Not sure how to say this: HN keeps linking to articles that are behind "the first ones free" paywalls. Admittedly, I recently read two articles on New Yorker that were thought provoking, and perhaps that is why people subscribe, but should we not be linking to news that we can get without walls?
It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. "
So, I am off topic, and behind a paywall :)
Once again, I need to find a new place to read great news.
Not a convincing argument. You need people to agree with you if you want to win in a democracy. This attitude, while entirely understandable, will leave you alone and naked.
If the majority is big enough it bloody well can. And it will. Protection of minorities only exists because the majority wants it.
Not that it is relevant in this conversation: “people who value privacy” are not a group considered a minority who need protecting from the majority. If you want people to help you protect your privacy, you need to convince them, plain and simple. Asking the electorate for help in electing privacy conscious officials and telling them to fuck off when asked why is going to get us absolutely nowhere. That’s the plain truth of our privacy debate today: we are losing, and we need help but we can’t convince people to help us. Ideas of civil liberty are not cutting it. Evidently.
If you need any more convincing, look at how the public sees Snowden. And weep.
Yes, that's the surface response, but what's deeper than that?
Ultimately I think it's a rational fear of being ostracized (or worse) for having believed or done something deemed by the group to be "not OK". The right to privacy shoes us to explore the nature of ourselves without harming others and without putting us in danger of violating social norms.
The counter argument might be that with more visibility and openness, the more tolerant we all might be if each others faults, but unfortunately history does not seem to demonstrate this.
Information wants to be free, its make more sense to promote openness and transparency.
LGBT is gaining acceptance, one of the reason is I believe its because its more visible.
There should still be some way for individuals to have the possibility to experience different facets of themselves. To give a stereotypical example, a middle-aged software programmer might want to experiment with psychedelic substances once in a while without the hassle of having to explain it to people in more mainstream spheres of his life. If every encounter has to be accounted for and recorded, this introduces significant mental strain and ends up impoverishing our lives.
So the issue is, in this context, to be able to experiment with psychedelic substances without hassle. Why do I have to explain it to people in the first place? Maybe because lack of information of knowledge about psychedelic substances ? More transparency and openness can help.
Another example, Why I do I feel the need to close the bathroom door when I take a dump ? Because it considered taboo or weird. But if more and more people take a dump with the door open, it will be less weird.
I mean it more in the sense of different social worlds. For instance you might relate differently to your relatives than with your friends. You might act in a certain way with some friends and not with other circles without it being duplicitous, but rather different facets of your identity that could not find an adequate expression if every aspect of your life was socially interlinked with every other.
Even if norms change to be far more permissive, there will still be issues with this. Besides, norms are never that permissive in absolute terms since some form of hierarchy quickly sets itself up in response to changing circumstances. For instance in some past contexts a young man might want to hide his promiscuity and adventurous experiences, whereas in some modern contexts he might want to hide his lack of promiscuity and adventurous (instagrammable?) experiences.
Norms always change and I will always have to adapt. In the near future, the advancement of technology make it harder and harder to keep information private. So I better be get used to worlds where every aspect of my life is socially interlinked with every other.
Of course. One should always fight for their believe. If someone doesn't like the open-door-dumps then he/she should do whatever they can to prevent it. Likewise If I prefer open-door-dumps then I better work on to make it happen.
Yes, it would be way easier if everyone on Earth was kind and understanding. But vulnerability might not feel safe in an environment where we know there are real social and economic consequences for being vulnerable about certain things.
Until we stop judging each other, the right to privacy seems pretty important. That doesn't mean you always have to exercise it, but it should be your right.
There are plenty of counterexamples. If I have an illness no amount of "openness" from others is going to solve the problem that someone might not want to hire me because of it.
There are different kinds of visibility. LGBT people are more publicly visible now because society is more accepting, and society has become more accepting largely as other people have come to know LGBT people in their individual lives. Being able to choose what they shared, with whom, when, where, and how has been an important part of that.
No, not really, it actually goes a quite deep. In a liberal democracy, it is not the citizens who need to justify their desire for privacy, it is the state that needs to justify impinging on it. This is very important, because the state always has Very Good Reasons™ for impinging on your privacy (and other rights).
Agreed, but saying "because I said so" doesn't really communicate your concerns. "I shouldn't have to because..." tends to help promote mutual understanding.
Not a bad article at all. A big chunk of it is a review of "The Known Citizen A History of Privacy in Modern America" by Sarah E. Igo
I like this quote:
"This means the freedom to choose what to do with your body, or who can see your personal information, or who can monitor your movements and record your calls—who gets to surveil your life and on what grounds."
(I always like to see just how much garbage uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger block on articles that are privacy focused. This one might be a new record: 51 and 18 respectively)
"People are inconsistent about the kind of exposure they’ll tolerate. We don’t like to be fingerprinted by government agencies, a practice we associate with mug shots and state surveillance, but we happily hand our thumbprints over to Apple, which does God knows what with them."
Great point. People say they care about privacy but willingly Instagram and Snapchat and YouTube every minor detail about their lives.
Not everyone of course, but a lot. Facebook has what, 2.1 billion users?
There's a vast asymmetry between the privacy people say they want and in reality how quickly they'll give it up in exchange for free services.
But this article is a good legal history of American law.
>There's a vast asymmetry between the privacy people say they want and in reality how quickly they'll give it up in exchange for free services.
This is a very interesting point. I think people don't really acknowledge how much convenience they gain from giving up their privacy. Much of the online discussion around GDPR seemed to be about this issue. People didn't seem top acknowledge just how much they gain from it.
I guess this is why it was made into a regulation, so people don't have to make the choice of whether to use an online service or keep their privacy.
Your fingerprint data is encrypted, stored on device, and protected with a key available only to the Secure Enclave. Your fingerprint data is used only by the Secure Enclave to verify that your fingerprint matches the enrolled fingerprint data. It can’t be accessed by the OS on your device or by any applications running on it. It's never stored on Apple servers, it's never backed up to iCloud or anywhere else, and it can't be used to match against other fingerprint databases.
I just took a random survey of 5 people around me. 5 out of 5 didn't know that, and assumed Apple had a copy of their fingerprint.
The point, in case you missed it? The fact that privacy is not actually given up doesn't matter. People are willing to give it up to gain some perceived benefit.
What you're posting on Facebook you have more or less complete control over. You can freely exclude aspects of your life that are not flattering or which you don't want others to know about (in practice Facebook collects plenty of information you might not want to share, but this is less obvious and not a core part of the functionality for users).
Like you said people are `willingly` Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube and it's the information they choose to share. We can't blame people for being on social media. Because they expose what they want to show.
They can still be concerned google, facebook recording their every click, what grabbed their attention and precise information about their politicial views, or government surveillance.
First one is what you choose to share, another one is basically log of your activities even you don't know how much information it includes.
In an article full of legal cases and law, I am a bit surprised to not hear one of the better argument for privacy.
Put me in a legal case where I (and only I) have full access to mobile data and Internet traffic for each of the 12 juries, judge, lawyers, prosecutor and their families and friends. Does the design of the legal system still work when one party can use data together with machine intelligence in order to figure out how to influence and manipulate the participants? I think the answer is a clear No, and I have heard a professor of legal history come to the same conclusion. The legal system as it is currently designed can not operate without privacy, and it is hard to imagine a system that can.
>> The legal system as it is currently designed can not operate without privacy, and it is hard to imagine a system that can.
Actually, it's very simple. You yourself hinted at it:
> Put me in a legal case where I (and only I) have full access...
You had to specify "and only I", otherwise your argument would not make sense. Now suppose everybody has access to the same data, and voilà!, your power just vanished.
Does it? I would image that a legal system where lawyers and prosecutors both can use machine learning and unlimited data to maximize what methods to use in order to influence judge, jury, witnesses and so on would be quite different from a legal system designed to find the truth.
Through even if we assume so, how would everyone get equal access to the data, algorithms and processing power? If cases are resolved based on who owns most of those resources can we still claim to have a just legal system?
