Cast-off Gadgets Spy on Owners (on Purpose for a Change) 73
Eric Smalley writes "For the project, dubbed Backtalk, researchers sent refurbished Netbooks to developing countries via nonprofit organizations. They set up the computers to record location and pictures, and send the data home to MIT--with their new owners' consent... The MIT team used the data to build visual narratives about the computers' new lives."
Re:Typical (Score:4, Insightful)
exploit the poor to create "visual narratives". ... Consent is easy to get when there are no alternatives in the 3rd world hell holes they ship these too
This is exactly right; granted, the rest of your post was inflammatory and mostly unnecessary. It doesn't matter whether it's Massachusetts or anywhere else; it's not like this sort of thing is limited to one state.
In effect - "Sell your privacy for a netbook."
How many Slashdot readers would let someone spy on them in exchange for getting a cheap laptop? Not many, because we can afford not to... this is exploiting the poor, no different than letting rental companies install spying software on their rental laptops [slashdot.org] (which happened in Pennsylvania).
Re:It's ok we have "permisison" (Score:4, Insightful)
"Negative" aspects of agreements are essentially part of the cost weighed by actors within a market. If a person wants to choose to be part of this project instead of paying a higher upfront cost, it is to the mutual benefit of both parties. I don't see how it is unethical to give somebody an economic advantage in exchange for consent to some random images. The only argument against it that would still benefit the participants in this project is that they could afford to dispose of the equipment without the condition, which while true would offer less motivation to do so, which reduces if not eliminates supply, and so the poor get nothing.
In the end the Hobson's Choice still provides the willing with a service they otherwise could not have. If it is really a system wherein one must accept a small negative effect to receive a larger positive effect, is it really fair for you or anybody other than the interested parties to determine that it should be nothing instead? Isn't it presumptuous to assume that just because you might not act under the same conditions, that those conditions should not be offered at all?
In the end it's a damn better use of the devices than junking them and letting them end up in a toxic heap in the same countries to be picked over by urchins who will get lead poisoning melting them down.
Re:Typical (Score:3, Insightful)
Their privacy shouldn't be negotiable.
Ipse dixit, eh? Who exactly died and made you king? If their privacy is, for whatever reason, worth more than their labor, who are you to say that they should not able to use this value about themselves?
This is just like the people who argue against legal prostitution. They assume that it is somehow intrinsically harmful and debasing and that nobody actually wants to do it, or if they do it must be because they have problems, because these people who lobby against it and generally have little to no first hand knowledge of the practice or its practitioners know better than they do what they should want and why.
People should be allowed to decide for themselves what they want to do. Get out of their business and stop telling people what they should and shouldn't want just because you think you're more morally sophisticated and developed than they are. If you are really advocating for respect than start with respecting people's decisions about their own lives.
Re:Typical (Score:3, Insightful)
Typical Massachusetts, exploit the poor to create "visual narratives". The whole state is deranged by some kind of progressive-ism mind virus. Consent is easy to get when there are no alternatives in the 3rd world hell holes they ship these too, this is just disgusting.
I fail to see how they're being exploited. I understand some people think taking their picture will steal their soul, but I kind of assumed the desire to use modern electronics meant these people weren't of that type. So, what do they lose?
I actually wondered about the "refurbished electronics to 3rd world countries" business as i heard it was just big business attempt to avoid e-recycling/e-waste costs while skirting international law. Since it is illegal to dump used electronics in 3rd world countries, they "donate" them as refurbished so the other country then has to deal with disposing of them. This shows the programs, at least some of them, are benefiting real people. It puts a human face on the programs.
As the immortal Martha would say, It's a good thing.