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canopic jug writes:

Christine Hall of FOSS Force has interviewed Richard Stallman with a series of seven questions. The interview wraps up with a question about LLMs and a question about service as a software substitute which leads to a discussion about digital surveillance.

Let’s contrast this with traditional systems of age verification to see how much worse this is. When you buy alcoholic beverages, a store clerk will ask to see your ID, but won’t record your identity, only take note of your age. That practice respects your privacy; its surveillance impact is null. But digital age verification systems record who you are, and precisely everything you do.

At 73 years old, I am sure all the sites that do age verification would rule I am old enough. But doing the age verification would give them my name or an ID number, and I refuse to give them that.

Because of my age, I am entitled to a discount card for the Boston trains and buses. But the card would record my identity every time I board a subway train or bus. I would rather pay full fare than submit to that.

I don’t own a car, or want to, but we need to stop cars from reporting where people go. I hope to find a mechanic who will work out how to convert connected cars into “disconnected cars.” I think it could be done by wrapping some sort of metal sheets around the antennas that transmit privacy-violating data, or receive GPS. Or perhaps just unscrewing them. To do navigation, use a stand-alone GPS receiver that isn’t connected to the car’s surveillance system.

One of the dangers of tech companies storing your personal data — and personal data about you — in their servers is that agents of repression can get that data from the company without even informing you.

For more about digital surveillance, see
https://gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html.

One long-running theme which RMS emphasizes is that software freedom remains a moral issue.

Previously:
(2023) The Four Freedoms and The One Obligation of Free Software
(2018) Happy 35th Birthday GNU!
(2018) RMS on a Radical Proposal to Keep Your Personal Data Safe
(2017) The Free Software Movement is Barking Up the Wrong Tree
(2017) US Court Upholds Enforceability of GNU GPL as Both a License and a Contract
(2015) GNU Prophet Richard Stallman Calls Windows and MacOS Malware

Original Submission