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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

#121

Post by Cakez0r »

rhino369 wrote: post #74
Sir_Substance wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm inclined to agree. I'd like to see more active ostracisation against software developers that have worked for organisations like the NSA and GCHQ. If we can make it a career ending job, it will dramatically reduce their ability to recruit. However, I'd also like to see general software development think more closely about the role it has in normalising these things. Next time you start to create an account system…

How is Google or Facebook any better? They are spy agencies for advertising purposes instead of national security. Or companies that deploy ad sense or otherwise depend on companies like Google or Facebook.

People have a choice (at least to some extent) about the data they share with Google and Facebook. There is no such choice about the information that governments scoop up.

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

#122

Post by jacquesm »

golergka wrote: post #120
blub wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your whole post is written in bad faith and frankly revolting. Which sector is building startup after startup for data mining, tracking, building profiles? This in addition to the already established companies. Then you're trying to downplay the issue to trivial actions such Facebook likes or tracking of IP addresses, a toy version of the state of the art. Finally, the sarcasm, showing how reasonable you are and putt…

> Which sector is building startup after startup for data mining, tracking, building profiles? You talk about it like it's necessarily a bad thing, by default, for everyone. Why?

Because information is power and power tends to be abused over the longer term, all fig-leaves about 'improving the world' to the contrary.

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

#123

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

karmacondon wrote: post #103
tobbyb wrote: post #64

I think the tech crowd is in denial about their role in surveillance. We expect professionals to behave ethically. Doctors and companies working on genetics and cloning for instance are expected to behave ethically and have constraints placed on their work. And with consequences for those behaving unethically. Yet we have millions of software engineers working on building a surveillance society with no sense of ethic…

Not everyone agrees with you that the tech sector is contributing to the building of a surveillance society or police state. There are a lot of people who have carefully considered the issue and come to the conclusion that facebook knowing what posts you liked or ad networks knowing which pages your IP address has visited is not a Bad Thing. It's clear that you don't agree and all debate is welcome, but I caution you…

> Simply, I and many others do not believe that any western government is going to use information gathered by tech companies to preempt threats to entrenched interests and the status quo.

It's simply hard to take your stance as one made in good faith.

The US government has a long history of using its national police, the FBI, to infiltrate and subvert domestic political movements that the powers that be found unpleasant -- including using their police powers against modern groups such as the Occupy movement.

Further, we know that the US government has used records held by tech companies to create massive cross-referenced databases of people, including domestic activities. The recent leaks about surveillance programs has made that abundantly clear.

Your position is literally that an organization with a history of doing this kind of activity won't use the technology we already know the government possesses to keep doing the same thing.

So I think there is a need for you to rehash the debate here, because it's not clear how you sincerely hold that position.

Because rather than a rational view, what you describe sounds like irrational denial.

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

#125

Post by jacquesm »

nsns wrote: post #86
blub wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large parts of the tech crowd are making big money from advertising and tracking people. Unsurprisingly, it seems these developers and entrepreneurs have a hard time understanding why their source of income has negative effects on society.

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…

I think you missed an important bit in your translation.

"We do not know how to determine how the technology fetish in individual people leads to the point at which a rational relationship changes into one of over-valuing, which eventually leads to someone designing a train system to get the victims as fast and smooth as possible to their destination in Auschwitz, but who forgets what it is that happens to them once they arrive there"

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

#126

Post by Cakez0r »

blitzprog wrote: post #46
spdustin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You might be searching for those things out of curiosity, but if (in the insurance hypothetical) statistically more people searching for "opiate withdrawal" are addicted to opiates, then it's going to affect your health insurance premiums regardless of your intentions.

Or more generally, you can't choose how people interpret data they gather about you and that can adversely affect you.

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

#127

Post by karmacondon »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #123
karmacondon wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone agrees with you that the tech sector is contributing to the building of a surveillance society or police state. There are a lot of people who have carefully considered the issue and come to the conclusion that facebook knowing what posts you liked or ad networks knowing which pages your IP address has visited is not a Bad Thing. It's clear that you don't agree and all debate is welcome, but I caution you…

> Simply, I and many others do not believe that any western government is going to use information gathered by tech companies to preempt threats to entrenched interests and the status quo. It's simply hard to take your stance as one made in good faith. The US government has a long history of using its national police, the FBI, to infiltrate and subvert domestic political movements that the powers that be found unplea…

You're saying, "We should not trust the government because they did things that I didn't agree with in the past". This seems like an unfair standard to hold any person or group of people to. I would be unhappy if people said "I think that karmacondon has made mistakes in the past, so he shouldn't be trusted to do his job ever again."

I understand what you're saying, and I think I get where you're coming from. But like the GGP post, you're begging the question and assuming that your beliefs are so correct that anyone who disagrees with them must be insincere.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the government monitoring potentially criminal groups or building databases. That's what we pay them to do. If they get out of hand then we, the people, will deal with it.

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

#128

Post by jacquesm »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #123
karmacondon wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone agrees with you that the tech sector is contributing to the building of a surveillance society or police state. There are a lot of people who have carefully considered the issue and come to the conclusion that facebook knowing what posts you liked or ad networks knowing which pages your IP address has visited is not a Bad Thing. It's clear that you don't agree and all debate is welcome, but I caution you…

> Simply, I and many others do not believe that any western government is going to use information gathered by tech companies to preempt threats to entrenched interests and the status quo. It's simply hard to take your stance as one made in good faith. The US government has a long history of using its national police, the FBI, to infiltrate and subvert domestic political movements that the powers that be found unplea…

> Because rather than a rational view, what you describe sounds like irrational denial.

The people that I know in real life that hold views like these are best described as scared, rather than ignorant. They feel that they price they pay is a small one as long as it gives them an un-specified increase in perceived security in return.

Fear is a very powerful tool when it comes to getting people to choose against their self-interest.

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

#129

Post by macns »

rms_returns wrote: post #100
tobbyb wrote: post #64

I think the tech crowd is in denial about their role in surveillance. We expect professionals to behave ethically. Doctors and companies working on genetics and cloning for instance are expected to behave ethically and have constraints placed on their work. And with consequences for those behaving unethically. Yet we have millions of software engineers working on building a surveillance society with no sense of ethic…

Second this. The Dell customer base "hack" we heard about yesterday is an example of this. It was not as if some extraordinary unethical programmers hacked their database, but inside technicians who were supposed to guard that data turned out to be unethical. Its high time we give the same importance to ethics of tech personnel that we extend to doctors, lawyers, etc.

Perhaps large corps like dell should face charges for leaking personal data.

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

#130

Post by jacquesm »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #90
chongli wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 teen…

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 wh…

Another important bit that contributes to your excellent comment is that software and data are very hard to control substances. Unlike physical goods such as precursors they can be transported through wires and all over the globe in less time than that it would take you to fill out that sign-off form.
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