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Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

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Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#41

Post by enraged_camel »

jkonowitch wrote: post #16

This issue always boils down to the LOTR argument for me: the surveillance power is too great, and no individual or group can or should be trusted with it, regardless of its actual current or potential future benefits. The crux of the debate then is where to draw the line between safe and unsafe amounts of power?

It's not the amount of power that makes it unsafe, but rather its nature. In order for it to be safe:

1. It must be granted through democratic means.

2. It must be under strict oversight by an independently elected or appointed group that's free from both private conflict of interest and popular pressure.

3. There must be reliable mechanisms to quickly and efficiently strip said power away from the authority if they are determined to have used it irresponsibly.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#42

Post by blitzprog »

ericdykstra wrote: post #33
blitzprog wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all thank you for respecting my opinion. I appreciate it. 1.) Free speech is a completely different topic. Snowden's quote on this page makes no sense to me no matter how often I re-read it. If free speech didn't exist I wouldn't be able to express my opinion about privacy :) 2.) Privacy means hiding the truth. Hiding what really happened. Hiding who you really are. I believe it is a flaw of the human person…

> Who is the government? It's people. People like you and me. If people decide to make assumptions based on data they collected and the assumptions aren't correct it's their own fault for assuming something in the first place (because...you know...it's an assumption...it can be wrong). What if the assumptions they make raise the premium on your health insurance because someone sells your data? People (or, more likely…

Wouldn't you agree that the real solution is to fix the a) algorithms and b) assumptions rather than c) hiding the data?

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#43

Post by Swizec »

blitzprog wrote: post #35
Swizec wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all true and I agree wholeheartedly. And when The People incorrectly decide that based on data you raped a 15 year old, you will be in prison for the duration of the trial, you will be on the sex offender list forever, and you will be inconvenienced with anything requiring a background check. You , not The People. Ideologically, I agree, privacy is a lame side-effect of how groups of people work. Pragmaticall…

I see your point. If society ends up believing in the fact that assumptions based on collected data have suddenly turned into "facts" then we will be truly...let me say it frankly...we are done for. I believe when this happens Hacker News won't exist anymore because the intelligence of human beings will be comparable to that of a fly. Luckily...this didn't happen yet because I can still have intellectual discussions,…

It's not even about "facts". Suspicion is enough because "innocent until proven guilty" is true in theory, but the period between "suspected" and "proven innocent" can be very ... inconveniencing.

And that's IF the internet or real lynch mob doesn't decide to go after you. If it does, then the being proven innocent part is the least of your concerns.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#44

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Laaw wrote: post #4

I have two unrelated thoughts. "Chilling effect" has always been a profound term for me, because I imagine the "cold" (numbness really) sensation a human body often senses when something truly awful (disembowlment/dismemberment) occurs. The body's way of protecting itself is to go "cold", and in many ways that's exactly the effect taking place here, as well. There's also an undeniable part of this conversation that r…

Try this:

Secrecy does not exist any more

Privacy is the politeness of your neighbours.

Now everyone is your neighbour

As such we choose to not be polite to paedophiles

However only a limited number of us choose to be polite to people still in closet. Others will impolitely sell pink insurance, others scrawl hate messages

I am not sure where I am going other than politeness is hard to enforce.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#45

Post by ericdykstra »

blitzprog wrote: post #42
ericdykstra wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who is the government? It's people. People like you and me. If people decide to make assumptions based on data they collected and the assumptions aren't correct it's their own fault for assuming something in the first place (because...you know...it's an assumption...it can be wrong). What if the assumptions they make raise the premium on your health insurance because someone sells your data? People (or, more likely…

Wouldn't you agree that the real solution is to fix the a) algorithms and b) assumptions rather than c) hiding the data?

I can't fix someone else's algorithms and assumptions, but I can hide my own data. Even if I agree with your premise, if someone else is in control of the "real solution," then it's not a real solution for me, is it?

