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

Doctors are actually professional. They have rigorous certifications, they have a professional board that administers examinations and issues licenses, they have a defined structure for reporting ethics violations with a code of ethics dating back centuries.

Programmers are just a loosely-defined group of tinkerers, labourers, and the odd scientist or engineer. How do you expect to impose a structure on that? A teenager can tinker around with software in his bedroom and nobody gives a damn. If he were to conduct medical experiments on his little sister, on the other hand, he'd go to jail. That is the difference.

> Any of those searches could be legitimately borne of pure, unadulterated curiosity, but taken out of that context by people with whom you're hoping to establish some kind of relationship, they could easily doom that relationship before it begins. Hell, those searches may not even be made by you but by someone in your household, but if decisions are made and opinions are formed based in that information, you've suffered an unnecessary loss.

I think the negative effects there are largely due to how private we are. If we were constantly confronting these things that seem embarrassing or concerning, we'd come to realize how normal they are.

It would require a completely shift in how we view privacy, one so large I doubt it would ever happen, but I think those are ultimately a symptom of the current system, where we often keep things private for the sake of societal or cultural norms, sometimes to personal detriment.

I'm not particularly arguing that either way is inherently right or wrong - but I do think the consequences you speak of are only meaningful in a world where a large measure of privacy, at least between most people in their day to day interactions, exists.

I can't help but be reminded of a sentence by Theodor Adorno:

    Keineswegs weiß man bestimmt, wie die Fetischisierung
    der Technik in der individuellen Psychologie der 
    einzelnen Menschen sich durchsetzt, wo die Schwelle ist
    zwischen einem rationalen Verhältnis zu ihr und jener
    Überwertung, die schließlich dazu führt, daß einer, der
    ein Zugsystem ausklügelt, das die Opfer möglichst
    schnell und reibungslos nach Auschwitz bringt, darüber
    vergißt, was in Auschwitz mit ihnen geschieht.[0]
    

In short: the fetishization of technology makes its creators forget for which purposes their wonderfully efficient tools will finally be put to use.

[0] Erziehung zur Mündigkeit, S. 91

I would like to see law enforcement focus on combating cases of child abuse in the real world instead of focusing so much on what happens online. The online component has been criminalized due to the argument that internet demand will spur abuse in the real world - I see the logic of that.

However, the true wins will come by doing real-world police work, educating parents and children on how to protect themselves and what are the potential offender profiles (hint: not guys in an ice cream van). They will come on a diplomatic level by negotiating better laws in countries where such materials are produced (Japan was a recent success AFAIK) and where sexual tourism is rife.

Finally, those individuals that haven't abused anyone should receive support from a mental health specialist if they come forward and admit to their urges, like in e.g Germany.

I have the feeling that this is a taboo subject, that is not discussed frankly in most societies. The authorities focus mostly on harsh punishments instead of prevention through education and mental health treatment.

Thinking about what happens on tor is mostly a reactive policy that doesn't do much to treat the causes.

Doctors (as a profession) have a professional regulatory board and are educated on the ethical proceedings, but doctors (as an individual) can be just as corrupt as anyone else. The difference is accountability within the profession. If a doctor starts doling out tons of prescription opiates, an auditing system is in place (Many levels in fact - either within the state, nationally via the DEA, by someone arrested who will rat the doctor out in exchange for lenient terms, or by a pharmacist who has seen one too many "Oxycodone 30 take as needed" pass through his shop.)

Programmers (as individuals) can't be ethically audited, but what we can do is regulate the data which is allowed to be collected. You regulate it like any other industry. Sigma-Aldrich is a corporate company that sells pharmaceutical grade precusors. I was dating a girl who was doing a post-doc in o-chem, in her office waiting to finish up something, and flipped through their catalog. I saw a precursor that was heavily flagged by the DEA which could be used to synthesize massive amounts of a recreational drug. Curious, I asked her the procedure for procurement, and she delineated it. In short, she could get it with a sign-off from the PI and a few other things fairly easily [she would never do that, she's far too ethical - but her PI was famous enough that a request on his letterhead with "Veritas" on it would have been enough] but there's a chain of custody and auditing system in that just like there is with doctors who are issued DEA numbers. If I call up S-A and ask for the same chemical not only would I be laughed off the phone, but they'd likely submit my information to the DEA to flag me for further investigation.

What am I getting at? You can't regulate people, but you can regulate systems. If that precursor was ordered and that drug happened to pop-up, the DEA could easily call up any of the suppliers of those precursors and figure out when it was dispensed fairly easily. We need to regulate any institution that collects data in the same way. When it's at a point where the institution is large enough to collect information at a level like that, issue compliance terms. In the same way publicly traded companies have to release financial information to the SEC and comply with numerous reporting terms (look at EDGAR to see how extensive it is), open up another branch of the government that is in charge of regulating the companies that collect data. That way, your engineer with loosely-defined morals who is capable of doing whatever will be prosecuted just like amoral doctors.