I totally agree.. though to play devils advocate, I do have to wonder how different what you describe is from the traditional system.
By traditional system, I mean; who is the best lawyer? One who can most effectively manipulate the jury towards their clients case. It sounds jaded, but mechanically I think it's true, no? And what makes one lawyer better at this? Perhaps training, personal talent, etc.
So in the two scenarios, you have:
1. a lawyer wins because s/he's more talented/trained at manipulation.
2. a lawyer wins because s/he's obtained a better ML software suite for processing data.
Is there a meaningful distinction here? Before ML, you always wanted to hire a "good" lawyer. So there were already meaningful differences between good and bad lawyers. Lawyers always tried to manipulate the jury. Lawyers always tried to sell the facts around their case in such a way as to be most effective.
I'm not sure how ML will alter this. Aside from cranking the dial to 11.
> If cases are resolved based on who owns most of those resources can we still claim to have a just legal system?
That's already the case. Poor people get a public defender, which usually means taking the offer. Rich people can jam up the courts for years, and can get out of it.
> Now suppose everybody has access to the same data, and voilà!, your power just vanished
I disagree completely. People are far easier to convince or manipulate if you know just a few things about them. For someone trained in appealing to people/making arguments, it'd be all about dropping in the right words and making the right suggestions.
Isn't that what we all do with advertising? It's why (some of) it works so well on Facebook. Everyone has access to the same targeting, some people understand better than others how to make their ads work.
How do you plan to do this without breaking other laws? I.e. if Blackmail is not an option? I say this because Blackmail is only an option for a very small set of actors.
Nobody was proposing blackmail. They were talking about bespoking the defence/prosecution for each individual juror based on their personal information.
We're already seeing it with political ads. It isn't that crazy to imagine lawyers using every [legal] advantage available to them.
That's not too compelling to me. One of the principles of a jury is that it is of your peers, which implies that to some extent you do know them and they know you. A jury of perfect strangers unrelated to you is not constitutional.
> jury is that it is of your peers, which implies that to some extent you do know them and they know you
Does not follow. I'm not aware of any context where that's part of what "peer" means.
> A jury of perfect strangers unrelated to you is not constitutional.
Generally speaking, if you're not a perfect stranger, you're kicked off a jury for conflict of interest.
A "jury of one's peers" means people in the same social class as you, i.e. a jury that is not biased against you. The word "peer" is a hold-over from English society with more pronounced social classes, and is meant strictly as a counterbalance against those social classes.
Note that the Consitution itself doesn't actually contain the word "peer," but rather uses the phrase "impartial jury."
Just to be evenhanded here, I suspect that in most criminal cases the jurors are likely NOT in the same social class as the defendant.
That said, having jurors be people you know seems a little unfair too. So a jury of perfect strangers seems greatly unfair in the postulated context of asymmetric privacy, and a jury of friends seems unfair as it's possible they would let you off regardless of evidence.
Problem is, asymmetric privacy is a reality today. So, yeah, tough problem.
There's a big difference in broadcasting what you are doing and giving over every piece of data to the organization with a monopoly on violence, who demands a large percentage of all the labor you do in your life and does not share the same transparency with you.
The kind of absence of privacy between consumers and internet giants is also a massive power imbalance: they know many useful and compromising things about billions of consumers. What do we know about Mark Zuckerberg?
I know that some self-serving bullshit about post-privacy came out of Facebook, but I don't see Zuckerberg or Sandberg leading by example.
I dont feel that the question was truly answered. WHY do we care? The author writes about human behavior and discusses the 'natural right' of privacy but arent natural rights just customs from previous generations. Observing human behavior might suggest that privacy somehow is a desired trait from natural selection. ie when pooping, animals are more vulnerable (maybe) suggesting that privacy somehow aids in security from preditors. Financial Transactional data privacy allows a competitive advantage on future trades.
Basically id like to hear arguments that get down to the fundamental reasons why humans care about privacy.
I have two reasons for wanting privacy. For practical reasons, the less info that is "out there" about me reduces the attack surface for scammers, ID thieves and the like.
But leaving aside crime and misuse concerns a more fundamental reason why I want privacy is simply because that is my personal preference. And that is a preference I shouldn't have to justify to anyone. I suppose if I were pushed to provide some kind of a justification I would say that I get comfort from knowing that I am privy to information that no one else is - it helps to define me as an individual.
"I'm considerably more pro-privacy than I was a few years ago. A few years ago, my position was closer to "in a well-running society it's probably optimal that everyone sees everything, the value for privacy tech for ordinary people is (i) to let them buy weed, put up beds so people can sleep over in offices, and otherwise circumvent silly regulations, and (ii) to maintain a healthy balance of power, because even if more transparency is good, the government only having the all-seeing eye and everyone else being in the dark would give too much power to the government".
Things that changed my mind, and made me believe that even in a hypothetical perfectly equal and fair society people having some privacy is a good idea include:
- Reading Robin Hanson and others' literature on signalling, and seeing just how large a portion of our lives it still is. Basically, I see privacy as a way to prevent signalling concerns from encompassing all of our activity, and creating spheres where we are free to optimize for our own happiness and just our own happiness, and not what other people think about us.
- Having a deeper understanding of the ways that it's possible to make other people's lives suck even as a law-abiding private citizen, and realizing that privacy is an important self-defense tool for those situations.
- Realizing more deeply that "the people" are not always virtuous, and that social pressure as a mechanism for influencing people's behavior doesn't always lead to results I approve of (see: recent string of internet mobs leading to people getting fired for political views). Realizing how bad mainstream media is even today, which makes me more understanding of people's desire to protect themselves from them.
Mass surveillance is problematic because (i) I don't trust governments and large corporations to have interests that are aligned with us, and (ii) it creates points of centralized data collection that could get hacked, leading to everyone getting that data even if that was never the original intention. That said, in the physical space it's pretty unavoidable, so we should at least work hard to make the internet a more privacy-preserving place."
The "in a well-running society it's probably optimal that everyone sees everything" view is something practically only held by people who don't deviate in any significant way from societal norms. It's obvious to "deviants" -- or people sharing minimal insight into the actual breadth of people's behaviours and tastes -- that it's not at all something to strive for.
A society of the "everyone sees everything" kind is a tyranny of the masses not just limited to your usual racism and whatnot, but crushing down on literally every property of a human being. Your run-of-the-mill Orwellian nightmare is a fluffy wonderland of individualism in comparison.
There's a thread of thought, in amongst radical transparency memes, that bringing these things out into the light will increase acceptance of deviation (... as a good thing).
That may well be wrong, but I don't think it's obviously wrong. FWIW, I think it's probably true that the dynamic will exist, but it probably won't be enough to defang your argument.
>that bringing these things out into the light will increase acceptance of deviation
Eh, there is a lot of very complex sociology going on here. Deviation is rather not accepted by humanity, our species is rather homogeneous, and has remained so across long periods of time and cultures.
Deviants that have a significant size will probably survive. It's the very small clusters of new deviations that are apt to be eradicated before they can get a foothold.
Actually I think that reinforces the point I made about who thinks in these ways. Either that or a distinct lack of empathy / regard for the well-being of all those that would suffer in their "utopy".
We care so much about privacy because prior to WWII millions of Jews who were innocently going about their every day business filled out a census that asked them their religion. Their religion was no more illegal than their existence. A few years later they were being exterminated like vermin in an attempt to eradicate them from Europe based entirely on a checkbox on a form. The home address they freely provided sealing their fate.
"I'm not doing anything wrong, I have nothing to hide. If you're trying to hide, you must be a criminal."
I pray that nothing you do innocently today becomes public knowledge and retroactively treated as a crime that threatens not only your livelihood, but your very life and the lives of those you hold most dear.
That. That is why privacy should be in our hands. We should be able to choose the information we divulge to the world about ourselves. Not have the world know every last thing about us.
