, and I occasionally let some through. I appreciate the community keeping me on my toes.
The passage in question, and in full context was:
This was left, unchanged, from the original submission [soylentnews.org]; I did not write them.
My reading of it was that these were strictly observations of the current situation and what would likely result from their privacy efforts. The Streisand Effect [wikipedia.org] immediately came to mind. It seemed to me to be an astute observation of the situation and likely outcomes. I suspected that it would lead to a fruitful discussion, and the community had not let me down.
Vehicle analogy time: Many years ago I was heading down an interstate highway. Three-lanes of highway and pretty heavy traffic, but it was moving steady at about 60 mph. And then I noticed a motorcyclist in my rear-view mirror. He was weaving through traffic at a high rate of speed. Passing on the right, passing on the left. I thought "He's giving bikers a bad name" and then "he's going to get into an accident!"
He continued on this fashion until I could no longer see him ahead of me.
About five minutes after that, traffic slowed to a crawl. In the breakdown lane was the biker. He tried to pass a car on the right using the breakdown lane and rear-ended a car that had broken down and been left there. He was unconscious and badly injured. I pulled over to see if I could help, but there was a nurse there already who had things well in hand. When I saw there was nothing I could do to help, I got back in my car and continued on my way.
I observed dangerous driving and predicted an accident. I wished him no ill will. I did not want him to be in an accident. But, given the circumstances, it was a very likely outcome.
One could reasonably expect that these attempts at privacy are not going to work. Having made their fortunes by gathering private information about other people, they somehow think that others will not gather private information about them. Just as they have succeeded in their efforts to gather this information anyway, so too will others succeed in *their* efforts. I have no interest or desire in seeing their privacy invaded, but I would not be surprised should it come to pass.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by rondon on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:32PM
So much AC hate in this thread already! Dang... do rich people post here often as AC, or do these AC's think that because they live in 'Murica (just a guess) they are just one lucky break away from joining the Yacht Club.
I guess if I clung so tightly to outdated visions of class mobility, I would probably post AC as well.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Geezer on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:45PM
Kinda sorta. It used to be called nouveau rich behavior. It's a symptom of narcissistic wannabes who just happen to be a rung or two up from the flippers of their burgers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:59PM
No, it's called having at least a small amount of class and decorum. Believe it or not, that's possible even when you're not rich, and don't have an IPO in the offing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @01:00PM
This is about privacy for all, not class warfare.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:16PM
Yea privacy for alll or privacy for none. I think the hypocrisy of zuckerburgs creating products that mine data from millions of people surreptitiously then using that money to try to buy yourself the privacy that no one else can afford is what's bringing this hate. There's no dignity left on either side here.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday March 24 2015, @01:22PM
They are, in fact, one lucky break away from being really rich. However, the odds of them actually getting that lucky break are approximately 0.000001%, and many of those end up broke again shortly after that lucky break thanks to Sudden Wealth Syndrome.
So the wise folks among us plan on being among the 99.99999% that don't get a lucky break, and instead work our butts off to build a career and ideally some wealth. It's sort of like how people who understand statistics realize that planning for post-apocalyptic scenarios is probably a waste of time, because odds are very good they'll be wiped out in the apocalypse.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @02:01PM
Not AC hate. Just reactions to martyb posting a troll post on the front page of soylentnews.org. He is obviously very unempathetic to what celebrities put up with. For example, swatting is something that celebrities have routinely dealt with for years, but now that gaming channels fall victim to it, it is a "real" problem now. So when anyone wants to reduce the chance of having themselves or pets shot by police, they need to have their privacy invaded even more, according to martyb.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @02:10PM
Definitely not so much AC hate. Just the hate of one warped AC.
We have a phrase for what's being proposed - what's good for the goose is good for the gander. The worst thing about this is that these rich boys are demonstrating that they know the value of privacy, they just choose to devalue the privacy of everybody else for their own benefit. One warped AC will not be able to wrap his head around that fact, pretty much everybody else will see nothing wrong with the idea that these people should get a taste of their own medicine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:54PM
One warped AC will not be able to wrap his head around that fact, pretty much everybody else will see nothing wrong with the idea that these people should get a taste of their own medicine.
Are you saying that these "rich boys" are not being tracked by their ad technology on the Internet and everyone else is? Because I can just about guarantee that they are being tracked too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @07:07PM
Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But the fact that they made the rules means it isn't a level playing field. After all, nobody is talking about doing anything illegal here. Just the application of entirely legal actions to synthesize private information from semi-public knowledge, just like they do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @09:07PM
But the fact that they made the rules means it isn't a level playing field. After all, nobody is talking about doing anything illegal here. Just the application of entirely legal actions to synthesize private information from semi-public knowledge, just like they do.
