Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously

news.ycombinator.com

41–50 of 65 posts

Re: Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously

#41

Simple, read this article about China's Social Credit System: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-... This is not going to happen overnight. But an inch at a time, if people do not take privacy seriously.

Together with the related Black Mirror episode, which I wasn't able to finish because it made me too sick to my stomach - too realistic, too close, too terrifying :S

(Season 3, Episode 1, for example: https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/24/13379204/black-mirror-se...)

Re: Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously

#42
post #35

Maybe you trust Google or Facebook or Microsoft. That's fine. And probably sane; they're large corporations with huge numbers of processes and procedures in place to make sure data is used in ways that is at least parallel with their terms of use. Do you trust that these companies will never be hacked? In a world where, this year, we discovered that a fundamental optimization in the literal silicon of processors, whi…

> Do you trust that these companies will never be hacked? I trust them more than I trust myself, unfortunately. I generally try to avoid uploading unnecessary/extra data. But email and remote document access aren't optional, and while I don't trust BigCorp to do security right, I also know that I don't have the resources to do it right for myself...

That's fair. You shouldn't trust yourself, or the companies, because your trust will be betrayed one day. Everyone is a little incompetent, its just a matter of when.

That's why End To End Encryption is the best solution we have, which balances usability with good security. It reduces the surface of attack to just the encryption algorithms, their implementation, and the keys, which is substantially easier to audit and doesn't change when the products evolve. It also allows you to say "fuck it, have the data, its encrypted so who cares". Finally, it logically separates the attack surface into two distinct parts; attackers need both the keys and the data to do harm, either alone does nothing.

In practice, trust comes down to "can I protect the keys". That's something I can trust myself to manage well, and plenty of companies sell solutions to make it easy (ex: Apple and the secure enclave of your phone).

Re: Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously

#43

This is a totally acceptable attitude. It’s your data, you can give it away or sell it or whatever. It’s your choice. It matters to me so I pay attention to news about products and companies with regard to privacy. Privacy, like free speech, is a universal human right. The fact that you choose to share information doesn’t mean you lose that right. Any more than not speaking does not mean you lose the right to free sp…

To expand on the point, if most people are like OP, then the concept of privacy as a "human right" is on thin ice anyways. It's hard to convince people to subscribe to some vague concept or idea if they are not in immediate pain / it doesn't provide some immediate benefit.

Re: Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously

#44
post #40

I agree with your lack of motivation because ultimately everything is connected so there cannot be any privacy actually. One thing this means is that privacy is egoity and the ego is a mental fabrication, totally illusory, however of convenience with a body in the world. In other words, don't worry about it. There is an assumption of practical common sense along with this viewpoint. Namely there is no expectation of…

Absolutely right. Privacy was an Enlightenment concept granted to so-called "Enlightenment thinkers" which were really just egotistical white Europeans. It was a mistake for a country as great as the USA to think that privacy should be appropriated from a gray and troubling past.

Re: Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously

#45
You may be right that privacy may not matter any more, and/or that the battle for privacy itself is already lost.

To provide an alternative approach to consider, there's always the questions of "qui bono?" and "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?". (There's are quite old questions, if the fact that they are often served in Latin wasn't a dead giveaway.) "Who benefits?" and "who observes the observers?"

Are you getting enough value from people using your private information?

Do you know who is using your private information? Who is keeping them honest/lawful/good?

Those are very tough questions, and a lot of the responses here certainly will tell you that the answers aren't in your favor. Though that's for you to judge, you may be benefitting enough from your Google services and social media, that maybe that's a fair trade-off for you. You may feel that market controls, capitalism, shareholders, may hold enough interest in keeping corporate entities accountable that you aren't worried what they are doing with your private information. That's a perfectly acceptable stance. It's largely the default stance these days, which is why so many posts are so fervently pro-privacy, because that's the stance that needs the most defending.

Here's the thing though, even if you agree that maybe privacy is an intangible benefit that is already "lost" and not coming back, there are still interesting answers to "qui bono?" and "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" that push towards the opposite direction: fighting for less privacy overall, but more transparency/accountability.

"Who benefits?" Why should Google make so much money selling advertisers to you personally? Why not disintermediate that situation and sell yourself directly to advertisers?

"Who observes the observers?" Who is it checking that Google is only using your private information for ads? Can you demand that Google explain everything they do with your private information, including when and how it gets "anonymized" or "aggregated" into other metrics? How much of your privacy data goes through open source code that you can evaluate for yourself? Can you access the foundations of their machine learning algorithms and help find biases as a user, as a general part of the "crowd", without being an employee or government auditor?