Witch hunts happen. They happen today as often as in the days of the Salem Witch Trials. Black people in the southern States live in an atmosphere of racism, wondering if the cop pulling them over will beat them or kill them... most cops aren't racist. Women everywhere live in an atmosphere of sexism, yet most men aren't sexist misogynists. LGBQT live in an atmosphere of not being accepted and have their lives threatened regularly just because of who they are sexually attracted to. If you don't think you could be on the receiving end of a witch hunt just because your life is "boring", you are as naive as you are ignorant.
Privacy matters. That's why attorney client privilege exists. That's why the 5th Amendment exists. That's why the right to remain silent exists. Just because there is a void in public information about you, doesn't mean it needs to be filled.
gun owners are going through this right now. This is why gun owners are so sensitive to any registration. They know that gun registries are a precursor to gun confiscation and prosecution.
Historically speaking governments have always been the worst perpetrators of violence on their own people.
"This is what car owners and house owners are going through right now, they know that car and house registries are precursors to confiscation and prosecution."
The insurance companies with a "put this device that monitors everything you do in the car, tracking you wherever you go, whatever you do and we'll give you an insurance discount."
Um... you could give me an almost 100% discount and I'm still not giving you the very ammunition that you will use against me at the first opportunity I need to make a claim despite never having made an insurance claim in the last 20 years. Not to mention, I'm not having you watch everywhere I go, when I go, building a profile about where I spend my time, who I spend that time with, when I do that, when I'm home, when I'm not home. You can have the mandatory information I must give you in order to be able to drive my car and take care of people in the event of an accident. Beyond that, I'm not giving you anything.
Of course when you crash into me and it's your fault, you'll just walk away because I doubt that you'll be able to pay for your mistake, and MY insurance and my money will be spent to cover for your inadequacies.
Freedom is not free, except you just want others to pay, it's the classic argument against government.
My insurance is fully comprehensive and is plenty enough to cover taking care of whatever is damaged and whoever is hurt.
The wording of your statement makes a lot of assumptions about the kind of person I am and my level of responsibility towards others without you even knowing me.
> "Historically speaking governments have always been the worst perpetrators of violence on their own people."
Yes, when people talk about deaths and dangers it's amazing to me that just about every other cause of death is so tiny compared to the numbers our own governments have produced.
and in the case of the Jews as I highlighted, the violence perpetrated by the government underwritten by data freely given by the hand of those in jeopardy, writing their own death warrant.
On one hand, I think free access to data could be both fascinating and beneficial to the entire human race if used benevolently. But let's face it. History has shown us that any company with access to this data will eventually share it or sell it to someone less scrupulous and it will end up being used against those who gave it freely in the first place thinking that it was either safe or at least couldn't harm them.
It's worse than just confiscation. The Journal News created an interactive map of permit holders[0] in New York. It is not hard to see how this information could be misused by criminals looking to acquire a weapon, cop-haters (lots of them are cops or retired cops) or others.
I disagree with gun registries being a precursor to confiscation and prosecution. I think the Government in their wisdom is trying to do the right thing. Having weapons registered means that if a crime occurs with a gun, it can be traced to a legal owner and they can be held accountable for the crime. This in turn means that legal gun owners will be more responsible with the storage and use of their weapons which will reduce the amount of crimes perpetrated by "legal" weapons. It will mean that if a weapon is stolen, it will be reported as such because the registered owner doesn't want to be held accountable for a crime with a stolen weapon.
There is much good that can come from registration. It will lead to more responsible gun owners.
However, the argument on the other side of the fence is also true - criminals will always be able to get unfettered access to illegal weapons. However, those weapons will have to be smuggled into the country, not stolen from those who purchased them through legal channels.
But just like the Jews, if you've got a gun and owning a gun becomes a crime that the government decide to enforce retroactively, then you have effectively signed your arrest warrant by registering them.
I don't think this is their intention however. Their intention is merely to hold legal gun owners to a standard of care that I believe they should be held and currently aren't. They're saying "if you own a gun, you're going to be expected to care for it responsibly. If you do not care for it responsibly, you are going to be held accountable for the damage it causes."
But you know what they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The government has a history of making laws that seem to be well intended that end up being exploited because they're overreaching while saying "oh, we don't mean that, we'll never enforce it in that way."
They also have a history of pushing through unpopular legislation by tacking it onto bills they can force it through with by holding congress over a barrel. "If you want this, you have to agree to this too." I view this as malpractice and a corrupt way of introducing legislation, but this seems to be an accepted way of behaving which leaves me aghast every time I see it.
> I disagree with gun registries being a precursor to confiscation and prosecution.
I have two friends who openly advocate for this method of removing guns from the US. Regardless, I think this is something gun owners fear. When Canada had a registration list, it seized weapons that were legal when purchased and later made illegal by bureaucratic decision, without compensation.
Indeed. I've also known people who had legally owned antique weapons they'd been grandfathered by deceased parents illegally seized and had to fight through the courts to get them back. They got them back eventually, but not everyone is that lucky.
>I disagree with gun registries being a precursor to confiscation and prosecution.
So gun owners shouldn't fear gun registries as a precursor to prosecution?
Yet in the very next sentence you advocate for prosecuting gun owners under a strict liability that holds them responsible for anything that happens using their gun.
>But you know what they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I'd say you've already gone too far when you criminalize someone getting their property stolen.
Why shouldn't you be held under strict liability for anything that happens using your gun? It is a tool for killing. If it is used to kill someone because you didn't store it responsibly, it was stolen and you didn't report it stolen, why exactly shouldn't you be held accountable for your part in that? You were accessory to a crime by your negligence to store your weapon responsibly.
I also didn't say you shouldn't fear gun registries being a precursor to confiscation. I suggested that the spoken intent is to hold gun owners to a higher standard of care of their weapons. I totally understand that there may be unspoken intent to use it as a precursor to confiscation, and while I don't believe this to be so, you're right to be wary of this. But frankly I think too many gun owners are criminally complacent about ownership and storage of their weapons.
A gun is serious, it should be treated as such. Store it safely and properly, if you don't store it safely and properly and you're caught in that position (i.e. by having it stolen, not reporting it as stolen and used in a crime), then you should be at least be charged for negligence. I don't think there's anything wrong with this - a gun kills. I don't care how you want to spin "guns don't kill people, people kill people," a gun is a weapon that is designed to kill, or at the very least used as a threat to kill. It should always be treated as such.
I don't criminalize people for ownership or having their property stolen. If you can prove it was stored responsibly and your legally approved gun safe was forcefully broken into and your weapon stolen and you reported it as stolen at the time you discovered it, you have absolved yourself of the responsibility of its use in a crime. You have acted responsibly. No charges should be laid against you.
If it was laying around on your night stand and an opportunist kid broke into your house and stole it, loaded and ready to kill, you didn't report it stolen, and it falls into the hands of someone who uses it in a crime, guess what? You're responsible for contributing to that and should be held accountable for your part in that to some appropriate degree. That degree in my mind is at least criminal negligence, in the same way as letting your baby die in the back of a car on a hot day because you forgot about them or getting into a car accident and killing someone because you were texting and not paying attention. What about how bar tenders can be charged for over-serving someone alcohol who then gets into a car and kills someone because they're driving over the legal blood alcohol limit? Your action, or inaction contributed to your weapon being used in a crime. You can argue that if it wasn't your gun, it would've been someone else's all you like. The fact is, it wasn't someone else's, it was yours. If it was someone else's, they would be charged with the same thing you were if they'd acted with the same negligence you did.
If you have a gun, it is your responsibly to store it safely, treat it with the gravity it's warranted. If it is stolen, report it as such. Be a responsible gun owner. If everyone treated their weapons with this amount of care, nobody would be screaming for gun registries.
Putting all those examples next to each other highlights a difference: Jews and LGBT people can (sometimes) use privacy to protect themselves from violence. But people with a different skin color can't.
The point you highlight is true, but you miss something that perhaps the way I worded my example didn't make clear.
Data doesn't know what colour you are by looking at you. It only knows what colour you are when you or someone you know specifies that.