But said application, just like the application written by people "not on a level playing field", affects everyone. It could just as easily affect the creator of that application as well as the intended target, as well as everyone else. In the end, nothing is gained, the intended target does not learn the intended lesson, and a lot is lost for everyone.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday March 24 2015, @03:25PM
having themselves or pets shot by police
Your choice to live in a country where police are routinely armed.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:50PM
In what country would one have to live in for the Police Not to be armed?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Informative) by isostatic on Tuesday March 24 2015, @07:04PM
Routinely armed, which you don't get in England, Scotland and Wales (there are certain units that are armed, they tend to be the ones at airports and near high profile targets like parliament - still far too many). New Zealand aren't armed either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @03:30PM
Being classist by claiming others are classist while making blanket statements about anyone that does what you do not like simultaneously and synonymously with a nation of 330 million people is far more hateful than anything else in this comment section.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:35PM
Does anyone actually care how Sergey decorates his living room? I mean, I can imagine a small audience for this, but it seems unlikely it would show up in, say, People magazine. I guess how rich people live is fantasy fuel for the masses; we can all compare how we would spend those billions to how they did or hate on them for being so profligate. But it just seems like the lifestyles of our tech overlords are a bit less juicy than those of people like Kanye and Kim.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:41PM
I mean, I can imagine a small audience for this
Maybe they're not interested in "brand dilution" having most non-tech people know them from the side of a plumbers truck proudly announcing "I am the plumber who installed Sergey's shitter"
(Score: 4, Funny) by Geezer on Tuesday March 24 2015, @01:04PM
Perhaps, but more likely they fear the embarrassment of public revelations of bloody diapers in the johnny plumbing, dead kittens jammed in the kitchen disposal, and the like. Bad for the old portfolio, donchaknow.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday March 24 2015, @01:29PM
Sounds likely, also the announcement of belt tightening outsourcing all the programmers to India and firing 10K americans the same day some plumber reports on facebook or whatever that he just installed a solid gold kitchen sink at Mr Belt Tightener's house. Or sorry raises will only be 1% absolute max comes out the same day some carpenter starts work on the new 6 car garage to hold all the brand new Ferraris from the executive bonus, etc.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:26PM
You know, I would rather have a 1% raise of 5,000,000 than a 99% raise of 50,000.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 24 2015, @03:14PM
The arc of my life has been such that I grew up in a place remote from power, wealth, and fame, and thereby was one of those who received the larger-than-life portrayal of those things; but as an adult, in the big cities of the world, cheek-and-jowl with the ultra-wealthy and gaining access to their private gardens, I see what they oppress and steal and cheat and murder to get, and it's pathetic. It's pitiable. And worse, it's cheesy.
First, none of those people is happy. They're miserable. They waste money and collect experiences like badges that stand as a simulacrum for having real worth as a human being. But in their heart-of-hearts they know they don't, and that discrepancy between their actions and their quest for meaning is the engine that drives their viciousness. They destroy because it gives them an infintesimal approximation of the sensation of being relevant to humanity. Very much most of the time, none of them has creative moxy or self-actualization to be admired for what they can do, only for their power to destroy; so, that's what they do.
Second, even if they manage to use their resources to build palaces for themselves, the palaces themselves give them no satisfaction unless they also make someone miserable whose misery they desire. Most of the time, though, their palaces are cheesy and unfit for any person of discernment. And if they have a palace and desire no one's envy in particular, they still derive no pleasure from them because they are never there. Saying to your cohorts in the squash club in Manhattan that you have a hunting lodge in Hawaii brings more pleasure than the actual thing itself.
It's all a grand carnival of mental illness and social dysfunction, but where things get serious is where their dysfunction impedes the ability of normal, healthy people to pursue their just lives and continue the project of human advancement. We are at that point. When their picadillos result in people starving, children dying, and our society and/or environment collapsing, then they must be put down like rabid dogs.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Jiro on Wednesday March 25 2015, @05:31AM
Sounds like you have a serious case of sour grapes here.
(Score: 1) by mmarujo on Wednesday March 25 2015, @04:54PM
Where's my "I so f#ing wish you are wrong" mod when you need it?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 24 2015, @03:14PM
"It's only a matter of time before somebody builds a crowdsourcing platform to invade their privacy."
Why? Does someone, somewhere, really give a damn?
And that's what kills me about people who want to invade EVERYONE'S privacy. Why? Really, WTF? If you have a life of your own, you would have no need to nose into other people's lives.
Zuckerberg's house? Gate's house? Crap, I just don't GIVE A DAMN! The only parts of their lives that I'm slightly interested in, is their business. And, I'm not even very much interested in their business interests, since I run Linux, and don't do Facebook any more that necessary. (Read "necessary" as meaning that Facebook knows when the daughter in law is pregnant before anyone near home knows.)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:02PM
> Why? Does someone, somewhere, really give a damn?
Does it matter? These guys think privacy is valuable - they arrange to monetize the loss of our privacy for their benefit, that's reason enough to do the same to them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:13PM
They're masters of the universe. We're commodities to be packaged, bought and sold.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:25PM
The same people who espouse "if you did nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide" and who have worked meticulously to strip everyone else of their privacy (and who have stripped the majority of wealth from the majority, but that's a separate topic), their actions do not match their words.
Here is the point, for those of you who missed it: these people are chronically lying sociopaths bordering on dictators. Not really news, but it'll add fuel to the log pile for when the fire gets going.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!