A strange style of writing for an analyst at Gartner. It left me more with an impression of some Reddit rant.
On another note, I am fine with him wanting to publish his data everywhere and perpetually (if his insurance premiums rise, will he still be ok with that?). But don't impose that on me; I want my data shared with as few as possible.
You obviously hold Gartner to a higher standard than I do.
You'd be better off ignoring their "Magic Quadrants" and looking for IT recommendations on Reddit.
> Look, my name is Anton Chuvakin (oh, no, nooo, nooo…this is “pee-ai-ai” leak … nooo!!!) , and I had my main email on my website
The key here being you voluntarily disclosed this.
> For god’s sake, have these privacy crusaders heard of phone books?
You can have an unlisted number.
>Similarly, if my hospital wants to share my health data with a pharma company and they pool it and then use it to develop cancer cure and make billions – you know, I am OK with that.
Great. Then the hospital can ask you for permission before they use your data.
> I am OK with being profiled online and seeing well-targeted ads.
I'm not
> some of it may feel creepy (uncommon, unexpected, weird, etc), but there is no harm to you and there is definitely value for you.
The value is "more relevant ads." You know what? I hate all ads. I don't care if they're relevant.
The harm is, some company has a list of everywhere I go on the internet. They say it's anonymized, but it's not really. They say it won't be shared with anyone, but they have crappy security so someone could steal that information. They say it will only be used to help target ads, but how can they prevent an abusive government from accessing all that data? The best thing to do is just not collect the data in the first place. (Unless it's absolutely necessary for the service, and you consent to it in an obvious way.)
This shouldn't be on gartner, and shouldn't be on hacker news. This guy's argument is a joke. He completely misunderstands, or is ignorant of, the privacy issues that led to the creation of the GDPR.
I've all ways found the premise that "targeted ads make your life better" utter BS. It is predicated on the premise that the advertised products would improve the consumer's life more than if they had not been exposed to the ad and more than the cost of the product. Increasing the efficiency of your money extracting engine does not make the world a better place, it just means you are more efficient at finding victims.
>>Please, don’t be stupid, PRIVACY IS NOT A HUMAN RIGHT. Privacy is at best a preference of some people; at worst, a luxury for spoiled neurotics.
I believe privacy is a human right, but the problem here is that the EU bureaucrats who formulated the GDPR regime are conflating the collection of voluntarily disclosed PII with a violation of privacy rights.
Warrantless searches are violations of privacy rights. So are income disclosure laws and the misnamed anti-money-laundering laws. In all these cases, non-compliance to what is essentially a morally unjustifiable invasion of one's private sphere means imprisonment or worse.
A company collecting data that you choose to disclose to it when you browse the website it serves you is not. It's qualitatively no different than someone remembering PII you disclosed to them when you went out for a walk, or went to their house, or had a conversation with them.
Others should not be forced to treat your actions and words as privileged information when they have never consented to entering into a privileged relationship with you.
The only one of his point's I'll agree with is that strawman that GPDR would protect against a holocaust. This is similar to the gun-rights fetishists who claim that absolute rights to personal firearms ownership will prevent the next dictatorship. (your handgun will be useless against a Predator drone)
Both are anachronistic. If you live in an advanced democracy, the primary threats to loss of privacy are criminal (identity theft), and discriminatory (banks, insurance companies, employers) using personal, private information to discriminate against you.
Interjecting dire scenarios of SkyNet or Holocausts is not really helpful to the debate _in developed countries_.
Ok, I'll bring up another point. Obsession with health record privacy actually will kill people. Being able to correlate medical histories with diseases and outcomes would go a long way to developing cured or diagnostic tests. If you live in a country with guaranteed healthcare, and don't pay private insurance, it seems a ridiculous fear. I'll list my medical conditions right here: Gout, Acid Reflux, Prehypertension, abnormal liver enzymes, Gall Stones. Does it bother me one iota that any entity knows this? Not in the least. But I'll acknowledge, at least in the US, with discrimination against pre-existing conditions, or private insurance policies, this is a risky proposition. But the solution is to get single-payer healthcare in the US, not fight private insurance evils by walling off medical data that could save lives. (I'm talking about "anonymized" records of course, even though we know with sufficient effort, you can deanonymize data)
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 36.7 ms ] threadOn another note, I am fine with him wanting to publish his data everywhere and perpetually (if his insurance premiums rise, will he still be ok with that?). But don't impose that on me; I want my data shared with as few as possible.
The key here being you voluntarily disclosed this.
> For god’s sake, have these privacy crusaders heard of phone books?
You can have an unlisted number.
>Similarly, if my hospital wants to share my health data with a pharma company and they pool it and then use it to develop cancer cure and make billions – you know, I am OK with that.
Great. Then the hospital can ask you for permission before they use your data.
> I am OK with being profiled online and seeing well-targeted ads.
I'm not
> some of it may feel creepy (uncommon, unexpected, weird, etc), but there is no harm to you and there is definitely value for you.
The value is "more relevant ads." You know what? I hate all ads. I don't care if they're relevant.
The harm is, some company has a list of everywhere I go on the internet. They say it's anonymized, but it's not really. They say it won't be shared with anyone, but they have crappy security so someone could steal that information. They say it will only be used to help target ads, but how can they prevent an abusive government from accessing all that data? The best thing to do is just not collect the data in the first place. (Unless it's absolutely necessary for the service, and you consent to it in an obvious way.)
This shouldn't be on gartner, and shouldn't be on hacker news. This guy's argument is a joke. He completely misunderstands, or is ignorant of, the privacy issues that led to the creation of the GDPR.
The overriding point is that you don't get to decide my behaviour or the rules that I want imposed on myself (the laws I will vote for).
Also, as a separate note, this person is not good at making a convincing argument.
>>Please, don’t be stupid, PRIVACY IS NOT A HUMAN RIGHT. Privacy is at best a preference of some people; at worst, a luxury for spoiled neurotics.
I believe privacy is a human right, but the problem here is that the EU bureaucrats who formulated the GDPR regime are conflating the collection of voluntarily disclosed PII with a violation of privacy rights.
Warrantless searches are violations of privacy rights. So are income disclosure laws and the misnamed anti-money-laundering laws. In all these cases, non-compliance to what is essentially a morally unjustifiable invasion of one's private sphere means imprisonment or worse.
A company collecting data that you choose to disclose to it when you browse the website it serves you is not. It's qualitatively no different than someone remembering PII you disclosed to them when you went out for a walk, or went to their house, or had a conversation with them.
Others should not be forced to treat your actions and words as privileged information when they have never consented to entering into a privileged relationship with you.
Both are anachronistic. If you live in an advanced democracy, the primary threats to loss of privacy are criminal (identity theft), and discriminatory (banks, insurance companies, employers) using personal, private information to discriminate against you.
Interjecting dire scenarios of SkyNet or Holocausts is not really helpful to the debate _in developed countries_.
Ok, I'll bring up another point. Obsession with health record privacy actually will kill people. Being able to correlate medical histories with diseases and outcomes would go a long way to developing cured or diagnostic tests. If you live in a country with guaranteed healthcare, and don't pay private insurance, it seems a ridiculous fear. I'll list my medical conditions right here: Gout, Acid Reflux, Prehypertension, abnormal liver enzymes, Gall Stones. Does it bother me one iota that any entity knows this? Not in the least. But I'll acknowledge, at least in the US, with discrimination against pre-existing conditions, or private insurance policies, this is a risky proposition. But the solution is to get single-payer healthcare in the US, not fight private insurance evils by walling off medical data that could save lives. (I'm talking about "anonymized" records of course, even though we know with sufficient effort, you can deanonymize data)