For example - your car insurance company doesn't know that you're black... unless you include that on the form. And it doesn't matter. Black people are no more or less prone to having an accident than Hispanics or Chinese or Whites. It's irrelevant for the purpose of car insurance. But insurance companies will ask whatever they can get away with and claim to use it to provide discounts based on statistics. They then often package up this information and sell it to other companies who now know you are black, just because you provided that information when it seemed advantageous to do so. But they will equally use that information against you if they have the opportunity to deny your claim.
I might look at you and know immediately that you're black, but what if I don't know you? What if I've never seen your picture? The only thing I can glean from your data is what data there is to sift through.
So just because something may be visible in person, doesn't make it less important when it comes to privacy.
Or the people with whom you share a social graph. The friend of yours that's also friends with a known local drug dealer who in turn just happens to have cartel connections, even though you had no idea and have never even experimented with legal pharmaceuticals. Or the aunt that was once a part of a political rally that showed real possibility of overthrowing the government. Or the brother that's showing signs of mental instability on social media that everyone has missed - "he was such a good kid, none of us saw it coming." but the data predicted it; and that innocent vacation your family took to Egypt last year, a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the Giza plateau suddenly looks a whole lot more sinister - suddenly your whole family is questioned as being terrorists and the witch hunt has begun. You lose your business, your jobs, the community you loved.
Even the most innocent of data can be misconstrued and turned against you.
Nicely echoes a comment I made yesterday that the trouble with all this guilt by association is we don't get to choose friends and neighbours via criminal and national security background checks.
That you live near or socialise with possible terrorists and criminals doesn't make you guilty. I've had very close friends amaze me when I find they're to be divorced as they always seemed a happy couple. I guess friends don't tell me everything. That includes not sharing their plans for terrorism, bank raids and coups.
So McCarthy era paranoia but with an awful lot of data to draw unfair inferences from or perpetuate society's current biases.
Do you suggest people should conceal their skin color?
Privacy is unfair because it highlights characteristics that are difficult to conceal. If someone wants to discriminate you based on your height, there's not much you can do.
Rather than coming up with strategies to help people hide aspects of themselves, such as lying, we should help people to be more tolerant and understanding. A good start is transparency and openness.
In a world where everyone can hide their differences, failing to do so exposes one to all the discrimination.
In an ideal world, nobody should have to conceal anything.
But we don't live in an ideal world. The data we freely post out into the world via our social channels is tracked, recorded, cataloged. Our social graphs mined for information about whatever can be gleaned about our personalities and things that matter to us. They say it's to our advantage, because we only receive ads for products that are important to us... but it's really just a means for them to be more specific with their advertising, a way to exploit our information to get access to our wallets. It isn't there for our benefit, though it's sold to us that way.
If you've never seen the movie "The Circle," watch it.
This highlights in very real terms why privacy matters - including your skin colour, sex, sexuality, religion, political affiliation or anything else about yourself. You should be able to divulge your personal information as you see fit, not as a matter of policy.
> In an ideal world, nobody should have to conceal anything.
Why not strive for it?
> The data we freely post out into the world via our social channels is tracked, recorded, cataloged. Our social graphs mined for information about whatever can be gleaned about our personalities and things that matter to us.
That's great, and I'd be happy to pay to ensure more data is collected about me. I'm sure this will become extremely popular in the future. In the meantime, I'm doing it myself (Quantified Self).
> They say it's to our advantage, because we only receive ads for products that are important to us... but it's really just a means for them to be more specific with their advertising, a way to exploit our information to get access to our wallets. It isn't there for our benefit, though it's sold to us that way.
Showing me what I'm looking for is great. I'd pay for that. Do you think Company X is evil for providing services and products that are perfectly compatible with my needs? They get access to my wallet because they do something great and I'm happy to encourage them.
> If you've never seen the movie "The Circle," watch it.
I'm actively trying to make the technology in this movie become reality. However, it wasn't such a great movie, and I disliked the end. Hopefully people realized that the benefits of transparency are well worth the rough adaptation period.
> This highlights in very real terms why privacy matters - including your skin colour, sex, sexuality, religion, political affiliation or anything else about yourself. You should be able to divulge your personal information as you see fit, not as a matter of policy.
What if I see you crossing the street? Am I supposed to keep that for myself? Should we ban surveillance cameras, drones, sensors, GPS trackers, etc? Should people really own any data that intersects with themselves? None of this seems at all reasonable.
Well... the idealistic part of me agrees, why not? I'd love to see a world where everyone treated everyone else without prejudice or malice formed by growing up with the stereotypes we do, but ignorance is still widespread and education lacking. I'd love for a world where our differences were celebrated rather than feared and hated. I'd love for this information to be used benevolently to eradicate disease or to genetically fix hereditary conditions that cause us pain or significantly degrade our quality of life.
They say that everything worth having is on the other side of fear, and I subscribe to this notion. But I fear that humanity in its present form isn't mature enough to adapt quickly enough for many millions of people not to suffer during the interim.
Much good has come in the aftermath of WWII, in fact I would say the good has far outweighed the bad when you consider how far we've come since then. Do I believe that millions of Jews should have died for that progress? No. I don't, and I never will. Do I believe we should have been able to get where we are today without that? Yes, I do. Do I believe we would have? Unfortunately, I do not.
> Showing me what I'm looking for is great. I'd pay for that. Do you think Company X is evil for providing services and products that are perfectly compatible with my needs? They get access to my wallet because they do something great and I'm happy to encourage them.
If they do only what they prescribe on the tin, that's great. Unfortunately, you know as well as I do that this doesn't happen. The data is sold on to other less scrupulous companies and where it can be exploited and used against us in an unregulated fashion. This is why the GDRP and the Data Protection Act came into being in the U.K. and Europe.
> What if I see you crossing the street? Am I supposed to keep that for myself? Should we ban surveillance cameras, drones, sensors, GPS trackers, etc? Should people really own any data that intersects with themselves? None of this seems at all reasonable.
Am I doing anything wrong by crossing the street? What difference does it make if you saw me crossing the street? Are you going to use or release that information to someone to use against me?
I'm from the U.K. so public surveillance is something that I've become used to, and in fact complacent about over the years. When I'm in public, I expect to have my person and my actions on public display. This means I self censor and show people who I want them to see. This doesn't mean you know me. This doesn't mean the world at large knows me. The only things you know about me aside from how I behave are the things I want you to know about me. Just because you want to know something about me, doesn't give you the right to know that information, unless I choose to disclose it to you.
> Privacy is unfair because it highlights characteristics that are difficult to conceal.
The idea that privacy highlights characteristics that are difficult to conceal is possibly truthful, but it's a bit far-fetched, at least when making a case against something (privacy) and alleging that is causes damage (unfairness due to highlighting characteristics...). If privacy is guilty of this crime, then everything is unfair for all sorts of reasons. Some people being tall is unfair because it highlights others' feelings of being short. Some people being more attractive than others is unfair because is causes other people to feel badly about themselves.
None of these "causations" would lead you to believe we should actively try to "equalize" people across all those spectrums, right? That would cause (much) more damage than good. Have you read the Handicapper General? Kurt Vonnegut illustrates this idea.
Therefore, your catchy causation is not a good reason to recommend active destruction of existent privacy.
> Rather than coming up with strategies to help people hide aspects of themselves, such as lying, we should help people to be more tolerant and understanding.
Wow, that's a pretty broad, meta-level prescription there. I have a couple reservations about it:
1. There's no reason to assume it's an either-or game.
Helping people have privacy ("helping people hide aspects of themselves") is not at odds with helping people be tolerant and understanding. In fact, wouldn't "wanting/maintaining privacy" be an example of such a characteristic that distinguishes people, that some people may feel it desirable to conceal due to people being intolerant or not understanding, and that therefore you just recommended people should be more tolerant/understanding of? Or does your proposed implementation of "helping people to be more tolerant and understanding" include an implied whitelist of only certain approved "characteristics" that should be protected this way, and "wanting/maintaining privacy" isn't on the list? I see possible issues with this approach too.