One possible demand in a surveillance state is to dismantle the surveillance, and if privacy is already lost, that's a doomed battle. The other possible demand is sousveillance: "I should be able to watch you back."

A good book of essays on the subject, if you want to explore the idea further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

Re: Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously

#46
You don't understand all the complexities in how legislation is created or why the executive does certain things. You may have disagreements with many of those laws and actions — if not now, you will the next time power changes hands/parties.

How can you prevent yourself from being manipulated all the time? How can you prevent yourself from being extorted or blackmailed for something society (or your circle) doesn't approve of? How can you prevent the rest of the citizens in your country from being manipulated all the time? How can you make sure that investigative journalists and activists don't "disappear" or don't get shutdown with scandals or shaming or blackmail? How can you know the truth about whoever these people are fighting against? The foundation for all these is that you need, and everyone needs, privacy and strong privacy protections. You cannot have a free society without it...but only a mirage of it where you believe whatever those who are in positions of power and influence tell you to believe. They could be political, corporate, religious, or other people/groups/entities. They might even be from another country.

There's something called "balance of power". Usually, governments are more powerful and have more ways to control or subjugate common people (even in free democracies). One of the things (not the only thing) to counterbalance that is privacy for common people (so information can flow easily). The same can be said of large corporations too, who are usually so rich that they can lobby or nudge or push politicians to do things to their bidding (something you as an individual may never be able to). If some corporations rely on privacy intrusions to grow larger and gain more influence, obviously we need strong protections from them.

Privacy usually doesn't seem to matter to those who are privileged enough to or able to live a comfortable life without trouble from other people. But once you face issues or take a deeper look at those who are not as privileged, you may understand why this is such a big deal. Those people are the ones most vulnerable to power, corruption, etc., and they're also the ones who cannot fight by themselves in many instances without the protection that privacy offers to their supporters.

If you're somewhat well off that you can afford to spend some money (even by foregoing eating out a couple of times a month), then you can surely opt for (paid or donationware) services that aren't relying on your personal information to stay in business.

[Anyone further interested can also check out my profile here for a little more on this topic]

Re: Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously

#47
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you trust that these companies will never be hacked? I trust them more than I trust myself, unfortunately. I generally try to avoid uploading unnecessary/extra data. But email and remote document access aren't optional, and while I don't trust BigCorp to do security right, I also know that I don't have the resources to do it right for myself...

That's fair. You shouldn't trust yourself, or the companies, because your trust will be betrayed one day. Everyone is a little incompetent, its just a matter of when. That's why End To End Encryption is the best solution we have, which balances usability with good security. It reduces the surface of attack to just the encryption algorithms, their implementation, and the keys, which is substantially easier to audit an…

Any suggestions for how to combine end-to-end encryption with document storage in a way that still allows me to access documents on my phone/tablet/computer and also share documents with others?

Unfortunately end-to-end encryption for email is completely impossible because almost everyone I interact with via email does not know how to use gpg...

Re: Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously

#48

Real time pricing and personalized pricing. The more marketers learn about you, the more they will be able to set custom prices for you that may not be in your benefit. Think airline tickets, that's the model people are after. What if I told you that in 10 minutes you could get most of the way to great privacy without leaving Google services or social networks at all? Also your pages will load faster, you will be pay…

Ok, pricing thing is scary. 1. Interesting 2. I've it installed already 3. How does vpn help? 4. Does having safari, help? 5. I use safari as default. does that work? 6. I don't use FB, Twitter. Only Youtube, Gmail

Re: Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously

#49
How many years you lived? How many more you think you'll do? Is not the next day that should worry you, but all the ones from there onwards. And the people you will care about, including the ones that survives you.

The thing is that you don't know what could happen, but digital records are there for the future, and what happens on it, different policies, different social trends, different governments and so on.

Things are changing fast. If is profitable, will be exploited. And is not that some person will find your personal data. AIs and bots will do it with everything they can access. And could affect you in ways you can't predict now, with effects that may be very unpleasant.

This may be far fetched, what could happen today, if you were older? Getting poor? No medic coverage? Lost house or pensions? No insurance when something wrong happen? Can't get any work? Now extrapolate for unknown conditions in a not so far but still unpredictable future.

Re: Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously

#50

Simple, read this article about China's Social Credit System: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-... This is not going to happen overnight. But an inch at a time, if people do not take privacy seriously.

Ok, this makes it more, uh, tangible I guess. This is scary!
Post reply on HN