There's also the chance that those algorithms and assumptions are "correct" from a business standpoint (it would cost more to "fix" them than the monetary benefit of fixing them) even if they're not correct for consumers, meaning nobody that's actually in control of them has any motivation to fix them.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#46

Post by blitzprog »

spdustin wrote: post #34
blitzprog wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all thank you for respecting my opinion. I appreciate it. 1.) Free speech is a completely different topic. Snowden's quote on this page makes no sense to me no matter how often I re-read it. If free speech didn't exist I wouldn't be able to express my opinion about privacy :) 2.) Privacy means hiding the truth. Hiding what really happened. Hiding who you really are. I believe it is a flaw of the human person…

I believe it is a flaw of the human personality that makes us want to hide information and eventually lie about it. Who said anything about lying being a part of a desire for privacy? I don't care if Google or the government knows that I'm searching "[insert embarassing keywords for you here] Would you care if a prospective insurer knows you're (hypothetically) searching for "atrial fibrillation management" or "opiat…

Recognize the real source of the problem.

Like you said, someone trying to get information about the topics you mentioned could simply be doing this out of curiosity. Now person A from the government says you are X. However you are not X, you are Y.

Think again, what is the actual problem? The actual problem is not the data which is 100% correct.

The actual problem is people's prejudices and assumptions. This is what we need to fix. If someone searches about topic Z we should think very carefully about the consequences of drawing an assumption.

However, this view is very ideological. Your view on the current state is more practical. I do not disagree with your statements, I simply wish that we can address the real issue here in the future. Even if it takes us centuries.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#47

Post by tdyen »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #9
Laaw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yours is a defeatist attitude, I think, and there is plenty of evidence that Evil can be stopped/averted in many cases. It's beyond obvious that there is no complete solution for Evil, but if you keep ignoring this question/problem, then people will continue to pick the "no Evil/no privacy" option over your "Evil/privacy" alternative, which is ultimately devastating to everyone. We need to talk about how to create "n…

I'm really curious what you think evil is since you keep capitalizing and speaking of it as some spiritual essence that can be eradicated. You have not established the slightest bit of an operational definition, and resort to pathologizing neutral transmission channels as hosts of "Evil". This is a complete non-starter and not worthwhile to deliberate. "Evil uses Tor" is as useful as "Evil uses paper".

But evil uses paper is probably going to do less harm than evil uses Tor or a gun or a nuke. Societal control must adapt to the medium on a regularly adjusting basis depending on the perceived level of evil.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#48

Post by tdyen »

exodust wrote: post #2

Very good, but it's funny how on the "why IPVanish" page he links to, the first reason given for using a VPN is, to watch Netflix from any location! Oh the horror of limited localised Netflix content. We must protect ourselves. (Really it is awful, I use a VPN for that purpose too). But the point is, it doesn't seem popular to hide metadata from ISPs with VPNs. Will it ever be popular? I'm not so sure. For good or ba…

I think Snowden showed that it is as easy as pressing a button which is why he went and blurted it out. The NSA were also working to make it easier to track people.

My take on it is privacy is dead or nearly and we have to have good legal protections of who can use what data and when. The privacy arms race will mostly be won by big government with lots of resources and enough willing/foolish patriots (Depending on your point of view).

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#49

Post by mirimir »

Laaw wrote: post #4

I have two unrelated thoughts. "Chilling effect" has always been a profound term for me, because I imagine the "cold" (numbness really) sensation a human body often senses when something truly awful (disembowlment/dismemberment) occurs. The body's way of protecting itself is to go "cold", and in many ways that's exactly the effect taking place here, as well. There's also an undeniable part of this conversation that r…

Limiting privacy to stuff that's "not Evil" is unworkable, because there's no reliable way to distinguish "good" from "evil". For example, many Wahhabi Muslims consider homosexuality to be at least as evil as child pornography. And indeed, some decades ago, that was virtually the case in the US.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#50

Post by mixmastamyk »

enraged_camel wrote: post #28
blitzprog wrote: post #11

"This affects all of us. We must care." is not an effective way of convincing someone. I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should. It's just my opinion. I know other people do but please don't generalize.

>>I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should. When late 19th century Germany started recording census data, a clerk made the suggestion that they should also record each person's religion. No one objected. What could be the harm, right? They were already collecting age, gender, occupation, etc. so they might as well collect one more thing. Half a century later, the Nazis were able to use tho…

This is the logical extreme. It may seem far fetched today, but it doesn't have to get nearly this bad to cause great harm.
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