2. Regarding being more tolerant and understanding...
I think it's much easier to treat people this way if you feel more-or-less content in your own life. Otherwise it's easy to let bitterness and resentment steer you into intolerant / non-understanding narratives and mindsets; it's easy to make up stories that justify your bitter feelings about others, and these stories often hinge on assumptions we make against people based on stereotypes or generalizations.
Yet there's no evidence that taking away people's privacy helps them achieve this contentment in their lives. What are examples of places where people have no privacy in their lives? Prisons? North Korea? Where does our idea come from that "total transparency" is guaranteed (or even likely) to unfold in some perfectly equal way that brings fairness, tolerance and understanding?
The internet is already filled with angry people who are sincerely enraged by reading about one another's "unacceptable" differences and experiencing cognitive dissonance about how different other people are; it is too easy for people to enter one another's personal mind spaces, and it's causing intolerance and misunderstanding. So what is your idea - we just do more of it and people will become tolerant and understanding? I don't see any evidence that that's the case.
I was trying to convey my intuition in terms OP could relate to. I obviously didn't do a very good job.
I don't care about equality of outcome. Heck, I'm not even sure I care about equality of opportunity. All I care about is efficiency, and privacy is inefficient. This is the main reason I despise it.
It also seems obvious that privacy is unsustainable and likely to disappear in the future. Knowing this, we should prepare for it. I don't see many people talking about this.
> privacy is inefficient. This is the main reason I despise it.
Certainly not in all cases, maybe not even most? For example, it's efficient to have a private key to log in to your server rather than just leaving it open to get hacked. It's efficient to have a private email inbox so your bank login doesn't get stolen. It's efficient to have a computer you can audit and control the software running on, so that your computer and data don't get compromised. Etc.
Everyone would be screwed without privacy. Being screwed is inefficient. This is the main reason I despise it. For people to move from more secure to less secure systems and paradigms in the name of "total transparency", they would need some assurance that they wouldn't be screwed. And I don't know if making an assurance like that is mathematically possible.
> It also seems obvious that privacy is unsustainable and likely to disappear in the future. Knowing this, we should prepare for it. I don't see many people talking about this.
This may seem obvious to you but I don't see any evidence for it. For one thing, how can you (even approximately) "measure" how much privacy there is? Privacy is by definition what you AREN'T able to see or account for in your ("total transparency") system. So if for example SMSs, IMs, emails and phone calls all become "totally transparent" (i.e. not secure), then we still have no evidence that privacy is "likely to disappear", because, for example, anyone can still just write their ideas in a physical notebook, and we have no idea how much this happens.
There's nothing efficient about keeping secrets and encrypting stuff. Our reliance on private key cryptography is horrifying. Keeping secrets is unsustainable, and making one mistake can break the whole system. This is far too fragile, and guaranteed to be universally broken in the near future.
The problems you described are authentication problems. It seems obvious that total transparency is the best (and only?) solution to those problems.
There will always be things we don't know. I don't think we'll ever become omniscient. That's fine. What I want is for people to understand how important it is to share and seek knowledge and resources. Tell people how you feel, share your medical records, open source your code, let people use your car. We can't work together if we don't share.
If everyone knew what everyone else was doing, it might change the world in a positive way (Not really sure, but it would be a change, e.g. #metoo, panama papers). Otherwise, it's only a privileged group of people who can maintain their privacy while accessing other's personal information.
And that's a well established power dynamic throughout history.
Good regulation protects people from themselves. Before the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook fiasco, people would claim why care about privacy I have nothing to hide. Its not about hiding the things you do, its about protecting you from smarter people with ulterior motives that might use your data to straight manipulate you (make you buy something, make you feel something, make you do something, etc). We have to change the dialogue regarding privacy into its for your own benefit not because you're doing illegal activities but because your data is valuable to many outside actors.
I’d make the argument that privacy is a neccessary pillar for growth in society. Things like marijuana usage could likely not have become legal had private use not occurred and many people found it to be not harmful. This private space for experimentation and self-evaluation (of products, substances, and norms) isn’t given much attention but could adversely change society if it’s lost imho.
I would say we don't care enough. There hasn't been any real blow back from the nsa vault leaks.
The government has and still is monitoring all forms of internet communication in the US en masse. Now they want to implement camera surveillance programs that use AI to track movements of people.
Where are the protests? Where are our political leaders? Our DAs, Supreme Justice, and what have you. You hear about these leaks almost monthly at this point and there are no repercussions. It will continue business as usual.
Because of the Stasi in german peoples republic or the Gestapo in the third reich. Two examples which only by coincidence happen to be Germany related, there are certainly many more examples like that.
I did not read the article, I admit, and won't do that as it is deliberately catch to attract click-bait. But is is so utterly bullshit to even phrase it in such a way.
Do we really care that much about privacy? We really should, but every Facebook scandal that goes seemingly unnoticed by the majority of the general public makes me think otherwise...
Throughout my life, I've had people discover facts about me and use them against me.
Personally. "Friends" who used -- and sometimes stole -- secrets to bully me.
Commercially: Insurance companies that used past treatment to discriminate against me. (In combination with the employer-provided insurance model, that marginalizes individual purchasers.)
So, I for one worry about privacy, because I've experienced first hand what its breach has cost me. I imagine I'm hardly alone.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 170 ms ] thread" Are paywalls ok?
It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. "
So, I am off topic, and behind a paywall :)
Once again, I need to find a new place to read great news.
> win in a democracy
This is why fundamental rights such as this are enshrined in constitutions and not up for grab by normal political processes.
An important aspect of liberal democracies is protection of the minorities. The majority can't just do what it wants, there are limits.
Not that it is relevant in this conversation: “people who value privacy” are not a group considered a minority who need protecting from the majority. If you want people to help you protect your privacy, you need to convince them, plain and simple. Asking the electorate for help in electing privacy conscious officials and telling them to fuck off when asked why is going to get us absolutely nowhere. That’s the plain truth of our privacy debate today: we are losing, and we need help but we can’t convince people to help us. Ideas of civil liberty are not cutting it. Evidently.
If you need any more convincing, look at how the public sees Snowden. And weep.
Ultimately I think it's a rational fear of being ostracized (or worse) for having believed or done something deemed by the group to be "not OK". The right to privacy shoes us to explore the nature of ourselves without harming others and without putting us in danger of violating social norms.
The counter argument might be that with more visibility and openness, the more tolerant we all might be if each others faults, but unfortunately history does not seem to demonstrate this.
Another example, Why I do I feel the need to close the bathroom door when I take a dump ? Because it considered taboo or weird. But if more and more people take a dump with the door open, it will be less weird.
Its a hassle too to have to keep things private.
Even if norms change to be far more permissive, there will still be issues with this. Besides, norms are never that permissive in absolute terms since some form of hierarchy quickly sets itself up in response to changing circumstances. For instance in some past contexts a young man might want to hide his promiscuity and adventurous experiences, whereas in some modern contexts he might want to hide his lack of promiscuity and adventurous (instagrammable?) experiences.
To borrow your analogy - even if most people become comfortable with open-door-dumps, why should we force someone who isn't to do it?
Until we stop judging each other, the right to privacy seems pretty important. That doesn't mean you always have to exercise it, but it should be your right.
No, not really, it actually goes a quite deep. In a liberal democracy, it is not the citizens who need to justify their desire for privacy, it is the state that needs to justify impinging on it. This is very important, because the state always has Very Good Reasons™ for impinging on your privacy (and other rights).
I like this quote: "This means the freedom to choose what to do with your body, or who can see your personal information, or who can monitor your movements and record your calls—who gets to surveil your life and on what grounds."
(I always like to see just how much garbage uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger block on articles that are privacy focused. This one might be a new record: 51 and 18 respectively)
Great point. People say they care about privacy but willingly Instagram and Snapchat and YouTube every minor detail about their lives.
Not everyone of course, but a lot. Facebook has what, 2.1 billion users?
There's a vast asymmetry between the privacy people say they want and in reality how quickly they'll give it up in exchange for free services.
But this article is a good legal history of American law.
This is a very interesting point. I think people don't really acknowledge how much convenience they gain from giving up their privacy. Much of the online discussion around GDPR seemed to be about this issue. People didn't seem top acknowledge just how much they gain from it.
I guess this is why it was made into a regulation, so people don't have to make the choice of whether to use an online service or keep their privacy.
Your fingerprint data is encrypted, stored on device, and protected with a key available only to the Secure Enclave. Your fingerprint data is used only by the Secure Enclave to verify that your fingerprint matches the enrolled fingerprint data. It can’t be accessed by the OS on your device or by any applications running on it. It's never stored on Apple servers, it's never backed up to iCloud or anywhere else, and it can't be used to match against other fingerprint databases.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht204587
The point, in case you missed it? The fact that privacy is not actually given up doesn't matter. People are willing to give it up to gain some perceived benefit.
They can still be concerned google, facebook recording their every click, what grabbed their attention and precise information about their politicial views, or government surveillance.
First one is what you choose to share, another one is basically log of your activities even you don't know how much information it includes.
Put me in a legal case where I (and only I) have full access to mobile data and Internet traffic for each of the 12 juries, judge, lawyers, prosecutor and their families and friends. Does the design of the legal system still work when one party can use data together with machine intelligence in order to figure out how to influence and manipulate the participants? I think the answer is a clear No, and I have heard a professor of legal history come to the same conclusion. The legal system as it is currently designed can not operate without privacy, and it is hard to imagine a system that can.
Actually, it's very simple. You yourself hinted at it:
> Put me in a legal case where I (and only I) have full access...
You had to specify "and only I", otherwise your argument would not make sense. Now suppose everybody has access to the same data, and voilà!, your power just vanished.
Through even if we assume so, how would everyone get equal access to the data, algorithms and processing power? If cases are resolved based on who owns most of those resources can we still claim to have a just legal system?
By traditional system, I mean; who is the best lawyer? One who can most effectively manipulate the jury towards their clients case. It sounds jaded, but mechanically I think it's true, no? And what makes one lawyer better at this? Perhaps training, personal talent, etc.
So in the two scenarios, you have:
1. a lawyer wins because s/he's more talented/trained at manipulation. 2. a lawyer wins because s/he's obtained a better ML software suite for processing data.
Is there a meaningful distinction here? Before ML, you always wanted to hire a "good" lawyer. So there were already meaningful differences between good and bad lawyers. Lawyers always tried to manipulate the jury. Lawyers always tried to sell the facts around their case in such a way as to be most effective.
I'm not sure how ML will alter this. Aside from cranking the dial to 11.
The feedback loop between Jury and ML algorithm can continue beyond the duration of the trial.
Without privacy controls, we will commodify the targeted manipulation of all human action and human choicemaking architectures.
Who benefits from an arms race on choice and decision manipulation?
That's already the case. Poor people get a public defender, which usually means taking the offer. Rich people can jam up the courts for years, and can get out of it.
We already live in a moneyball court system.
I disagree completely. People are far easier to convince or manipulate if you know just a few things about them. For someone trained in appealing to people/making arguments, it'd be all about dropping in the right words and making the right suggestions.
Isn't that what we all do with advertising? It's why (some of) it works so well on Facebook. Everyone has access to the same targeting, some people understand better than others how to make their ads work.
We're already seeing it with political ads. It isn't that crazy to imagine lawyers using every [legal] advantage available to them.
Is there actually a legal case that can be won to be made there?
(And if it wasn't clear earlier, when I say "unrelated" of course I'm not talking about familial relations, but social relations)
Does not follow. I'm not aware of any context where that's part of what "peer" means.
> A jury of perfect strangers unrelated to you is not constitutional.
Generally speaking, if you're not a perfect stranger, you're kicked off a jury for conflict of interest.
A "jury of one's peers" means people in the same social class as you, i.e. a jury that is not biased against you. The word "peer" is a hold-over from English society with more pronounced social classes, and is meant strictly as a counterbalance against those social classes.
Note that the Consitution itself doesn't actually contain the word "peer," but rather uses the phrase "impartial jury."
That said, having jurors be people you know seems a little unfair too. So a jury of perfect strangers seems greatly unfair in the postulated context of asymmetric privacy, and a jury of friends seems unfair as it's possible they would let you off regardless of evidence.
Problem is, asymmetric privacy is a reality today. So, yeah, tough problem.
If a juror actually knew you (or you knew them) wouldn't that be grounds for their dismissal from the jury due to a possibility of bias?
Obviously if a public figure or celebrity is on trial, the jurors will usually know of the accused, but still not necessarily know them.
I know that some self-serving bullshit about post-privacy came out of Facebook, but I don't see Zuckerberg or Sandberg leading by example.
I always wanted to know with all the data available, was Mark's data as available as everyone else's, or did they protect it?
Basically id like to hear arguments that get down to the fundamental reasons why humans care about privacy.
But leaving aside crime and misuse concerns a more fundamental reason why I want privacy is simply because that is my personal preference. And that is a preference I shouldn't have to justify to anyone. I suppose if I were pushed to provide some kind of a justification I would say that I get comfort from knowing that I am privy to information that no one else is - it helps to define me as an individual.
Things that changed my mind, and made me believe that even in a hypothetical perfectly equal and fair society people having some privacy is a good idea include:
- Reading Robin Hanson and others' literature on signalling, and seeing just how large a portion of our lives it still is. Basically, I see privacy as a way to prevent signalling concerns from encompassing all of our activity, and creating spheres where we are free to optimize for our own happiness and just our own happiness, and not what other people think about us.
- Having a deeper understanding of the ways that it's possible to make other people's lives suck even as a law-abiding private citizen, and realizing that privacy is an important self-defense tool for those situations.
- Realizing more deeply that "the people" are not always virtuous, and that social pressure as a mechanism for influencing people's behavior doesn't always lead to results I approve of (see: recent string of internet mobs leading to people getting fired for political views). Realizing how bad mainstream media is even today, which makes me more understanding of people's desire to protect themselves from them.
Mass surveillance is problematic because (i) I don't trust governments and large corporations to have interests that are aligned with us, and (ii) it creates points of centralized data collection that could get hacked, leading to everyone getting that data even if that was never the original intention. That said, in the physical space it's pretty unavoidable, so we should at least work hard to make the internet a more privacy-preserving place."
Vitalik Buterin https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/8m3wj1/rothschild...
A society of the "everyone sees everything" kind is a tyranny of the masses not just limited to your usual racism and whatnot, but crushing down on literally every property of a human being. Your run-of-the-mill Orwellian nightmare is a fluffy wonderland of individualism in comparison.
That may well be wrong, but I don't think it's obviously wrong. FWIW, I think it's probably true that the dynamic will exist, but it probably won't be enough to defang your argument.
Eh, there is a lot of very complex sociology going on here. Deviation is rather not accepted by humanity, our species is rather homogeneous, and has remained so across long periods of time and cultures.
Deviants that have a significant size will probably survive. It's the very small clusters of new deviations that are apt to be eradicated before they can get a foothold.
"I'm not doing anything wrong, I have nothing to hide. If you're trying to hide, you must be a criminal."
I pray that nothing you do innocently today becomes public knowledge and retroactively treated as a crime that threatens not only your livelihood, but your very life and the lives of those you hold most dear.
That. That is why privacy should be in our hands. We should be able to choose the information we divulge to the world about ourselves. Not have the world know every last thing about us.
Witch hunts happen. They happen today as often as in the days of the Salem Witch Trials. Black people in the southern States live in an atmosphere of racism, wondering if the cop pulling them over will beat them or kill them... most cops aren't racist. Women everywhere live in an atmosphere of sexism, yet most men aren't sexist misogynists. LGBQT live in an atmosphere of not being accepted and have their lives threatened regularly just because of who they are sexually attracted to. If you don't think you could be on the receiving end of a witch hunt just because your life is "boring", you are as naive as you are ignorant.
Privacy matters. That's why attorney client privilege exists. That's why the 5th Amendment exists. That's why the right to remain silent exists. Just because there is a void in public information about you, doesn't mean it needs to be filled.
Historically speaking governments have always been the worst perpetrators of violence on their own people.
Oh..wait...
Um... you could give me an almost 100% discount and I'm still not giving you the very ammunition that you will use against me at the first opportunity I need to make a claim despite never having made an insurance claim in the last 20 years. Not to mention, I'm not having you watch everywhere I go, when I go, building a profile about where I spend my time, who I spend that time with, when I do that, when I'm home, when I'm not home. You can have the mandatory information I must give you in order to be able to drive my car and take care of people in the event of an accident. Beyond that, I'm not giving you anything.
Freedom is not free, except you just want others to pay, it's the classic argument against government.
The wording of your statement makes a lot of assumptions about the kind of person I am and my level of responsibility towards others without you even knowing me.
Yes, when people talk about deaths and dangers it's amazing to me that just about every other cause of death is so tiny compared to the numbers our own governments have produced.
On one hand, I think free access to data could be both fascinating and beneficial to the entire human race if used benevolently. But let's face it. History has shown us that any company with access to this data will eventually share it or sell it to someone less scrupulous and it will end up being used against those who gave it freely in the first place thinking that it was either safe or at least couldn't harm them.
I'm looking at you, Cambridge Analytica.
[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/nyregion/newspaper-takes-...
There is much good that can come from registration. It will lead to more responsible gun owners.
However, the argument on the other side of the fence is also true - criminals will always be able to get unfettered access to illegal weapons. However, those weapons will have to be smuggled into the country, not stolen from those who purchased them through legal channels.
But just like the Jews, if you've got a gun and owning a gun becomes a crime that the government decide to enforce retroactively, then you have effectively signed your arrest warrant by registering them.
I don't think this is their intention however. Their intention is merely to hold legal gun owners to a standard of care that I believe they should be held and currently aren't. They're saying "if you own a gun, you're going to be expected to care for it responsibly. If you do not care for it responsibly, you are going to be held accountable for the damage it causes."
But you know what they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The government has a history of making laws that seem to be well intended that end up being exploited because they're overreaching while saying "oh, we don't mean that, we'll never enforce it in that way."
I have two friends who openly advocate for this method of removing guns from the US. Regardless, I think this is something gun owners fear. When Canada had a registration list, it seized weapons that were legal when purchased and later made illegal by bureaucratic decision, without compensation.
So gun owners shouldn't fear gun registries as a precursor to prosecution?
Yet in the very next sentence you advocate for prosecuting gun owners under a strict liability that holds them responsible for anything that happens using their gun.
>But you know what they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I'd say you've already gone too far when you criminalize someone getting their property stolen.
I also didn't say you shouldn't fear gun registries being a precursor to confiscation. I suggested that the spoken intent is to hold gun owners to a higher standard of care of their weapons. I totally understand that there may be unspoken intent to use it as a precursor to confiscation, and while I don't believe this to be so, you're right to be wary of this. But frankly I think too many gun owners are criminally complacent about ownership and storage of their weapons.
A gun is serious, it should be treated as such. Store it safely and properly, if you don't store it safely and properly and you're caught in that position (i.e. by having it stolen, not reporting it as stolen and used in a crime), then you should be at least be charged for negligence. I don't think there's anything wrong with this - a gun kills. I don't care how you want to spin "guns don't kill people, people kill people," a gun is a weapon that is designed to kill, or at the very least used as a threat to kill. It should always be treated as such.
I don't criminalize people for ownership or having their property stolen. If you can prove it was stored responsibly and your legally approved gun safe was forcefully broken into and your weapon stolen and you reported it as stolen at the time you discovered it, you have absolved yourself of the responsibility of its use in a crime. You have acted responsibly. No charges should be laid against you.
If it was laying around on your night stand and an opportunist kid broke into your house and stole it, loaded and ready to kill, you didn't report it stolen, and it falls into the hands of someone who uses it in a crime, guess what? You're responsible for contributing to that and should be held accountable for your part in that to some appropriate degree. That degree in my mind is at least criminal negligence, in the same way as letting your baby die in the back of a car on a hot day because you forgot about them or getting into a car accident and killing someone because you were texting and not paying attention. What about how bar tenders can be charged for over-serving someone alcohol who then gets into a car and kills someone because they're driving over the legal blood alcohol limit? Your action, or inaction contributed to your weapon being used in a crime. You can argue that if it wasn't your gun, it would've been someone else's all you like. The fact is, it wasn't someone else's, it was yours. If it was someone else's, they would be charged with the same thing you were if they'd acted with the same negligence you did.
If you have a gun, it is your responsibly to store it safely, treat it with the gravity it's warranted. If it is stolen, report it as such. Be a responsible gun owner. If everyone treated their weapons with this amount of care, nobody would be screaming for gun registries.
Data doesn't know what colour you are by looking at you. It only knows what colour you are when you or someone you know specifies that.
For example - your car insurance company doesn't know that you're black... unless you include that on the form. And it doesn't matter. Black people are no more or less prone to having an accident than Hispanics or Chinese or Whites. It's irrelevant for the purpose of car insurance. But insurance companies will ask whatever they can get away with and claim to use it to provide discounts based on statistics. They then often package up this information and sell it to other companies who now know you are black, just because you provided that information when it seemed advantageous to do so. But they will equally use that information against you if they have the opportunity to deny your claim.
I might look at you and know immediately that you're black, but what if I don't know you? What if I've never seen your picture? The only thing I can glean from your data is what data there is to sift through.
So just because something may be visible in person, doesn't make it less important when it comes to privacy.
Even the most innocent of data can be misconstrued and turned against you.
That you live near or socialise with possible terrorists and criminals doesn't make you guilty. I've had very close friends amaze me when I find they're to be divorced as they always seemed a happy couple. I guess friends don't tell me everything. That includes not sharing their plans for terrorism, bank raids and coups.
So McCarthy era paranoia but with an awful lot of data to draw unfair inferences from or perpetuate society's current biases.
Privacy is unfair because it highlights characteristics that are difficult to conceal. If someone wants to discriminate you based on your height, there's not much you can do.
Rather than coming up with strategies to help people hide aspects of themselves, such as lying, we should help people to be more tolerant and understanding. A good start is transparency and openness.
In a world where everyone can hide their differences, failing to do so exposes one to all the discrimination.
But we don't live in an ideal world. The data we freely post out into the world via our social channels is tracked, recorded, cataloged. Our social graphs mined for information about whatever can be gleaned about our personalities and things that matter to us. They say it's to our advantage, because we only receive ads for products that are important to us... but it's really just a means for them to be more specific with their advertising, a way to exploit our information to get access to our wallets. It isn't there for our benefit, though it's sold to us that way.
If you've never seen the movie "The Circle," watch it.
This highlights in very real terms why privacy matters - including your skin colour, sex, sexuality, religion, political affiliation or anything else about yourself. You should be able to divulge your personal information as you see fit, not as a matter of policy.
Why not strive for it?
> The data we freely post out into the world via our social channels is tracked, recorded, cataloged. Our social graphs mined for information about whatever can be gleaned about our personalities and things that matter to us.
That's great, and I'd be happy to pay to ensure more data is collected about me. I'm sure this will become extremely popular in the future. In the meantime, I'm doing it myself (Quantified Self).
> They say it's to our advantage, because we only receive ads for products that are important to us... but it's really just a means for them to be more specific with their advertising, a way to exploit our information to get access to our wallets. It isn't there for our benefit, though it's sold to us that way.
Showing me what I'm looking for is great. I'd pay for that. Do you think Company X is evil for providing services and products that are perfectly compatible with my needs? They get access to my wallet because they do something great and I'm happy to encourage them.
> If you've never seen the movie "The Circle," watch it.
I'm actively trying to make the technology in this movie become reality. However, it wasn't such a great movie, and I disliked the end. Hopefully people realized that the benefits of transparency are well worth the rough adaptation period.
> This highlights in very real terms why privacy matters - including your skin colour, sex, sexuality, religion, political affiliation or anything else about yourself. You should be able to divulge your personal information as you see fit, not as a matter of policy.
What if I see you crossing the street? Am I supposed to keep that for myself? Should we ban surveillance cameras, drones, sensors, GPS trackers, etc? Should people really own any data that intersects with themselves? None of this seems at all reasonable.
Well... the idealistic part of me agrees, why not? I'd love to see a world where everyone treated everyone else without prejudice or malice formed by growing up with the stereotypes we do, but ignorance is still widespread and education lacking. I'd love for a world where our differences were celebrated rather than feared and hated. I'd love for this information to be used benevolently to eradicate disease or to genetically fix hereditary conditions that cause us pain or significantly degrade our quality of life.
They say that everything worth having is on the other side of fear, and I subscribe to this notion. But I fear that humanity in its present form isn't mature enough to adapt quickly enough for many millions of people not to suffer during the interim.
Much good has come in the aftermath of WWII, in fact I would say the good has far outweighed the bad when you consider how far we've come since then. Do I believe that millions of Jews should have died for that progress? No. I don't, and I never will. Do I believe we should have been able to get where we are today without that? Yes, I do. Do I believe we would have? Unfortunately, I do not.
> Showing me what I'm looking for is great. I'd pay for that. Do you think Company X is evil for providing services and products that are perfectly compatible with my needs? They get access to my wallet because they do something great and I'm happy to encourage them.
If they do only what they prescribe on the tin, that's great. Unfortunately, you know as well as I do that this doesn't happen. The data is sold on to other less scrupulous companies and where it can be exploited and used against us in an unregulated fashion. This is why the GDRP and the Data Protection Act came into being in the U.K. and Europe.
> What if I see you crossing the street? Am I supposed to keep that for myself? Should we ban surveillance cameras, drones, sensors, GPS trackers, etc? Should people really own any data that intersects with themselves? None of this seems at all reasonable.
Am I doing anything wrong by crossing the street? What difference does it make if you saw me crossing the street? Are you going to use or release that information to someone to use against me?
I'm from the U.K. so public surveillance is something that I've become used to, and in fact complacent about over the years. When I'm in public, I expect to have my person and my actions on public display. This means I self censor and show people who I want them to see. This doesn't mean you know me. This doesn't mean the world at large knows me. The only things you know about me aside from how I behave are the things I want you to know about me. Just because you want to know something about me, doesn't give you the right to know that information, unless I choose to disclose it to you.
> Privacy is unfair because it highlights characteristics that are difficult to conceal.
The idea that privacy highlights characteristics that are difficult to conceal is possibly truthful, but it's a bit far-fetched, at least when making a case against something (privacy) and alleging that is causes damage (unfairness due to highlighting characteristics...). If privacy is guilty of this crime, then everything is unfair for all sorts of reasons. Some people being tall is unfair because it highlights others' feelings of being short. Some people being more attractive than others is unfair because is causes other people to feel badly about themselves.
None of these "causations" would lead you to believe we should actively try to "equalize" people across all those spectrums, right? That would cause (much) more damage than good. Have you read the Handicapper General? Kurt Vonnegut illustrates this idea.
Therefore, your catchy causation is not a good reason to recommend active destruction of existent privacy.
> Rather than coming up with strategies to help people hide aspects of themselves, such as lying, we should help people to be more tolerant and understanding.
Wow, that's a pretty broad, meta-level prescription there. I have a couple reservations about it:
1. There's no reason to assume it's an either-or game.
Helping people have privacy ("helping people hide aspects of themselves") is not at odds with helping people be tolerant and understanding. In fact, wouldn't "wanting/maintaining privacy" be an example of such a characteristic that distinguishes people, that some people may feel it desirable to conceal due to people being intolerant or not understanding, and that therefore you just recommended people should be more tolerant/understanding of? Or does your proposed implementation of "helping people to be more tolerant and understanding" include an implied whitelist of only certain approved "characteristics" that should be protected this way, and "wanting/maintaining privacy" isn't on the list? I see possible issues with this approach too.
2. Regarding being more tolerant and understanding...
I think it's much easier to treat people this way if you feel more-or-less content in your own life. Otherwise it's easy to let bitterness and resentment steer you into intolerant / non-understanding narratives and mindsets; it's easy to make up stories that justify your bitter feelings about others, and these stories often hinge on assumptions we make against people based on stereotypes or generalizations.
Yet there's no evidence that taking away people's privacy helps them achieve this contentment in their lives. What are examples of places where people have no privacy in their lives? Prisons? North Korea? Where does our idea come from that "total transparency" is guaranteed (or even likely) to unfold in some perfectly equal way that brings fairness, tolerance and understanding?
The internet is already filled with angry people who are sincerely enraged by reading about one another's "unacceptable" differences and experiencing cognitive dissonance about how different other people are; it is too easy for people to enter one another's personal mind spaces, and it's causing intolerance and misunderstanding. So what is your idea - we just do more of it and people will become tolerant and understanding? I don't see any evidence that that's the case.
I don't care about equality of outcome. Heck, I'm not even sure I care about equality of opportunity. All I care about is efficiency, and privacy is inefficient. This is the main reason I despise it.
It also seems obvious that privacy is unsustainable and likely to disappear in the future. Knowing this, we should prepare for it. I don't see many people talking about this.
Certainly not in all cases, maybe not even most? For example, it's efficient to have a private key to log in to your server rather than just leaving it open to get hacked. It's efficient to have a private email inbox so your bank login doesn't get stolen. It's efficient to have a computer you can audit and control the software running on, so that your computer and data don't get compromised. Etc.
Everyone would be screwed without privacy. Being screwed is inefficient. This is the main reason I despise it. For people to move from more secure to less secure systems and paradigms in the name of "total transparency", they would need some assurance that they wouldn't be screwed. And I don't know if making an assurance like that is mathematically possible.
> It also seems obvious that privacy is unsustainable and likely to disappear in the future. Knowing this, we should prepare for it. I don't see many people talking about this.
This may seem obvious to you but I don't see any evidence for it. For one thing, how can you (even approximately) "measure" how much privacy there is? Privacy is by definition what you AREN'T able to see or account for in your ("total transparency") system. So if for example SMSs, IMs, emails and phone calls all become "totally transparent" (i.e. not secure), then we still have no evidence that privacy is "likely to disappear", because, for example, anyone can still just write their ideas in a physical notebook, and we have no idea how much this happens.
The problems you described are authentication problems. It seems obvious that total transparency is the best (and only?) solution to those problems.
There will always be things we don't know. I don't think we'll ever become omniscient. That's fine. What I want is for people to understand how important it is to share and seek knowledge and resources. Tell people how you feel, share your medical records, open source your code, let people use your car. We can't work together if we don't share.
http://time.com/money/4346766/mark-zuckerberg-houses/
If everyone knew what everyone else was doing, it might change the world in a positive way (Not really sure, but it would be a change, e.g. #metoo, panama papers). Otherwise, it's only a privileged group of people who can maintain their privacy while accessing other's personal information.
And that's a well established power dynamic throughout history.
The government has and still is monitoring all forms of internet communication in the US en masse. Now they want to implement camera surveillance programs that use AI to track movements of people.
Where are the protests? Where are our political leaders? Our DAs, Supreme Justice, and what have you. You hear about these leaks almost monthly at this point and there are no repercussions. It will continue business as usual.
I did not read the article, I admit, and won't do that as it is deliberately catch to attract click-bait. But is is so utterly bullshit to even phrase it in such a way.
Personally. "Friends" who used -- and sometimes stole -- secrets to bully me.
Commercially: Insurance companies that used past treatment to discriminate against me. (In combination with the employer-provided insurance model, that marginalizes individual purchasers.)
So, I for one worry about privacy, because I've experienced first hand what its breach has cost me. I imagine I'm hardly alone.